Image posting and preservation

[ShiRen]

Some of you that frequent this forum and other forums like it might notice that there is a finite limit on how many pictures you can upload, more specifically, how much storage you have. It is pretty safe to assume that the pictures you upload should be around as long as the forum lives, however things happen, forums get reset, sometimes large files like pictures are also not archived in backups, or the same backup as all the posts, they are not immortalized here, but neither is any forum really.

One way to circumvent the storage limit on forums, among other perks, is to upload your image to a file or image sharing website. These include imgur, photobucket, flickr, and imgBB, but one I would like to specifically mention is PixelFed. PixelFed is open source and free to use, it is private and does not track its users. There are numerous PixelFed instances to upload to, you can even host your own, the good thing about these is they will never get money hungry and lock all your photos behind a paywall, this has happened in the past and wrecked many old forums. Even if an instance is shut down, or even the whole service, there are still ways to get your photos, the easiest being self hosting, but the rest are probably archived, which brings me to my next topic.

I have discussed the topic of archiving here before, but sites like archive.org and archive.is can be your best friend. Not only are they a backup, but they can circumvent firewalls, paywalls, etc. Not much else to say here, but I urge you to read my other thread

Lastly, before I segway into another topic, I want to talk about backups. Local backups on your computer, NAS, or home server are a very good idea, preferably all 3. Run backup software on your computers, get a NAS for your home such as a Synology Diskstation or WD My Cloud, and/or set up a home server with FreeNAS. However, managing your own data is tricky and you have a budget which restraints maximum capacity and replacement parts, cloud solutions such as Google Drice or Dropbox are easy as cake. Whichever route you go keep backups and use zip compression to save space.

I want to get back on the topic of Pixelfed because it is a little tricky to use and there are a few problems with this forum in particular that I would like to bring up with the admins. Choosing and signing up for a Pixelfed instance is pretty easy, as well as making an upload, but uploading it to this site is not. I have been trying many solutions to post images on forums due to my lack of trust, but I can't seem to get away from image sharing sites, the problem is forums want a link to an actual picture, it can't be a direct link or embedded link to a picture like some sites will give you, it has to end in .jpg or .png or something. This still does not work in some places because I have yet to successfully upload directly from my Dropbox. Once your image is posted on Pixelfed you MUST right click the picture and either "Open in new tab" or "Copy image address" either one of these will get you the link you can use on a forum. The problem you might run into is the pictures are extremely large, this is the issue I wanted to bring up. I have yet to find a way to resize the image on this forum. Forums use what is called BBCode, and it is very well documented as you can see here. That link is the official image posting documentation for BBCode. Thing is, this forum doesn't obey it. I don't know if it is an old version, but I can't use any of the syntax to resize an image. Their examples are below.

Including an image

Resizing the image
[img=100x50]https://www.bbcode.org/images/lubeck_small.jpg[/img]
Making the image clickable (in this case linking to the original image)

Resizing and adding meta information for the image
[img width="100" height="50" alt="Lubeck city gate" title="This is one of the medieval city gates of Lubeck"]https://www.bbcode.org/images/lubeck_small.jpg[/img]
Example of an image too large, straight from Pixelfed (in a code block because its massive)

[Dr_Snooz]

I'm glad you brought this up because there are a few things I'd like to see happen with our site functionality as well. It does seem like we're still using HTML 3.0 to render pages and while our photo handling is better than it used to be, it could be muuuch better still. I'll bring it up with the boss and see what we can do.

You can use Dropbox to host your pics this way:

1. Open your photo in Dropbox
   
   
   
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2. Click Share (on the far right)
   
   
   
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3. A dialogue pops up. Click Create then copy link
   
   
   
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4. Click Copy link
   
   
   
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5. A pop-up shows that the link has been copied.
   
   
   
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6. Click the Insert image button for your post
   
   

[Dr_Snooz]

1. Click From URL
   
   
   
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2. Paste the address from Dropbox into the URL field
   
   
   
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3. Uncheck Retrieve remote image and reference locally. (We have local hosting, but the images are small and crappy. Unchecking this option will keep the photo on 3geez until you delete the photo from Dropbox.)
   
   
   
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4. MOST IMPORTANT STEP!!! In the web address provided by Dropbox, change the "dl=0" to "raw=1"
   
   
   
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5. Click OK and behold your beautiful car!
   
   
   
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6. The site will automatically resize the images to fit any browser window.
   
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7. Be happy!!!

[Dr_Snooz]

The big problem with the photos is that much of the site was created when photo hosting services were free and cloud storage services like Dropbox did not exist. Everyone used free hosting to post their pics. Then when the free hosts all disappeared, so did the pics. C'est la vie, right?

If you're looking for a free photo host, it's going to be tough. If you're willing to pay, then Microsoft's Office 365 gets my vote. I pay $70/yr and get Microsoft's complete Office package with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive. I can install the Office programs on up to 5 computers, or I can use the web-based versions from any device, anywhere. I get personal email at outlook.com and 1TB of cloud storage with OneDrive which I'm currently using to host my photos. (All the pics in my posts above, however, are hosted by Dropbox just so you can see how it looks). I put all my files on OneDrive and they follow me on any device, anywhere in the world. If $70/yr is too much, you can find deals on eBay, like this one for $50/yr.

Microsoft Office 365 Personal 12-Month Subscription, 1 Person, PC/Mac QQ2-00728 | eBay

There are even some really crazy deals like $5/yr. though I can't say how those will work out long term. You get so much value from Office, it's my hands-down winner.

[Oldblueaccord]

Thanks for the input guys those are great options.

[ShiRen]

Well I did not know about the raw=1 on the Dropbox links, well that changes some things lol. I do not use Windows, or crapple for that matter, so office365 is not an option for me, not to mention that I use it at work and hate it with a passion. Seriously, Pixelfed is hands down going to be the best free image host you can find, imgur might be the easiest, but its imgur, there are fantastic self hosted products such as nextcloud or owncloud, which I recommend if you actually go out of the way to make yourself a server, but as far as paid options go I would argue sync.com is the best.

And if you want to break free from the shackles of Microsoft, LibreOffice is free fyi... Though I will admit even I forget about them, but on the rare occasion I use office software, usually just for a spreadsheet, Google docs is free and portable. I know office365 works in the web browser too, but I'm not sure how they think they can still put a price on their office suite with competitors like those 2. Probably because people will buy it without thinking twice...

Tangent over, anyway, is BBCode bundled in the HTML version? All the websites I've made don't go that direction and instead contain a copious amount of php, so I wouldn't know.

[Dr_Snooz]

I get it. I spent 8 years wandering in Linux land. You can use office.com for free. It's the same site you pay for, minus the OneDrive storage, which is the most valuable piece for me. So basically, you pay for ample cloud storage (like anywhere else) and get Office thrown in for free. We used G-Suite before Office and there is simply no comparison. Google's stuff is really terrible and Libre Office just isn't in the same league. It's worth paying for on its own, but when you throw in everything else, you can't say no.

As an aside, I don't understand the enduring hatred of Microsoft by so many smart techy types. Google is raping your privacy, reading your emails, selling your data everywhere, censoring speech on YouTube, meddling in elections. Microsoft has been exemplary for more than 20 years but somehow this notion persists that Microsoft is evil and Google is okay. You gotta climb in bed with one of them to get good cloud service. Seems like Microsoft is the best of the bunch to me. They aren't getting caught selling customer data. They've never been hacked. They aren't up to all kinds of shenanigans politically. C'mon man!

[conozo]

I've been hosting my pictures on my own IONOS by 1&1 » Hosting Provider | Websites. Domains. Server. (1&1) hosting plan, I dont trust any other cloud service onedrive, google drive, or dropbox to support external linking forever. Also if i change server providers all my links will still work since i can transfer the domain name.

ShiRen do your solutions work like that? can you transfer to another provider without updating all the links.

[ShiRen]

Oh ok, I guess I haven't looked at office.com much recently, forgot they do have some free stuff, and a few gigs free on onedrive iirc. At this point I can't go back to Windows simply because the operating system sucks balls and there is no good workflow. Try to get any work done and there is just windows stacked everywhere and you constantly have to resize and move them, god forbid the windows actually remember their size and place, ESPECIALLY Outlook. I work off of multiple remote desktops from my personal laptop at work lol, only way I can stay sane. I don't use google outside of youtube and the few shared google sheets I have and I am only using Dropbox because I was on it before I found sync.com, Dropbox is only better than gdrive because I have done the google account clean up before, no sir I am not going through that again.

Conozo, that is certainly one way to do it. Since you have just created your own website, no they don't really work like that, unless you wanted to host it yourself. I could recommend a more trustworthy host, like Linode, but if you are backing up your site you are doing pretty well. The cloud is good for site backups at least.