Hosting Debate

[budakinns]

I know we have touched on this subject once in some random thread i cant find or remember so where we go. What are all of your thought on paid hosting such as smugmug, Photobucket and Flickr. Personally i think i am going to get a sumgmug account due to i am to lazy to finish coding php right now. I like the simple designs they provide and from my understanding and reading they are a good hosting company. Photobucket pro accounts in my book are crap for the amount but its better then nothing. Not a big fan of flickr but i do like the quality the images retain over pbucket. Those are my thoughts now for yalls. What do you use, used at one point but not anymore or what are you plaining on using.

[Projekt]

Photobucket, always have always will. I don't seem to lose any quality on it.

[Hater]

I use flickr for shots i want the quality to retain ad PB for just everyday nonsense.

I just cant see myself paying for hosting.

[HUGHJASS]

pbase.com

uber.com

pb sucks

[Mars_302]

Web Hosting by DreamHost Web Hosting: Web Sites, Domain Registration, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, all on Debian Linux! (http://www.dreamhost.com)

you gotta pay though

[Chris C.]

Photobucket is not that bad, I dont know why people knock on it that much. Frankly, 98% of us are not professional photographers, so whining over 2 degrees of lost image quality is ridiculous. And $25 for a year of professional options from a hosting site is not that bad.

Flickr is probably one of the best all-around hosting sites. Great image quality, easy-yet-still-functional navigation, and has a great supporting community (Blogs, Contacts, Groups, etc.) The only relevant downside is the fact that free users have very little options, but Pro accounts cost too much.

Smugmug so far isn't bad, but nothing has made it stand out more so than the two above. Navigation and organization could use a little work IMO, but I like the concept of customization and Album's rather than individual photo's. Quality isn't that different from flickr, as far as I can see (or that matters). The only downside to SmugMug is the fact you HAVE to pay for an account. Until I'm deemed a Professional Photographer by some act of god, I won't need to settle for a hosting site that reqires me to pay. Especially when I only show half of my shots specifcally to you TR lurkers. ;)

[CEMAYHALL]

FYI, Smugmug.com isnt "that easy" to set up...

[Chris C.]

FYI, Smugmug.com isnt "that easy" to set up...

Someone said it was?

And wait a sec, shouldn't you be defending SmugMug? :lol: Your the one that introduced us to it!

[ITPete]

Setting up my own server in my home was the best thing I did. Don't have to pay anything extra to host as much stuff as I want. I can create the way I want my gallery to look and don't have to worry about image quality loss. These days I am suprised more people haven't started doing this.

[.:Chris:.]

Web Hosting by DreamHost Web Hosting: Web Sites, Domain Registration, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, all on Debian Linux! (http://www.dreamhost.com/)

you gotta pay though

I agree here. If you can do it, coding your own page and hosting it on your own web space is the way to go. That's how I do it, and it leaves control up to me - image size, quality and everything else. I hope to finish coding my webpage in the next couple of weeks, and it shouldn't look lie any old smugmug or flickr page.

On a side note, I've been using this host for about a year (reliablesite.net) and they're pretty much bottom of the barrel. Their support sucks, I've had issues that they haven't fixed, and worst of all it's a windows server. I'm seriously considering moving back to pair.net soon. I used them for 9 years without a hitch, but they're just not cheap like the majority.

Photobucket is not that bad, I dont know why people knock on it that much. Frankly, 98% of us are not professional photographers, so whining over 2 degrees of lost image quality is ridiculous. And $25 for a year of professional options from a hosting site is not that bad.

I disagree here. If I didn't care about image quality I'd use a P&S camera. I don't know why everyone makes refrence to the fact that "[we] are not professional photographers." I take my hobbies seriously, don't you? Photobucket negates any sharpening that has been done in photoshop and then some. I do agree that $25 is more than reasonable. That's $2 per month, or two quarters a week... less than a cheeseburger at McDonalds.

Flickr is probably one of the best all-around hosting sites. Great image quality, easy-yet-still-functional navigation, and has a great supporting community (Blogs, Contacts, Groups, etc.) The only relevant downside is the fact that free users have very little options, but Pro accounts cost too much.

Sorry to pick your post apart, but I disagree here too. They've got image quality advantages over most of the competition, but they're geared too much towards their internal community for me to really consider them for hosting per se. I do, however, search their images and read through discussions daily. It's a great resource.

Smugmug so far isn't bad, but nothing has made it stand out more so than the two above. Navigation and organization could use a little work IMO, but I like the concept of customization and Album's rather than individual photo's. Quality isn't that different from flickr, as far as I can see (or that matters). The only downside to SmugMug is the fact you HAVE to pay for an account.

SmugMug is great for people willing to pay. I dislike the fact that even when you register a domain, your webpage ends up being displayed via their URL (yourdomain.smugmug.com). I'm paying for their service, I shouldn't have to advertise for them too. Their layouts are great for people that don't have the ability to create someting completely unique, but you can usually tell when you're looking at a smugmug page - if you want to stand out from the crowd I don't think this is the way to do it.

Especially when I only show half of my shots specifcally to you TR lurkers. ;)

LOL, I know how that is. :lol:

Setting up my own server in my home was the best thing I did. Don't have to pay anything extra to host as much stuff as I want. I can create the way I want my gallery to look and don't have to worry about image quality loss. These days I am suprised more people haven't started doing this.

+1 - I did this until I found my ISP to be unreliable, and sometimes they block port 80. Also, they sent me a letter threatening to discontinue service if I didn't stop running a server. This is the best route, but obviously not the easy way to go.

i am to lazy to finish coding php right now.

Lame excuse! :D

[Chris C.]

PHOTOBUCKET:
I disagree here. If I didn't care about image quality I'd use a P&S camera. I don't know why everyone makes refrence to the fact that "[we] are not professional photographers." I take my hobbies seriously, don't you? Photobucket negates any sharpening that has been done in photoshop and then some. I do agree that $25 is more than reasonable. That's $2 per month, or two quarters a week... less than a cheeseburger at McDonalds.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have a backup plan. Sometimes I just wanna uplaod a picture, not go through sorting albums, describing photos, tagging, etc. Photobucket is the best one to use if you wanna go quick. There's always a compromise.

Flickr:
Sorry to pick your post apart, but I disagree here too. They've got image quality advantages over most of the competition, but they're geared too much towards their internal community for me to really consider them for hosting per se. I do, however, search their images and read through discussions daily. It's a great resource.

Thats a matter of opinion I guess. I personally like the strong internal community. It's a great way to meet people and study other techniques.

SmugMug:
SmugMug is great for people willing to pay. I dislike the fact that even when you register a domain, your webpage ends up being displayed via their URL (yourdomain.smugmug.com). I'm paying for their service, I shouldn't have to advertise for them too. Their layouts are great for people that don't have the ability to create someting completely unique, but you can usually tell when you're looking at a smugmug page - if you want to stand out from the crowd I don't think this is the way to do it.

I do really enjoy this hobby of mine, but I don't wanna have to pay anymore than I already have (camera & equipment) to go out and take pictures... at least not yet.

[.:Chris:.]

I can see where you're coming from. I like the flickr community/website a lot too, I just hate using it to hose images that I'm going to post elsewhere. Like you said, it's too much work and effort. I upload to my web space via FTP for images that I post here.

I've had web space long before I ever got into photography, so I guess I'm just used to the $10/month that I pay for hosting. It really is invaluable to me.

[Chris C.]

I've had web space long before I ever got into photography, so I guess I'm just used to the $10/month that I pay for hosting. It really is invaluable to me.

I've had web space long before also, I just got really lazy or (as I like to think of it) too caught up with school/work/anything-other-than-running-a-site. :lol:

[.:Chris:.]

:lol:

I know how that is. Check out my current (lack of) site... chrismetcalfe.co.uk (http://www.chrismetcalfe.co.uk/)

[budakinns]

Lame excuse! :grin:

yeah i guess i should change that from to lazy to to picky with what i design. In my eyes what i whip up looks like crap and never use it. Take the DE site im working on. I know that once i finish editing the layout of the site imma think its crap and wont flow right and start designing a new one. Its a habit i have with almost every thing i do. But i have been slacking on that site due to got a few other projects going on atm also.

[btuner]

ok i need a free place to host like 100 pics that i just took at a wedding anniversary, i want to be able to give out the website to all the people that attended and let them be able to look at the pics and be able to download them if they want to print them off. should i just create a new flickr account and send everyone there? or does anyone have a better option?

[CEMAYHALL]

Someone said it was?

And wait a sec, shouldn't you be defending SmugMug? :lol: Your the one that introduced us to it!
Ha... I dont know who said it was easy!!! It took me over 50 hours to get it to where it is today!!! <~ Thats comming from someone who is HTML illiterate!

After doing it once, I would be able to do it much quicker the next time but still, there is a code for every little thing! <~ I might as-well have created a HTML webpage from scratch!


SmugMug is great for people willing to pay. I dislike the fact that even when you register a domain, your webpage ends up being displayed via their URL (yourdomain.smugmug.com). I'm paying for their service, I shouldn't have to advertise for them too.
Very true but with the Professional Account, you can link your own domain name to your smugmug account! Thats one thing that I did like about it!!! In all reality, once the visitor has typed www.cemayhall.com (http://www.cemayhall.smugmug.com) they probably wont look at the url box again! If they do, they most likely DONT know what smugmug is!

Their layouts are great for people that don't have the ability to create someting completely unique, but you can usually tell when you're looking at a smugmug page - if you want to stand out from the crowd I don't think this is the way to do it.
FYI: If you really wanted to, you are able to use/ create your own layout (ONLY with the professional account!) <~ It takes a lot of HTML knowledge that I dont have. I like the simplicity of my webpage! I think its look professional, VERY easy to navigate/ use, and doesnt confuse visitors (which is what matters the most!)


In My Opinion, Smugmug is a great website but the initial set-up can be very frustrating!!!

[budakinns]

yeah after a good minute of thinking it over im just going to buy a server and design our own shit. gonna be the same price as smugmug every year with a domain and email accounts. Like i said only problem i have when making sites is i dont like the end project and scrap em.