Image Hosters?

[PookaWitch]

As everybody probably knows, Photobutt is screwing everybody over. Not only are they demanding $400 a year for hosting images as 3rd party, but they won't even let you access your photos if you don't pay their costs. >.<

So we need to find a new 3rd party hoster. Not just for Sphinxes, but I also need one for my own hosting needs for pet/character pages, profiles, etc.

I want to know what people suggest and why that hoster is good. What have you found works well for you, what sites work well with free hosting, what are decent paid hosting sites, what has the best bandwidth, etc. Which plan is needed for what sites for just near unlimited 3rd party hosting and practically nothing else, etc.

I'm seriously looking into these now.

So please, tell me what works well for you and why you suggest it. ^_^

[Operetta]

I am a colorist for another adoptable, and we switched to smugmug from photobucket a while ago, probably two years? I like the fact that you can tag the images with the ID numbers. You can organize very easily. Images update rather quickly. You can make folders and galleries private so that you can only see the images with a direct link or if you are logged in. I'm not sure which package our owner has and have PM'ed her for more details, which I will happily share once I have them.

[Fanta]

For personal/quick things, I like imgur. Its free, you can make folders, they have quick links. You can also resize the thumbnails easily; only thing to worry is if its a transparent PNG, if you use any other size outside of "original," a black background will be added for some reason. XP

For adoptables, I switched to Smugmug since another adoptable I'm on staff with got tired of the ads & general crappiness that is Photobucket. I believe the cheapest subscription/basic account is $48/year if you pay for the full year up front. Otherwise you're billed monthly for slightly more. It's very much a gallery type site you have basic customize options for how it looks from preset templates. You can create subfolders galore, have titles & tags, quick links. You can resize the thumbnails with no problem. Only downside for me using Smugmug, is they don't accept Paypal, so it has to come from a credit card.

[kaats711]

I'll second that for personal things (and speedy games!) I use Imgur. I just transferred over most of my personal stuff from photobucket to Imgur yesterday and it's very straightforward to use. I like the albums function and while it doesn't feel as organized as PB did it's still pretty solid. I work with another adoptable and we've been slowly rolling out our gallery for a bit now, I know Piwigo is the base and it's a little more coding heavy, but it's looking pretty nice. Unfortunately I do not know the financial details of it, but it might be worth a gander

[Operetta]

I've been doing a lot of research on image hosting for personal use over the last several days. I've tried Google photos, but that only provides you a link to the photo and does not actually post the image elsewhere. It's also very roundabout to even get the link if you ask me. I've done some research on Imgur, which seems to be a pretty good option, except that I found this in their terms and conditions.

"Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network."

Obviously, lots of people use Imgur to post random pics on PI, and they haven't been shut down or anything, but that makes me think that at any time Imgur could crack down on that kind of thing. Just thought I'd share some of my findings of my own research.

[Siopilos]

I would always suggest smugmug because it's usuability and ease of access. Customer service is a plus, so at least what you're paying would come with lots of help.

The downside I think, would be the the way the sphinxes are IDed and uploaded you would have to just give new links when they're updated. I think the urls are unique with each upload.

[Fanta]

Jul 8, 2017 16:56:52 GMT -5 Siopilos said:

I would always suggest smugmug because it's usuability and ease of access. Customer service is a plus, so at least what you're paying would come with lots of help.

The downside I think, would be the the way the sphinxes are IDed and uploaded you would have to just give new links when they're updated. I think the urls are unique with each upload.

Even if you just use the replace feature? I haven't had a reason to try it, but I know it's a feature.

And to Operetta 'stranger point, there's a thread in the Friends forum that Were pointed out the same statement in their ToS. But it's very wink/nudge. They won't bother users unless it becomes an issue. So yes it definitely could come back to get the user, but unless you have a ridiculous amount of people viewing the image, I just don't think PI has that kind of traffic to even ping on their radar.

[Operetta]

I have definitely used the replace feature of smugmug many times, and I think it automatically just updates the image. I'm not one hundred percent sure only because I always recopy the link just in case it did change.

Good to know, Fanta.

[Fanta]

Yay for typing on my phone & making strange autocorrect choices. @_@

But yeah so I think the general consensus from that thread was it shouldn't be an issue, just be aware it's there in case something does happen. WHICH is why I save all my images & if anything should happen to imgur, I'd just have to redo pony profiles. Annoying, but doable. XD

[PookaWitch]

I'm seriously looking at smugmug, the problem is that it doesn't have a free option, which I needed for my non-sphinx images.
But for an adoptable hoster this could really work. It's going to take a HUGE amount of work to change over all of these sphinx files.

Does smugmug have a bandwidth limit?

[Fanta]

As far as I know, it does not. All I could find was "unlimited uploads," "fully hosted & unlimited traffic."

What I've done with my Smugmug, is I have a general name "FantaCoAdopts" & under that I have subfolders for my adoptables "City Cats" & "Marionettes". That way they can be separate, but I"m not paying for multiple Smugmugs. You could probably do that with Sphinxes. Just have one for your own quick stuff (Which I may have to do myself should imgur decide to boot us that use them heavily for art-related things).

[Operetta]

Hey, Pooka! I heard back from the adoptable owner that I work for. I have forwarded her information on via PM on PI instead of posting it here since it is really long.

[springacres]

Bit late here, but I've been using tinypic for mine. However, tinypic is owned by Photobuttface, so not sure how long that will work.