Photo sharing Web sites...

[Ed Poyer]

web shots is slow...

but personally, I hate webshots. It always seems so slow to me. Whenever somebody posts a link to webshots I usually give up after a few pictures because it's so slow

FWIW, that's been my experience with webshots also: it seems to be the slowest of the lot...so slow that I sometimes just give up.
Ed

 

[Kevin Rooney]

I just looked over Tuco's 48th pictures and I was pleased with the system, from the viewer's perspective. A lot of time we think only about our interaction with the system, but we use it once and the viewers use it hundreds, if not thousands of times...

Tim

Ain't that the truth - I noticed this AM my Webshots count was nearly 193,000 hits.

As for the speed of various picture-hosting websites - I'm of the opinion that a large factor is the connection your ISP has with the 'outside world'. I haven't found Webshots any faster/slower than others, on balance, over the years. I don't like the ads, but ... whether it's the internet or TV, I've trained my senses not to see or hear them, so that's not as much of an issue for me.

I also like Smugmug's presentation, but ... I have a hunch that alot of downloading is going on behind the scenes so that when you select a picture/album the response time will be better. For those of us on satellite connections (I use SkyBlue) that's not always good news as there are upload/download quotas on your account, and bad things happen to your thruput if you exceed this limits. So, I like to be able to control when data is going down the pipeline.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Slow how? Slide show flipping? The "next" function, picture-to-picture is slow because they load each picture using flash and a bunch of other stuff, like ads. With Adblock installed on Firefox things are much faster because you don't wait for the stuff you don't wish to see.

Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) based sites are usually a bit faster because they flip the picture inline and don't actually change much, if anything, until the new picture is loaded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

This goes back to my comment about considering "your customers", those who want to view your slide shows.

(EDIT) Kevin I think your hunch is correct... read above

Tim

 

[Papa Bear]

I've been lucky over the years to have a site (non commercial) that's basically free. But I've always had thoughts of "What would I ever do if they went away?"

I like the software it uses (Gallery) and I have been thinking of moving my stuff to my own site. Or at least thinking of how I would do it if I had to. And yes, I've always kept a complete mirror of my photos on my PC (and back them up). If you don't do this, you're crazy. Remember an external hard drive holding a gazillion bytes it like under $100.

Anyone have any experience of installing something like this and hosting your own pictures? I have full FTP access but everything to date that I have installed is HTML files, .js files and a few photos. Anyone know how easy the administrator's interface is for this? I think Darren has it for his own photos on this site.

Darren? You there? Come on in from the swimming pool for a moment, I got a question.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Hosting your own photos isn't that difficult. What is more problematic is

A) DNS traffic to your PC
B) Your ISP allowing inbound HTTP (or other) traffic
C) Bandwidth: quotas and contention

Dave Metsky will probably weigh in here as he uses Gallery and hosts his own site with a hosting company, as opposed to on his own machine in his own house using his own bandwidth....

It can be done, of course. Most ISPs don't bend over to make it easy.

Tim

 

[Kevin Rooney]

On hosting your own photos - I would agree that it's not that difficult. But, having worked in network management for many years, it's not something I'd recommend doing. It's costly and labor-intensive to create a 'hardened' website, and even then you can get hacked. I don't want to hijack Poison Ivy's thread any more than we have already, but if you do host your own, do it with your eyes open and know the risks of it getting trashed are rather high, so don't do it on any any machine that you can't afford to rebuild (not the hardware, but the software).

 

[sapblatt]

I have been a user and fan and unpaid endorser of Shutterfly for almost five years...I think they are good for sharing - it takes seconds to share an album which gives you a URL that can be shared - folks can view the pics or a slides show...it is totally free and they are the best for ordering prints, posters and special products like calendars - I highly recommend!

 

[jeffmac]

seeking open video and photo hosting

it doesnt seem like smugmug does video sharing (correct me if im wrong).
I'm also looking for an "Open" phanfare2.0 replacement.
phanfare 2.0 is requiring registration which means
most of my family simply wont be able to view my photos and videos.

 

[poison ivy]

it doesnt seem like smugmug does video sharing (correct me if im wrong).
I'm also looking for an "Open" phanfare2.0 replacement.
phanfare 2.0 is requiring registration which means
most of my family simply wont be able to view my photos and videos.

You can share videos on smugmug... but you need to get the second tier account. I think it's called a "power user" account. They don't allow the videos to be as long as phanfare does (but frankly I've never put together a 10 minute video anyway.)

I've been using smugmug for a couple of months now... I don't like it as much as I liked phanfare but it was the next best thing I could find. And they treat their customers better too.

If you do join smugmug, make sure you put "phanfare" in the coupon code box when you sign up. It will give you 50 percent off your first year.

- Ivy

 

[Early Bird]

Same question

Hi Poison Ivy,
I had this same question almost a year ago. I realize some information may be obsolete, as in how your current site is changing, but I thought it might be worthwhile to check these comments. They were helpful to me.
http://vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15357