Image hosting to use on ePlaya and elsewhere?

[Elliot]

Which image hosting sites are best suitable for posting pictures on ePlaya?

I have searched for an hour in ePlaya Overviews and Feedback going back five years, but it may be time for a new thread on this.

To recap, images can be attached directly to ePlaya, but the capacity is limited. The other way is to put the image on an image hosting site, and link to it in the ePlaya post.

In a Feedback thread from four years ago, Trilobyte recommended Tumblr for this purpose. Is this still a good choice?

I've been using Photobucket for over ten years, and it works for other bulletin boards and whatnot also. But Photobucket has been suffering more and more outages (a recent one lasted well over 24 hours), and also inexplicable obstacles to signing in.

In an online discussion among Photobucket users, there is enthusiasm for Imgur.
But when I read Imgur's Terms Of Service, I find this:

...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.

I'm rather computer-illiterate for this age and time, but that sounds like Imgur would "not be a good fit" for our purpose.

Also, I would like to use a hosting site that allows a "Burning Man level" of social norms for content (such as non-sexual nudity), but will not get me associated with unfavorable Stuff (by my personal standards) such as porn and... hmm, I'm at a loss for the words... Stuff that's found only in shady circles.

Suggestions?

[Traveller in Time]

As in: images may be a gift for one but are a burden for the site?
(sorry for the inconvenience, will keep an eye on this thread)

[burner von braun]

I'd like to hear some good suggestions as well. It seems to me that Photobucket is becoming more and more cumbersome to use, and I'm not the least bit interested in all of their options and advertising either.

[Elliot]

I pay Photobucket a trivial amount to delete the advertising on the screen. Very much worth those few bucks. But they still send me e-mails, which is next on the "hit list".

[FIGJAM]

I use "Picture Trails".

They have an "Image URL" tab that gives you cut and paste options for any type of sharing.

[Elliot]

All right, I'm trying PictureTrail. Reckon I will test it with this photo from my first Burn. I still use the same farmer's straw hat and the desert goggles.
But PictureTrail say they are not free -- they will insist I start paying after an undetermined time. If that's a reasonable amount, that's fine. Here we go.

[BBadger]

I just use Imgur. They used to encourage linking directly to their images. Quite frankly, if they were serious about stopping hotlinking they could easily do it, but they don't.

Also you can just post the URL of the IMGUR page directly in this forum and it'll embed it properly in the same manner that Imgur encourages, for example (""):

[FIGJAM]

I think it's $20 a year.

[Leap]

All right, I'm trying PictureTrail. Reckon I will test it with this photo from my first Burn. I still use the same farmer's straw hat and the desert goggles.

I had 2 straw hats fall apart on me out there. What's your secret?

[trilobyte]

I still use tumblr with no issues, and it's still all kinds of free. I recommend that site or imgur, which is also free. I personally prefer tumblr just because of the bloggy experience, you can follow friends and people who post interesting things pretty easily and it can be an interesting thing to surf around in its own right.

Once you've uploaded your image, you ccan right click and choose 'copy image address' and then paste that URL in on ePlaya or other forums.

[Elliot]

Thanks Trilo!
I actually tried to sign up with Tumblr, but found myself shunted over to a Yahoo sign-in page, and there I remained stuck in a loop, with no sign of Tumblr anywhere.
I have an AT&T/Yahoo e-mail account (which I avoid using ever since they completely blocked ePlaya notifications), which explains the connection. But if they are trying to simplify sign-in for their various subsidiaries, well... chalk up one fail.

So.... This business of... "...or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network." isn't a concern for us small potato users?

[BoyScoutGirl]

I've always used imgur and have never had to log in. I just hit the green "new post" button at the top and upload from my computer...

[trilobyte]

Generally speaking, I wouldn't be concerned (and haven't been for all the years I've used such sites). When most of those places refer to CDN's (content delivery networks), I think they're generally thinking about high traffic commercial sites that try to take advantage of such services by using them to host their images/videos, which they then link to on their own blogs and articles that are generating ad revenue.

In those cases, the hosting companies feel that it's not fair that a person is not just using their free services to host and serve up content for large numbers of users, but that you're making money off it and not giving them a cut.

[Traveller in Time]

imgur

Seems to lose some transparency.
OK we'll live with that.

[trilobyte]

That's cuz, as they say, you're doing it wrong

What you did is just paste in the URL of the whole page, and so the site's embedder sees the link as a post to embed. If you right click on the image and choose "copy image address" (or whatever wording your browser uses) and then click on the image embed button (little icon of mountain and red sun) and paste the URL there, you get this:



The code you would see in your message edit window would look like this:

Code: Select all

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MdVzPDG.gif[/img]

[Traveller in Time]

Thanks.




Hmm, there is a view counter