Pictures without a website

[1recluse]

Calgunners, here is my question. I want to be able to host/post/store pictures on the net. I do not want to host on the free sites where someone has to sign up to see the photo's or deal with the adware etc. What I am looking for is something like a website host without the website if that makes since? I don't want the people looking to have to deal with anything other than going to the picture link or as on Calguns just see the picture, Free Costs something somewhere, Any suggestions?

[devious21]

Calgunners, here is my question. I want to be able to host/post/store pictures on the net. I do not want to host on the free sites where someone has to sign up to see the photo's or deal with the adware etc. What I am looking for is something like a website host without the website if that makes since? I don't want the people looking to have to deal with anything other than going to the picture link or as on Calguns just see the picture, Free Costs something somewhere, Any suggestions?

Not exactly sure what you want, but if you just want somewhere to host photos that you can link directly to other people, dropbox, google drive, etc can do that.

If you want a website that can host a list of photos that people can browse without having to sign up, I'm sure you can find that too. Photobucket and services like that don't require registration to view.

Maybe if you tell me more about what you're trying to do, I could help you out more.

[SoldierLife7]

Zenfolio. It's not free, but it is the best "bang for the buck".

I pay $60 a year for unlimited storage with the option of full resolution downloads.

I upload photos to an album, and then I can send a link and password to clients so that they can access the album. Each album has its own password...

My wife and I did a lot of research on this type of site and this is the best option in our opinion.

[Creampuff]

Sorry to be nerdy here, but you probably just mean you want to post your images. If you really want to "host" then it means you want to run the server that will post the pictures you upload to. I don't think you really want to host any servers.

Sorry, it is semantics, but semantics does matter.

Any way, if you want to share pictures with family and friends, google photos and google drive is a free commonly used service.

[Cokebottle]

I don't think you really want to host any servers.

Ya...

For publicly available files without any login required by the viewer, it's either run your own HTTP server and deal with the security issues, or a service like Photobucket, though the free service is limited, as they all are.


IT people and companies run services to make money.
This isn't 1988 anymore, people don't run hobby BBSs with free download libraries anymore other than forums like Calguns.

An online hosting service like Photobucket is going to make money one of two ways... subscriptions, or advertisements. Servers and bandwidth are not cheap.

[Scratch705]

if you don't care about privacy, imgur is a photo hosting site that is free, no sign ups even as the uploader, and you just send the share link to anyone you want.

there is also a deletion link you get when you upload the photo so if you want to take it down you can. (although as we all know, once it is on the net, it is out there forever.)

[BuddyBoy]

if you don't care about privacy, imgur is a photo hosting site that is free, no sign ups even as the uploader, and you just send the share link to anyone you want.

I started using imgur a while back when imageshack switched to a pay-only service. Works fine. I created an account so I could more easily delete my images. They allow direct links for embedding in forum posts.

[DaveInOroValley]

Another vote for imgur, much better then photobucket and other free ones.

[ocabj]

I actually still prefer flickr over imgur. Flickr will automatically create resized images that you can share, with either direct link, html tags, and bbcode tags.

[Bobby Ricigliano]

Another vote for imgur, much better then photobucket and other free ones.

Imgur gets flagged and blocked by some anti-virus suites.

Photobucket is the worst free solution on the planet. Overwhelming spam and pop-ups that twist your arm to upgrade to their paid service, which sucks too.

I have been using SmugMug for a year now, and it is great. Not free, but it might as well be when you calculate the time and aggravation you saved by not closing endless ads and pissing people off who tried to look at your photos but decided not to bother when your shytty free image host tries to take their browsers hostage.

[1recluse]

Imgur gets flagged and blocked by some anti-virus suites.

Photobucket is the worst free solution on the planet. Overwhelming spam and pop-ups that twist your arm to upgrade to their paid service, which sucks too.

I have been using SmugMug for a year now, and it is great. Not free, but it might as well be when you calculate the time and aggravation you saved by not closing endless ads and pissing people off who tried to look at your photos but decided not to bother when your shytty free image host tries to take their browsers hostage.

Thank You all for your help! I believe this "SmugMug" sounds like what I am wanting. I wanted something that didn't have tons of ads and the browser hostage issue for people trying to see the photo's. Before I got some good tips on the ad blockers and Privacy Badger some of the issues were maddening.

[Bobby Ricigliano]

Thank You all for your help! I believe this "SmugMug" sounds like what I am wanting. I wanted something that didn't have tons of ads and the browser hostage issue for people trying to see the photo's. Before I got some good tips on the ad blockers and Privacy Badger some of the issues were maddening.

I have no affiliation or personal benefit in recommending it. It is just what I use and it is well worth the nominal subscription fee. There is a whole suite of photo editing tools embedded in the software too.

[TacFan]

Synology personal cloud. Store your pics on there since it's really just a hard drive with a simple operating system. Has built in photo sharing app/widget

[ocabj]

If you want to use Smugmug, go for it, but as I mentioned earlier, Flickr will fit your needs and doesn't cost anything.

Flickr example:


Now if you really want to pay, I'm going to go ahead and pitch Zenfoliosince I've had an account with them since 2008 or so.

Zenfolio example:


A lot of times, I will just link/embed to the photos on my Virtual Private Server, which is Linode. It is a standard LAMP stack running my website. There are several benefits to just running your own apache, nginx, or other httpd server to host photos. One being that you can fine tune who can hotlink to your images. Most photo hosting services have an all or nothing hotlinking protection: either people can or cannot hotlink. If you just run your own webserver, you can run .htaccess rules to allow and block various referrers. One time I saw in my weblogs a lot of referral deny's to some French webforum, and found they tried to hotlink to some of my watch photos. So I crafted a rule that would instead show their visitors a bit more offensive (NSFW) images. Of course, one negative is that you do have bandwidth caps. But places like Linode and DigitalOcean have a minimum of 1TB per month. If you can serve out 1TB of photos a month, then you are probably someone who should be looking into more advanced services and need to consider monetizing your content, anyway.

Personal Linode VPS example:

[1recluse]

Thank You ocabj. I appreciate the response. I don't need anything like 1TB. I hate intrusive adds and privacy issues. I looked at SmugMug but the reviews were horrible. Your photography is awesome!