I need another option than Photo bucket

[QB93Z]

Thanks George (Gunny), I was planning to contact you about this but you beat me to it.


I will download a trail of jAlbum and see what is does for me. Does jAlbum provide a simple way to allow third party hosting of individual images? Photo Bucket has a built in feature that creates a html text line that pastes directly into the post editor dialog box in vBulletin on the Registry Forum.


BTW, all of your albums are wonderful.


Jim

[G-Sting]

Originally Posted by Gunny

My .02 (adjusted for inflation) with a huge caveat ... I don't like & refuse to use a photo host that assumes ownership of my copyrighted property.

If you have more than a few photos consider hosting yourself.
What do you need? a domain name and a web host plus a little time/effort on your part to learn how to manage your photos. If you can download your photos from your camera to your computer and then organize them in folders, you're already over half way to doing this entirely yourself. It's not rocket science ... or to be blunt, it's easier than pulling the plenum.

Cost:
domain name should not cost over $10 annually
web hosts are available for less than $5.00 a month - some include a free domain name when you sign up for a year or more
I prefer to use a dedicated domain name registrar and keep my domain name separate from my web host giving me the flexibility of changing web hosts if/when their service becomes unsatisfactory.
PM or email me if you want/need additional information including recommendations for registrar and/or web host. There are some good, affordable companies and there are some that are just rotten and should be avoided. Most web hosts offer unlimited storage for your website but NOT storage for other files - use DropBox, GoogleSpace, Amazon, etc. for file storage.

Pros:
total control of your photos, web pages, design, etc.
no advertising
unlimited space (generally)
email that you control & generally more private than gmail, hotmail, etc.
cost is easily $80 or less depending on how well you shop
Cons:
a small learning curve at the beginning

I currently design/develop/maintain 3 personal websites plus 1 for my wife's organization. My websites are almost exclusively about photos with very little "other" content. The software that I use for the photos is free (with advertising) or very reasonable (no advertising plus more features). The software is extremely easy to use but also affords a good bit of customization for those who want to do so ... yes, I do a lot of additional hard coding for the "look" that I want, but it's not necessary - just one of my hobbies.

Recommended software: jAlbum. Everything you need to build nice looking web pages to display photos.

Links to my sites: You can email me from any of these sites by clicking Info on the home page (icon in upper left corner or on the menu bar)
ZRWON.com 10,000+ Corvette related images, mostly ZR-1.
TUBAND.com almost 20,000 images - family, travel, bands I play in, etc.
JRET.net selected images dealing with my photography hobby. I have a good bit of extra hard coding to customize this site including the homepage slideshow that changes every hour.

Jim V - if you haven't already considered self hosting you might want to check to see if you have an unlimited plan with gismos art. If you do have unlimited it should be a simple matter of going into the control panel and creating a single folder, hopefully in the root directory such that your photo album address would look like: gismosart.com/photos. The photo album would never appear on your main gismos website but would be "self contained". Another method is to use this address: photos.gismosart.com - assuming your web host allows the use of sub-domain names. Once you have "built" your photo web pages on your computer it is a simple matter to upload everything to your photo folder using the FTP protocol. Contact me if you have any questions.

So what is my total cost for the three websites described above?
3 domain names @ $8.50 each per year (I usually pay for 5 years at a time)
1 web host account that allows multiple domain names with unlimited webspace, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email addresses - $7.95 monthly

fwiw, my wife's website costs her $8.50 annually for the domain name plus FREE unlimited web hosting because her organization is a 501c3. This website is more traditional but it does have a photo section ... here's the LINK if you're interested.

My observation is that the various photo hosting companies are looking at all the photographers as cash cows and at the same time want to impose unrealistic "rules of usage". I find that totally unacceptable.

Since it's becoming difficult to find acceptable "free" photo hosting I recommend that anyone, especially those with large photo collections, consider self hosting.

Apologies for the long post (and a couple of rants), but I wanted everyone to know that other alternatives are available that work as well or better than the dedicated photo hosts.

Gunny,

Thanks for posting details on setting up your own websites/hosting. I've been reading this thread with interest - and bothered by the PB 'forcing' payment to keep going. They were almost doing it before with their annoying/gross advertisements, but now...

I was looking into smugmug.com as a host as it is a quality photo site, but I wouldn't use all the features for the $.

I like the idea of control over the site and photos/documents that you are suggesting with having your own domain name & web host. Will look into it, unless someone else comes up with a better idea in the next few weeks.

Last, and final thought, is: If a lot of folks are still using PB and it would be a big hassle to change, would it be possible for the ZR-1 Registry board to see if they could get a 'group discount' for PB paid membership? ...just a thought.

Thanks again,
G

[Gunny]

Originally Posted by QB93Z

Thanks George (Gunny), I was planning to contact you about this but you beat me to it.

I will download a trail of jAlbum and see what is does for me. Does jAlbum provide a simple way to allow third party hosting of individual images? Photo Bucket has a built in feature that creates a html text line that pastes directly into the post editor dialog box in vBulletin on the Registry Forum.

BTW, all of your albums are wonderful.

Jim

Jim -
give jAlbum a try ... I suspect you'll feel right at home very quickly. The docs are very good plus there is a very helpful forums section where you can usually get help from the various developers/authors.

in a nutshell the jAlbum workflow works like this ...

• organize your photos in folders (these become the albums that you will eventually upload to your host server)
• open the jAlbum program
• choose a skin ... I suggest you try Gromit first as it adapts to & looks good on any device
• check/edit the various jAlbum settings ... important: be sure you have all of your source files in one folder and a different destination folder for the completed files (i.e. the generated files that are uploaded to your server). I recommend that you use copies of your original images in the source folders even though they theoretically are never changed.
• run jAlbum ... click on the build/make button to create your website.
• you can preview the album, make changes, etc. then rebuild to suit your taste.
• upload using the upload routine built into jAlbum or use a separate FTP program such as FileZilla (free)
• on a small website (fewer than 500 images) jAlbum/Gromit should build your complete website in 5-10 minutes ... add another 10-15 minutes for upload and you're done

If jAlbum (or one of the skins) can auto generate an html link I'm not aware of it. I'm old school and just go to the page/image that I want and copy the link then paste into the editor of the forums.
Try this:

• click HERE
• click the address bar and edit 50D_6752.html to 50D_6752.JPG to open the image by itself (if JPG doesn't work, try lower case jpg)
• click the address bar again and copy the complete http address and paste into the Z registry editor using the insert image button

this is not as simple as clicking a button to generate the link but I'm so used to doing it this way I haven't looked for a 1-touch solution. jAlbum/Gromit have so many options there may indeed be a quicker method.

Also, as I mentioned in my 2nd post ... jAlbum does offer photo hosting (free or very reasonable) that does not involve getting a separate domain name or paying for a web hosting account. I haven't tried it but it may work just fine for most people. Since jAlbum and the various skins are all open source I doubt seriously that you would be prevented from using 3rd party links, at least not by them. It's usually the web host that places those restrictions and my web host has never restricted me in any way.

The beauty of jAlbum is its simplicity of organizing everything on your computer, building the page(s), and then uploading - keeping all of your originals on your computer. The first time or two the process might be a little daunting (much like a plenum pull) but after a couple of times it's really quick & easy. And if simplicity/ease begins to bore you there are tons of ways to mod your final look, which is what I've been doing to all of my sites. Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a few other little bits is handy, but not totally necessary.

Give it a try, send me the link, and I'll take a look. Feel free to email or call me if you run into any glitches.

Bet you'll take to it like a duck ...

[Gunny]

Originally Posted by QB93Z

Thanks George:

<a href="http://www.zrwon.com/events/120824/slides/50D_6752.html [IMG" target="_blank">http://www.zrwon.com/events/120824/slides/50D_6752.jpg[/IMG]

Jim

change your link to "http://www.zrwon.com/events/120824/slides/50D_6752.JPG" upper case

then click the insert image button and paste the new link w/upper case to make the image display


and then you discover the image linked from my website is too large.
use jAlbum to size the image to whatever size you want so that the link to 3rd party sites will be the desired size. if only one or two images, use photo editing software to adjust images to your taste. FWIW, jAlbum provides the building of albums with custom thumbnail size (120x160px), custom image size (600x800px), PLUS the ability to click to a larger or the original image should you need/want that size. Harder to explain than actually implement.

To recap ... select any thumbnail on any of my sites, click the thumbnail to open the larger image, note the link & change the end of the link from "html" to "JPG" and you have the link for a direct connect to the image. All of my images are optimized to look good on a 26" flat screen but when clicking on the html image page the code recognizes the device and resizes the image accordingly. If you have a smart phone or iPad compare the page appearance to a desktop computer with larger screen. Again, that's one reason I use the Gromit skin.

[QB93Z]

Trying from my website:






Jim

[WARP TEN]

Originally Posted by QB93Z

Trying from my website:






Jim

What a great looking '93 Quasar Blue ZR-1!!!! --Bob

[Gunny]

Originally Posted by QB93Z

Trying from my website:



Jim

I see someone's doing his homework ... looks good, Jim.

I see that you're linking to your gizmo site ... are you also using jAlbum to generate your images? The author of the Gromit skin that I recommended also has a NoPages skin that may be more suitable for your needs ... click HERE then click the NoPages tab for more info.

I played with NoPages sometime back and it looks to be an effective way to resize a large number of images in a batch operation, especially if you're not interested in building a website. Upload the edited images to a folder on your web server for 3rd party linking. For editing images I generally prefer PhotoShop but for web authoring, I've found nothing better than jAlbum for building my photo websites.

On a fast computer w/plenty of RAM, jAlbum is reasonably quick & efficient in building (rebuilding) albums ... my computer usually handles about 5000 images in less than 10 minutes. Uploading is another matter. I don't have access to really fast internet ... it's OK for normal stuff but large uploads I usually do at night while sleeping.

[tf95ZR1]

A little off track, but George (Gunny) I looked at some of your photos.
Absolutely BEAUTIFUL & AMAZING! I am impressed.
Side job as an automobile photographer?

Back on track. How about security of the website?

[Gunny]

Originally Posted by tf95ZR1

A little off track, but George (Gunny) I looked at some of your photos.
Absolutely BEAUTIFUL & AMAZING! I am impressed.
Side job as an automobile photographer? ....

Thanks ... much appreciated. Several of my photos were featured in the June/July 2015 edition of America's Sports Car (NCM's magazine) on pp. 14-15. I also do a good amount of event photography locally but travel photography is probably the most enjoyable. If you get a chance check the other links on the earlier post.

[QB93Z]

Originally Posted by tf95ZR1

A little off track, but George (Gunny) I looked at some of your photos.
Absolutely BEAUTIFUL & AMAZING! I am impressed.
Side job as an automobile photographer?

Back on track. How about security of the website?

The security of the website is always a concern. My thought right now is that I am already running a website from GizmosArt.com, so using my storage space to host my own car pictures will not impact the security. If someone can use the photo tag to get access to my data files, please let me know.






<img src="http://www.gizmosart.com/webimages/corvette/qbonsbr.jpg"border="0"alt=""/>



Jim


Edit: Now I can't get a photo to show. I guess my quota is 1 per day.