Hosting site for images to be used in a web log

[Boatman]

I'm working on a personal web log. So far I have been linking my images from Picasaweb where I have most of my online images stored. This is convenient and Google Blog Spot and Picasa have a lot of useful linking features.

However, the images from Picasa lack quality and won't go above 800 pixels. There are are other issues as well.

What are the preferred sites to use? Tinypic is an obvious choice as it is used here and seems to work well. But, I'm not familiar with the nuances of using the service.

Comments, please.

http://remononaz.blogspot.com/

[spngr311]

I pay for photobucket's setup. I can upload them however large I want and the remote linking works perfectly. It's like $30 a year, but a small price for the convenience it offers me.

[inkista]

I use Flickr. You can configure Flickr to post photos directly to Facebook, Wordpress, Blogger, Twitter, Tumbler, Yahoo Updates, and LiveJournal. (Flickr has a public API, which is why plugins and integration with other services is so prevalent.) If you use a free account, you'll be limited in monthly upload bandwidth and size-wise only the 1024 on the largest side and smaller sizes will be accessible, although the original will still be stored. If you get a pro account, you will also have access to the original size.

[Crovean]

Flickr is another good option for 24$ per year

[Geoff F]

I use Pbase. There is a small charge although that varies with the amount of space you use. Relatively easy to use. Even someone like me can use the simpler options; although I've never had sufficient confidence to experiment with the more complicated alternative settings.

[Colin Southern]

I use Pbase. There is a small charge although that varies with the amount of space you use. Relatively easy to use. Even someone like me can use the simpler options; although I've never had sufficient confidence to experiment with the more complicated alternative settings.

+1 for pBase. It took a little while to get comfortable with it, but now that I have, it's been a consistant & reliable performer. http://www.pbase.com/cjsouthern if you haven't seen it already.

[Donald]

I'm not sure what a web log is but if you just need something from which to link images into the 'web log', then something like Flickr is probably as good as anything else. If you're actually talking about your own website, then pBase etc is the way you might want to go. A few of us on here use Smugmug.

[Colin Southern]

I'm not sure what a web log is

Traditionally, the term "blog" comes from weB LOG, which I'm guessing is what's meant?

[Dave Humphries]

Another vote for PBase here too.

One problem we see quite often here with Flickr hosted images is that the direct link image url seems to include the path of the album they are in. So in the future, if you ever rename or reorganise an album, the picture link breaks in all those far off blog and threads you potsed in (but have forgotten about, or have no way to find and fix)

By contrast, PBase (and others); the direct link image url is just that, a link to the image and you can move stuff around on your website without fear of breaking previous posted image links.

Cheers,

[spngr311]

^Photobucket is similar to PBase regarding the direct links.

[inkista]

One problem we see quite often here with Flickr hosted images is that the direct link image url seems to include the path of the album they are in. So in the future, if you ever rename or reorganise an album, the picture link breaks in all those far off blog and threads you potsed in (but have forgotten about, or have no way to find and fix)

Actually, all you have to do is truncate the path back to the image ID number (i.e., chop off the /in/set-bladdy-blah part part of the path). Just having the image number after the account name/ID will still work and be a legitimate link as long as you didn't delete the image or edit/replace it.

This is just a case of someone copy'n'pasting the link from the page where they're viewing it, and forgetting they got there via an album. If you use the share drop-down on the photo's page in Flickr, the link is direct and will not involve the album name. Example of default:


Circles by inkista, on Flickr

Note how the links DO NOT include the album name, only the account name. If you use the tools that Flickr provides, you'll be fine. Other nice gracenotes for sharing, if you post to Twitter, links are automatically shortened; and if you post images on messageboards, you can choose for the img tag and link to the Flickr page to use BBCode, rather than HTML.

The biggest danger with Flickr is that your photos are much more accessible to the public, due to the nature of the API. PBase has much better security controls for locking down an image, so I wouldn't use Flickr for professional work you wanted to sell--PBase is a much better arena for that. Flickr is first and foremost a photo sharing site.

[Dave Humphries]

This is just a case of someone copy'n'pasting the link from the page where they're viewing it, and forgetting they got there via an album. If you use the share drop-down on the photo's page in Flickr, the link is direct and will not involve the album name.

Hi Kathy,

Thanks for that, I did wonder if there was a better way.

The only problem is, without inspecting the urls of every image posted, we don't know there is (going to be) a problem until it is too late. At least I can be more specific and helpful in PMs in future

Cheers,

[inkista]

Whoops sorry for the slippage. I added some text in my post about fixing the problem after the fact: just delete the set information from the path. For example, the path for the image above in my Comic-Con 2011 set is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkista/5995468630/in/set-72157627280422536/

But the individual page link is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkista/5995468630/

And that remains good even if I remove it from the set or delete the set altogether.

The "share" pulldown is up above the upper left corner of the image on a Flickr page. When I use it, it looks like this:

[Boatman]

Thanks to all for the good information. I see I now have more HTML to study but I'll be up the steep part of the curve pretty soon.

The site I'm working on is remononaz.blogspot.com. Google provides many good 'gadgets' to work with but the ones for photography have limitations and you need to use the HTML gadget and put in your own code to create better photo deliver tools.

Several very nice tools can be found at simpleviewer.net though these still need a site to link back to, to display the pictures. Hence my questions about a site that works better than Picasa.

Does anyone else get the feeling that this digital photography is like black hole? You get interested and after you think you have a handle on the cameras and photography basics you get sucked in by the PP stuff, then the printing techniques, and now, for me, the web delivery tools. Where does it end? How can I end it so I can go take some photographs?!

A forum category in Tips and Techniques for photo web site development, within this forum would be very useful.

[Ronny]

I'm not sure what a web log is but if you just need something from which to link images into the 'web log', then something like Flickr is probably as good as anything else. If you're actually talking about your own website, then pBase etc is the way you might want to go. A few of us on here use Smugmug.

A web log is a Blog. First there was a website, which was most a one way traffic. Then people want more inter-acting with each other and started creating the blog sites. WordPress.com and WordPress.org came to develop blog themes and widgets. The other main sites to develop blogs are joemla and drupal. Today WordPress is in its version 3. And in this latest version a blog becomes a web again, but with the benefits of the blog. This was needed because of google who determine the ranking when searching for a certain subject. (SEO)
Having a free website for your hobby or one that cost nearly nothing is fine, but when you want to market your business you need a professional setup. You want your business to be found on at least the first 3 pages of google when some body does a search.