Easy, free, large storage photo sharing

[Daniel]

I've stumbled upon a pretty nice program that sets up a public dropbox on your computer that can be used in many very useful ways.

It's called "DropBox" (funny enough)...

www.dropbox.com

It's free and works on all platforms.

You can:

a) Set up a public folder, copy and paste URL links to photos in that folder that can be posted anywhere and folks can click that link to see the photo and nothing else, or

b) share an entire folder's worth of photos (or whatever) by connecting people that trust each other via email addresses. Make the folder, share the folder by entering email addresses and you're done.

No need to upload pictures to flickr or whatever, and no need to spend hours cropping/downgrading/resizing pictures to attach to a post.

That way, you can choose a couple of pictures to upload, and simply copy and paste links to the rest of the pictures.

I think you may be able to install and start using the program directly from the link in this post. If not, shoot me an email and I will send you an invite.

Cheers

Dan

 

[Daniel]

Testing new method

[img=900x600]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52853095/CherryBurl.JPG[/img]

cherry burl picture uploaded via the "insert image" button on the create thread GUI...

I clicked the button, pasted the "public link" that I copied using the DropBox menu, and the results are...

 

[Daniel]

So, it works!

Here's how:

1) Get a free dropbox account (I can hook you up if needed).

2) Load the images you want to post into the "Public" sub-folder within the "Dropbox" folder that will be installed on your system when you install DropBox.

3) Name your images as you prefer (keep them in the public folder!)

4) Click on the file, and using the DropBox menu, select the "copy public link" option.

5) click the "Insert Image" button and paste the copied URL into the prompt box.

You will get something that looks like this "[ img ]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52853095/CherryBurl.JPG[/img]"

In order to ensure proper sizing and continuity of the thread, I STRONGLY recommend that you alter that BBcode as follows: "[ img=900x600 ]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52853095/CherryBurl.JPG[/img]" -- basically insert "=900x600" or "=600x900" after the initial "img" in the BBCode. That will fit your image to a standard screen and not break the browser window/thread width.

In this way, you can insert any and all images without having to individually resize each one...

Kevin or Daren, will this overload the servers with images that are too large?

 

[Admin]

...
Kevin or Daren, will this overload the servers with images that are too large?

Server aren't affected by the size of one user's image or images in a post, but the members who view the threads with large pictures, and have slower computers can be very much affected by posting too large image sizes.

Where the servers becomes a problem, is companies that allow bandwidth to be pushed to the maximum. There's all sorts of reasons for this but for example, one reason is for the hosting company to save money by offering extremely cheap rates, and pushing the maximum bandwidth through their servers.

When I picked the company to host this site I sure that in the terms of use they did not allow Lady Gaga, illegal downloading of copyrighted material, or other types of media that is notorious for causing server jamming and virus attacks. This doesn't mean that we can't ever have a problem, but it minimizes the frequency because those types of sites have hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of users downloading multiple streams of video ton their computers and the guys like us who just want to trade wood, have to share the limited bandwidth with them on those servers.

This may be more info than you wanted, but before I started this forum, I joined & lurked numerous forum/admin sites to learn the pitfalls. This is one reason it took me two years nearly to get the site up & running after my intitial idea of it. the more I prepared for, the more I learned that I didn't know. Guess what, I still have a lot to learn!

So for that reason, I never suggest using an offsite photo facility. They go out of business so the images in all your posts turn into those annoying red x's, most don't monitor their users' accounts closely and terminate the violators who hog so much bandwidth and so you are competing for bandwidth that was touted as "unlimited" (no such thing really, different topic though), and the use of them often means slower loading for members of forums like us. I have a whiz-bang fast computer, and your post I replied to with the pics of the burls, took so long to load it was like I was back in the 90s on dial-up.




[

 

[Daniel]

Thanks a ton!

I will be using your upload instead - I don't want unhappy browsers!!!

:)

 

[Daniel]

Is there an easy way to modify the display size of an image once it is uploaded?

for example, using the bbcode "img" tag, you can write [ image=600x900 ] and then [ /img]

Can I do the same with the [ attachment# ] tag?

 

[Admin]

Is there an easy way to modify the display size of an image once it is uploaded?

for example, using the bbcode "img" tag, you can write [ image=600x900 ] and then [ /img]

Can I do the same with the [ attachment# ] tag?

No not once it's uploaded to the site, and I'm glad about it. Once our site gets really busy, none of us would want members tying up al that bandwidth editing photos here when it's just the same as doing it on your local network.

There's many free photo editing softwares that allow you to do the basics though, and some of them even more.

My suggestion to anyone is to get a basic photo editing software that allows you to quickly & easily crop, resize, rotate, compress, add text & pointing tools. Most free photo editing packages have this and much more. If you have that and know how to save & organize your photos locally (on your hard drive) then that's all you need. Of course, always backup your hard drive routinely not just for the photos.

 

[Daniel]

Is there an easy way to modify the display size of an image once it is uploaded?

for example, using the bbcode "img" tag, you can write [ image=600x900 ] and then [ /img]

Can I do the same with the [ attachment# ] tag?

No not once it's uploaded to the site, and I'm glad about it. Once our site gets really busy, none of us would want members tying up al that bandwidth editing photos here when it's just the same as doing it on your local network.

There's many free photo editing softwares that allow you to do the basics though, and some of them even more.

My suggestion to anyone is to get a basic photo editing software that allows you to quickly & easily crop, resize, rotate, compress, add text & pointing tools. Most free photo editing packages have this and much more. If you have that and know how to save & organize your photos locally (on your hard drive) then that's all you need. Of course, always backup your hard drive routinely not just for the photos.

Lol. I have the software, it's just that I am a lazy ba$tard. Call me a victim of the instant gratification generation. Sigh. Maybe by the time I hit 70 years old, I will learn patience... or not.