Flickr, Imgur, how to attach photos, etc.

[CeruleanMoon]

I wasn't sure what folder to out these questions in! I'm thinking of doing a trip report (my first!) but I don't know what site to use for photo uploads. I noticed a lot of people using Flickr, but I know nothing about it. I've used Imgur without an account in the past, but I'm unclear on how long the photos remain viewable without an account. I also noticed at least one person whose photos on here don't say at all where they are posted when you hover over them. What does that mean and how do you do that?

Does anyone recommend a particular site over another? Privacy concerns? Ease of use, longevity of photos sticking around, etc? Free is a must. I've been googling info but am feeling a bit overwhelmed with choices.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

I wasn't sure what folder to out these questions in! I'm thinking of doing a trip report (my first!) but I don't know what site to use for photo uploads. I noticed a lot of people using Flickr, but I know nothing about it. I've used Imgur without an account in the past, but I'm unclear on how long the photos remain viewable without an account. I also noticed at least one person whose photos on here don't say at all where they are posted when you hover over them. What does that mean and how do you do that?

Does anyone recommend a particular site over another? Privacy concerns? Ease of use, longevity of photos sticking around, etc? Free is a must. I've been googling info but am feeling a bit overwhelmed with choices.

You can post photos directly to DISboards without using a photo hosting site.

As long as the image is smaller than 1MB, you can drag & drop, or copy & paste directly from you computer into your post.

For those sites that require a photo hosting site I use tinypic.com. You don't have to join it to download and get IMG codes for posting.

 

[Imzadi]

Tinypic.com is owned by Photobucket, so that will probably go down the tube soon too.

I'm leery of Imgur. They have a lot of rules in their terms of service. And with so many people using them, especially now that people have jumped ship from Photobucket, I have to wonder how long it will be before they get the financial strain of too many members using them as a 3rd party site host too?

Flickr has a very specific rule to NOT link directly but post their Backlink URL for pics. One CAN set their account to private, so in case someone accidentally clicks on a photo, they don't see your whole account, it's just the one photo back at Flickr. But, Flickr was owned by Yahoo for a while and services went DOWN because of that. Verizon recently bought Yahoo, so who knows what they will do with Flickr. They could decide in a year that they too want to charge a fee like Photobucket only less. And then we will be forced to move all our photos AGAIN.

Another alternative, one that I am using and found works best for me was to create a blog at Blogger.com. That is owned by Google. So, they aren't going anywhere. Set the blog to private. Upload & post pics onto a blog post. One can set up different blog posts to be different "folders" for different types of photos. Publish the post. (Don't worry, it's private.) Then either highlight & copy the photo on the published post page and just paste it into a DIS post OR right mouse click on the photo and get the image location to post.

I've been slowly saving & moving all the smileys I have in my Photobucket account that I post here over to my Blogger.com private blog. Here are two of them. There also should not be any backlinking to them as one hovers over the pic with a mouse. If it does, it only goes to the page of the actual pic and not the full blog post it's on.






Also, all my pics in my DIS signature are fin the same Blogger.com blog. Put in a different blog post, so I could "file" and separate them into a different blog post.

 

[Imzadi]

You can post photos directly to DISboards without using a photo hosting site.

As long as the image is smaller than 1MB, you can drag & drop, or copy & paste directly from you computer into your post.

I personally will never post my personal pics on any site where I may later lose control/access to those pics and can't get in to delete/edit out my own pics. There was a thread just this weekend, where if one responded to a couple of those posts might have meant, "Bye, Bye Dis!"

 

[CeruleanMoon]

Thank you both for your thoughts on this! I like the ease of just dragging and dropping pics, but not having those pics be "deletable" anymore is a good point. I'll look into blogger as well while I think on this.

 

[Imzadi]

I like the ease of just dragging and dropping pics,

I forgot to add, you can also just highlight & copy the photo on the published post page and just paste it into a DIS post, instead of copying the photo location & posting it that way.

 

[CeruleanMoon]

Flickr has a very specific rule to NOT link directly but post their Backlink URL for pics.

Can you explain what this means exactly? I'm not familiar with what a "backlink" is.

 

[Imzadi]

Let me see if I can come up with an example.

Okay, I picked this photo by Ciclismo Italia from Flickr. If you mouse over the photo, you can actually click on it and it will not only bring you to the actual page of the original photo, but that person's whole account. Then you can click on and take a look any any of the photos you want in their account by clicking on the side arrows or on the individual photos at the bottom.




That may be alright by you. But say, you had some more private photos in there you didn't want the whole world to be able to click on & see or copy themselves? What if you only wanted the photos you POSTED to be the ones seen? Say you had goofier photos of your kids in your account. Or more photos of your kids you wanted private. If colleges or potential employers of your kids found your blog and then went poking around your more private photos, your kids might be disqualified from that college or job because the Interviewer might think they'd goof off too much at college or the job. Or some such nonsense. If you use Flickr or Imgur, make sure to set your account to Private to stop people from seeing the rest of your account.

Remember the saying, "The Internet is forever." Once other people have access to your personal photos, you don't know where or how else they will show up. BTW, if you are planning on posting trip report pics on Facebook, know that if you UPLOAD your pics onto Facebook's servers, you are giving permission for FB to USE your pics in any way they want. It's in their fine print. Your pics might end up as ads for THEM on other FB pages or their advertisers - since FB has shown us they like sharing our personal info. Make sure you host your photos elsewhere (as you are now trying to figure out,) and post them directly into any posts using the actual image location. So the photos appear on FB, but they are not stored on their own servers.

 

[CeruleanMoon]

Ok, so a "backlink" is simply a link that directs you to one photo only and not a whole album? That sounds great as long as they make it clear on their site how to differentiate between the two types of links so you end up doing the one you want. (I'm surprised they'd actually have a rule about this though.)

I'm looking into Google Photos now as well, since I already have lots of things linked to Google anyway and I can use it for other things as well. Not sure how set up they are for linking photos for a forum though. I'm going to play around with it.

 

[Imzadi]

(I'm surprised they'd actually have a rule about this though.)

They WANT people to be able to link back to Flickr somehow, so more people join and post their own photos.

I'm looking into Google Photos now as well, since I already have lots of things linked to Google anyway and I can use it for other things as well.

I already looked into Google Photos. For some strange reason, the photos appear for a short time, days, weeks. But then they disappear off the page they are posted on. Other people brought this up on a few other forums. That's how I found out about it, by doing a Google search and finding those posts about it. Then we did a test here on the DIS. Someone posted his photos into the thread. They kept showing up for him, as they were his photos, and he was probably logged into the account. But, after a few days, they disappeared and all I and others saw was a tiny X. He tried linking them another way. (They weren't drag & drop back then. Don't know about now.) Again, they showed up for a while, but then disappeared after several days.

Google Photos IS a great place to STORE photos. They give a good 15GBs of storage. (I use them as my free cloud storage for my photos & documents.) And if you set your WHOLE ALBUM to public your friend (and the world) can see the whole album any time they want. But, people have to go to your Album.) It doesn't seem good for using them as a host and posting the pics elsewhere. It seems they might purposely delete/block the links after several days when they realize they are linked elsewhere.

 

[Imzadi]

Here's an old thread where we were talking about linking to Google Photos. The conversation about it starts here:

https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...s-from-jet-blast.3618031/page-3#post-57897062


I quoted this poster's post where his pics from Google Photos don't show up:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...s-from-jet-blast.3618031/page-2#post-57895535

If you follow the thread, other people don't see them either. Some do.

He had to change some settings to make the pics Shareable. Not sure how that is done. I *think* he has to make his whole Album Shareable, meaning the whole thing is public, even though he only wants to post some photos. So some people may accidentally happen upon his Album. That's why I ruled it out when I did my own test on pics I have stored in Google Photos. I had to make the whole album Sharable, not just individual photos.

Anyway, he DID get his photos to show up finally. And apparently they do stay showing up, after all this time. Just not sure what settings he actually used. It may be different than what I found. He still is an active DISer, so you might want to PM him and see how he did it.

https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...s-from-jet-blast.3618031/page-5#post-57897529


I finally decided on the Blogger.com blog because my photos ARE stored in Google Photos. When I upload them to the server, they go into my own private Google account under Google Photos. So they are quite safe. Yet, the only ones that are public are the ones I actually post elsewhere from the private blog posts.

 

[CeruleanMoon]

They WANT people to be able to link back to Flickr somehow, so more people join and post their own photos.



I already looked into Google Photos. For some strange reason, the photos appear for a short time, days, weeks. But then they disappear off the page they are posted on. Other people brought this up on a few other forums. That's how I found out about it, by doing a Google search and finding those posts about it. Then we did a test here on the DIS. Someone posted his photos into the thread. They kept showing up for him, as they were his photos, and he was probably logged into the account. But, after a few days, they disappeared and all I and others saw was a tiny X. He tried linking them another way. (They weren't drag & drop back then. Don't know about now.) Again, they showed up for a while, but then disappeared after several days.

Google Photos IS a great place to STORE photos. They give a good 15GBs of storage. (I use them as my free cloud storage for my photos & documents.) And if you set your WHOLE ALBUM to public your friend (and the world) can see the whole album any time they want. But, people have to go to your Album.) It doesn't seem good for using them as a host and posting the pics elsewhere. It seems they might purposely delete/block the links after several days when they realize they are linked elsewhere.

Ugh. Yeah I think I may have found one of the threads you are talking about. I'm sure some might say I'm overthinking this, but I really want to pick a site I'm comfortable with, but I'm having trouble understanding some of the terms and rules these sites post. I keep having to google definitions and I still don't always understand what they mean. Imgur, for example, had some clauses that sounded pretty red flag to me, so I can't figure out if I'm just misunderstanding what they mean or what. For example, I read that they prohibit "hotlinking" but as far as I can tell, hotlinking is the pretty much exactly what everyone uses the site for (and posting photos in a trip report would be hotlinking, no?) so either I'm still misunderstanding the term or so many people are doing it that they just haven't gotten around to cracking down on everyone yet.

Edit: Thanks, just checked out the threads. It sounds like as long as he created a sharable public folder, the pics stayed? It is confusing. I didn't like that sharing pics through a link put my account name (which is my real full name) at the top of the picture. So then I'd have to create a dummy account...I don't know yet. Still looking around.

 

[Imzadi]

For example, I read that they prohibit "hotlinking" but as far as I can tell, hotlinking is the pretty much exactly what everyone uses the site for (and posting photos in a trip report would be hotlinking, no?) so either I'm still misunderstanding the term or so many people are doing it that they just haven't gotten around to cracking down on everyone yet.

Nope, you understood the term "hotlinking" correctly. I also think they just haven't cracked down on everyone. And I'm concerned that they might crack down by doing exactly what Photobucket did, block everyone's photos which are hotlinked.

I still have not moved all my photos from Photobucket. I have a public, very popular "Cookies From Cake Mixes" thread on the DIS Cooking Forum. And I have yet to move all those photos and re-do all the links.

I am only going to move my pics ONCE. I don't have the time or inclination to keep moving and uploading them. That's a second reason why I chose Blogger. Some of those blogs have been up for years. Blogger.com used to be known as Blogspot.com. And people also hotlink to those photos all the time. Pinterest is full of those photos from individual blogs. None of them have been blocked. Hell, doing a Google Images search would be useless if Google blocked their own Images from being hotlinked.

Anyway, if you find another place to host & post photos for free, I'd be very interested in learning about it.

 

[CeruleanMoon]

Nope, you understood the term "hotlinking" correctly. I also think they just haven't cracked down on everyone. And I'm concerned that they might crack down by doing exactly what Photobucket did, block everyone's photos which are hotlinked.

I still have not moved all my photos from Photobucket. I have a public, very popular "Cookies From Cake Mixes" thread on the DIS Cooking Forum. And I have yet to move all those photos and re-do all the links.

I am only going to move my pics ONCE. I don't have the time or inclination to keep moving and uploading them. That's a second reason why I chose Blogger. Some of those blogs have been up for years. Blogger.com used to be known as Blogspot.com. And people also hotlink to those photos all the time. Pinterest is full of those photos from individual blogs. None of them have been blocked. Hell, doing a Google Images search would be useless if Google blocked their own Images from being hotlinked.

Anyway, if you find another place to host & post photos for free, I'd be very interested in learning about it.

Ok, glad to know I was understanding "hotlinking" correctly after all. I'd be concerned at this point that Imgur would do the Photobucket thing and suddenly block all linked photos.

According to a Google photo help page, links are not supposed to expire, but it sounds like you need to specifically have the pics saved in a "shared" folder for that to apply. I'm still annoyed that links display my real name at the top however and there doesn't seem to be anyway to block this. If I want to use google photos, I'll have to create a dummy account it seems.

When you use Blogger, you create a new post that is unpublished and somehow "store" your photos in the post? I've never used a blog site before.

 

[Dan Murphy]

I have so many pictures here on the dis in Photobucket, I just elected to pay the $99 a year hotlinking fee. I had been paying $15 or $25 for years with a 'pro' account, so not a deal breaker for me. I could not imagine moving the pictures and attempting to change the links here on the dis.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Let me see if I can come up with an example.

Okay, I picked this photo by Ciclismo Italia from Flickr. If you mouse over the photo, you can actually click on it and it will not only bring you to the actual page of the original photo, but that person's whole account. Then you can click on and take a look any any of the photos you want in their account by clicking on the side arrows or on the individual photos at the bottom....

When I drag and drop a photo directly from my computer into a post, and then click on that photo in the thread, it only enlarges the photo. There's no "connection" to anything else.

 

[Imzadi]

When you use Blogger, you create a new post that is unpublished and somehow "store" your photos in the post? I've never used a blog site before.

Go to Blogger.com, create an account for a blog. If you already have and use a Gmail address, you will already be brought directly to the page to create a blog. All of Google's services are linked together. So if you want to store the pics in another Google Photos account, do make a dummy account. Otherwise, you might be able to just post a photo from your existing photos in Google Photos into a blog post. Then post/hotlink from the blog post onto the DIS.

From what I see, once the photo is posted into a blog post, it's given a very long generic link, so no one can trace it back to your real name.

Once you sign up for a blog, you can give it any name you want. Then go to Settings and set your account to Private.

When you create a post, you will see a text box, just like the text box the DIS has. You don't have to create multiple posts for different photos. I just do that to keep all my stuff straight. You can just post ALL your photos to ONE single long post. Then scroll down to find the one you want.

Here is a travel blogger who uses Blogger.com and posted ALL her photos onto one super long blog post.

https://www.blogger.com/feeds/1740245040261653150/posts/default

You don't have to enter any text, except as notes to yourself. Remember your blog is private.

You would upload your pics to the blog, just like you do here. You click on the Icon in the toolbox at the top of the text box, to the right of the LINK icon. It's the one that looks like a photo. Then upload a pic, or get one already existing in Google Photos. Once you have the pics you want inserted into the blog post, click the orange Publish button at the top of the page. (When you add more photos later, the "Publish" button will turn into an "Update" button.

Go to the top left corner of the screen and click on "View Blog." That is the published page where you simply highlight & copy the photo, or right-mouse click on it to get the Image/Photo location and then post it into your trip report on the DIS.

 

[Imzadi]

When I drag and drop a photo directly from my computer into a post, and then click on that photo in the thread, it only enlarges the photo. There's no "connection" to anything else.

That is because the DIS is hosting the photos here. The going somewhere else is for when you have your photos hosted somewhere else. Some photos automatically link back to the place the photo is really hosted at.

BTW, there is nothing wrong with placing photos directly onto the DIS and having them host the photos.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

That is because the DIS is hosting the photos here. The going somewhere else is for when you have your photos hosted somewhere else. Some photos automatically link back to the place the photo is really hosted at.

BTW, there is nothing wrong with placing photos directly onto the DIS and having them host the photos.

OK, sorry. I read your post "I personally will never post my personal pics on any site where I may later lose control/access to those pics and can't get in to delete/edit out my own pics." as saying not to post on the boards. I guess you're saying "don't use a photo hosting site".

 

[Imzadi]

OK, sorry. I read your post "I personally will never post my personal pics on any site where I may later lose control/access to those pics and can't get in to delete/edit out my own pics." as saying not to post on the boards. I guess you're saying "don't use a photo hosting site".

No, I'm saying the first. If you post on the DIS and are later banned, you won't be able to get back onto this site, under that account name to edit out your personal photos. You and I post here enough that we see trolls baiting us all the time. Usually we don't bite. Or if we do, we try not to rack up too many points to get the boot. Not that I would know anything about that. I just personally don't like not being able to get back in to edit out any personal photos if I do get the boot from here. So, this is a good place to have the DIS host your photos if you don't care about that. And/or IF you think you won't get into future trouble here.

If you do want to maintain control over your own photos, do look for another hosting site, where you wouldn't have any reason to be booted off of.