10 replies to this topic

[Odseybod]

This may be old news to some but it's something I've only just discovered.

 

I've been happy with the Postimage.org image hosting site as a reasonably easy way to add images to TNF posts and also to create themed galleries, which you can invite others to browse and even download from (though always best to keep images small and clearly watermarked, of course). And all for free, though here comes the 'Yes, but ...'

 

I'm not sure if it's a recent development, as I don't offer the browse gallery/download option that often, but someone I recently invited to view a set of my pics there mentioned that their visit included a sidebar of 'interesting' ads, featuring buxom females offering various athletic services. I couldn't see them myself - no sniggering please about the effects of certain habits on eyesight - but a friend I invited to confirm this development was offered various weight-loss programmes - so the ads presented clearly depend on the sort of cookies you have lurking on your system. 

 

The aim of the Postimage people is not surprisingly to persuade you to subscribe to their new (?)  Premium service, which in exchange for me paying about £70 a year offers my visitors ad-free browsing of my images. I've yet to confirm this works in practice but, whatever you may mutter about a fool and his money, I've opted into their Premium service, as being the hassle-free way to keep my images on there, rather than relocate them somewhere else that's free (at least for the moment). No doubt this post will prompt a deluge of such suggestions.

 

Of course, it does mean some loss of entertainment opportunities linked to any received complaints,given the tailoring of the presented ads to the browser's proclivities - but despite that, I think it's worth knowing about.

 

   

[GreenMachine]

As you may have seen on the other thread, I take the viewpoint of 'you get what you pay for'.  I get the homepage for Postimage sometimes when I click on an image hoping to see it larger/better quality - it certainly is not attractive, and to me signals clearly the nature of the site, I wouldn't touch it with a forty foot pole.

 

I pay for a hosting service, I always have, I don't get ads (neither do my visitors), nor does the site itself make claims on the copyright of my images.  Last time I looked there is a disturbing (to me) clause in the T&Cs in which, by uploading images, you grant Postimage a licence to use them.  That might be benign, but if my host doesn't make that claim I assume it is there for a commercial reason.  Autosport T&C does not contain that clause, but another forum I inhabit does, and my posting of photos there is very circumscribed.

 

Seventy quid for their premium service?!  I pay a bit over half that, and I am paying one step up from the basic subscription, for some features I want (in particular, to have private restricted access galleries for family photos).  I currently have over 5k photos on the site.  I guess the hook is that you already haver a lot of photos up on the site, and as you say the effort involved in moving them to another site is not trivial, not to mention all the broken links such a move would leave in its wake.

[2F-001]

That's interesting info, from both of you. Thanks.

[Doug Nye]

Yes - that is alarming info from you.  Many thanks...  Now to study Postimages small print.   

 

DCN

[Ray Bell]

For my money, as long as they don't do what Imageshack did...

 

With thousands of images on Imageshack I commenced paying when they demanded it. But on my second day in America on my last trip I got simultaneous messages from PayPal and Imageshack, my payment hadn't gone through (a strange thing with PayPal where they assign a specific credit card to each account and have no backup, even though I had two cards listed with them) and there was simply nothing I could do about it.

 

I now have even more images on Postimage. About 9,400. And I basically never see their ads.

[GreenMachine]

Horses for courses.

 

I chose my host as a photo host, before I started to think about posting photos on websites, so my criteria were different to someone who just wants to post photos on websites.  Aesthetics, security and control were top of my list, cost was in there but lower down,- YMMV, and probably does, there will be a huge variety of criteria reflecting individual preferences/needs.  In terms of website posting I am probably a corner case.

 

In general, free sites make me suspicious, someone has to pay, somehow.  Putting two and two together in the light of my costs, the premium service of Postimage cross-subsidises the free users, with revenue from the ads in the mix.  Obviously free hosting with ads is not sufficiently viable, so the premium component is necessary to keep the site going.  The model works because as Oseybod has found, by the time you find out all the downsides of the free site, you are almost locked in, the effort of moving to another site outweighs the upgrade costs and the site can charge a premium over competitors fee-for-service rates.

 

Ray's experience is a cautionary tale of which I was aware, but I am reminded to take up with my host how they go about deleting a user's uploads in the case of payment issues.  I would hope that some warnings would be issued, and provision made for reinstatement of the account and content.  If they collapsed, users would hopefully get some notice to download their content, but that may be both optimistic, and not something that hosts are prepared to plan for.  That probably goes to the question of computer backups, and what systems users have in place on their computers to preserve their content (not just photos).

[lyntonh]

We are at the mercy of the photo servers.

 

I was burnt when Imageshack lost hundreds of my photos in a crash.

I had someone hack my Imageshack account and harvest 1500 photos in one go, then to begin posting them on a Facebook group a hundred at a time.

I was a member of the group and immediately put a stop to it, 

After my experiences with Imageshack I followed the trend and went to Photobucket, with a paid account, only to have them decide to destroy their own business, and every account owners faith in them, by upping the price to $399 per year to host images on forums.

 

Since they saw the error of their ways as people rushed for the door, and they offered existing accounts massive discounts, I now pay for a small account to keep the photos on this forum alive as an act of courtesy.

 

I went to Postimage with a free account, and as people will notice, I now rarely post images on this forum because the issues in doing it are not worth the effort.

I post profusely on Facebook because it's so much more simple.

 

I know that others on here find Facebook frustrating, but I find this forum to be much more cumbersome when working with pictures.

 

Each to his own.

 

So far as dubious ads on Postimage...

 

I use it now and again to link people to groups of photos, and they will see those ads....

 

If they're like me, they will have trained themselves, as I do on this forum and others, to simply not take notice of internet advertising.

Edited by lyntonh, 14 June 2022 - 02:33.

[Ray Bell]

Another aspect of Imageshack, and I still have a free account, is the way they display all you pics if you access them...

 

They're in random order, there's nothing easy about finding things. Postimage, at least, give you folders and then the pics are laid out in those folders just as you'd have them on your computer.

 

For all the moans about Imageshack losing photos, and I know it happens, my trip thread (in the Paddock Club) for my first US trip was built using Imageshack until the last week or so of the trip. After that I completed it with the images saved on Postimage. The Imageshack images have held up fairly well, only about nine out of 500+ pics being lost and needing replacement.

 

Mike uses another free provider, imgbb.com, it seems to work fine.

[Odseybod]

Lots of interesting points - I've learnt a lot!

 

Just to clarify, as I understand it, the 'free account' person who posts images on Postimage doesn't see the ads, only the person(s) invited to view and possibly download the pics. That can be embarrassing if (as in my case) you want to thank the organisers of an event by pointing them towards a gallery of the pics you've taken during it, only to be told you're also offering them some soft porn, which is how I became aware of the problem. Of course, some organisers I know might welcome this unexpected bonus (allegedly).

 

I'm not committed to paying Postimage my 70 quid a year (or whatever it inflates to) indefinitely, because (as the wise GreenMachine says) other hosting sites are available, often charging much less or nothing at all (yet). I don't have that many images on there, and those are all lo-res and watermarked or have outlived their usefulness - I'm such a Luddite that most of my 'master' images live at home, with multiple back-ups, and only venture out on parole. Repairing the broken links to places like this would be a pain, though.

Edited by Odseybod, 14 June 2022 - 08:25.

[lyntonh]

Lots of interesting points - I've learnt a lot!

 

Just to clarify, as I understand it, the 'free account' person who posts images on Postimage doesn't see the ads, only the person(s) invited to view and possibly download the pics. That can be embarrassing if (as in my case) you want to thank the organisers of an event by pointing them towards a gallery of the pics you've taken during it, only to be told you're also offering them some soft porn, which is how I became aware of the problem. Of course, some organisers I know might welcome this unexpected bonus (allegedly).

 

I'm not committed to paying Postimage my 70 quid a year (or whatever it inflates to) indefinitely, because (as the wise GreenMachine says) other hosting sites are available, often charging much less or nothing at all (yet). I don't have that many images on there, and those are all lo-res and watermarked or have outlived their usefulness - I'm such a Luddite that most of my 'master' images live at home, with multiple back-ups, and only venture out on parole. Repairing the broken links to places like this would be a pain, though.

 

 

I can vouch for the 'pain' you anticipate replacing broken links.

 

I've had to do it for around 150 images.

 

If the photo isn't captioned, because you are hoping that one of the 'encyclopaedic brains' on here can name the car and driver for you, and you've put them up in a group......you end up having a very intense lesson in guesswork when you try replacing them using the blind link left behind.

 

 

And we do this for pleasure..... 

Edited by lyntonh, 14 June 2022 - 08:55.

[GreenMachine]

Came back here to update on a couple of things.  I contacted my host about non-payment, and I had another look at their T&C.

 

Ray's experience is a cautionary tale of which I was aware, but I am reminded to take up with my host how they go about deleting a user's uploads in the case of payment issues.  I would hope that some warnings would be issued, and provision made for reinstatement of the account and content.  If they collapsed, users would hopefully get some notice to download their content, but that may be both optimistic, and not something that hosts are prepared to plan for.  That probably goes to the question of computer backups, and what systems users have in place on their computers to preserve their content (not just photos).

Host said they would make several attempts to contact a user whose subscription has not been renewed for non-payment, and that it would take a couple of months before the content was taken down.  Probably as good as you could reasonably expect.  Moral - check your junk mail regularly, and update your subscriptions if you have a new email address.

 

They also pointed me at a little utility which backs up the site in most respects, but not the photos themselves.  I have yet to check this out, it is not generic and was written specifically for this host by a user..

 

 

I pay for a hosting service, I always have, I don't get ads (neither do my visitors), nor does the site itself make claims on the copyright of my images.  Last time I looked there is a disturbing (to me) clause in the T&Cs in which, by uploading images, you grant Postimage a licence to use them.  That might be benign, but if my host doesn't make that claim I assume it is there for a commercial reason.  Autosport T&C does not contain that clause, but another forum I inhabit does, and my posting of photos there is very circumscribed.

I had a look at the T&C, and lo and behold there is a clause relating to users granting a licence to the host, but it goes on to say that is so the site can work (eg display your photos) and other uses which are related to the administration of the site and the applicable legal environment.  Pretty sure this wasn't there when I look several years ago, but the world moves on.  Nothing in the clause caused me concern, looks like a bit of legal bum-covering.  AIRI the relevant Postimage clause did not have this sort of limitation, but that may have changed now.