Greeting’s, once again, from the fOtofair team. We’ve been busy putting together the criteria for this years fair, and today, we’re also going to delve into the wonderful world of fOto-hosting sites.
Before we get started, thanks again for all the responses to the Launch Diary and for your votes and volunteering…we will be in touch.
As you can see, the date selected was October 28-29, with a submission deadline of 21 October for those needing help with creating diaries…more on that later, but props to all!
Please stand on the moving yellow line…and repeat after me…
Submission Requirements:
All submittals must be:
ORIGINAL work
B&W, colour, and manipulated, ie: photoshopped, images
are included
NO VIDEOS
Maximum photos per diary: 10. HTML Primers are below and
Posting templates and details will be in the next
communique.
Simple, eh? Thought so…Now the fun stuff…
fOtohosting Sites:
, OK, a few minutes of exhaustive research and testing, have identified the three major hosting sites most often used by the denizens at BT…Photobucket, Flickr, and ImageShack. If you haven’t yet signed up for one of these, we offer the following information to, hopefully, assist you in your quest. BTW, they’re all FREE!
The first, most popular, and, in the not so humble opinion of some fOtofair team members, best site. Easy to use, lots of storage: 1G, multiple image uploading, easy editing, creates thumbnails [more on that next time], excellent privacy controls, and lots of good tutorials and forums for assistance. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
The second place finisher, has lots going for it. Easy to use, automatically resizes photos, good privacy controls…the works. Requires a Yahoo ID but, it has a fairly restrictive upload requirement…20Mb/month…very easy to burn thru.
Very similiar to photobucket with the notable exception of some difficulties with the thumbnail links, and their attendant ads, which cause some browsers to crash, most noticeably, Mac OSX2.8/Safari. We have been unable to test it w/ later V’s such as OSX3.9 or 4, and would appreciate any input re: it’s efficacy with those.
A fourth site, kind of the new kid on the block, is Zooomr. Very similiar to Flickr, with more bells and whistles, and lots more storage. But, very buggy on Macs, again, OSX2.8…so if you’ve tried it, or try it, w/ a later version of OSX, please chime in as it looks very promising.
And, just for FYI purposes, here’s a list, not inclusive, of other hosting sites that we’ve id’d. Again, any insight you might have regarding these or others, is encouraged:
That’s all we got for now, the next installment will be devoted to HTML, How to do Thumbnails, and the template for posting your fOto diaries. For those of you wishing to read ahead for extra credit, RenaRF’s excellent HTML 101 @ MLW is Highly Recommended. [Hope that’s ok MSOC, and all the wingers are invited to participate!] as is Superscalar’s outstanding: How’d Boo do that?
Questions, comments and all input is encouraged and requested.
Please Recommend this diary so it may reach everyone who may be interested
Thanks, we will be back.
till I discovered Photobucket. If I can remember my old username/password I’ll give it another shot; I’m running Mac 10.4.6 (current Mac OS). Same with Zooomr. (May have to wait till early next week to check — got a ton of homework, plus will be out of town and without Internet access this weekend…)
That would be very helpful!
Thanks for the info. I’m excited — and intimidated —
by this project. I appreciate all the help you are offering.
Great to hear you’re exicted, but don’t feel intimidated!
If you have any specific questions that pop up, don’t hesitate to ask. 🙂 We’re trying not to overload everyone w/ information, so that’s why we’re taking this slow.
The task for now is to set up a free photo hosting acct if you don’t have one, so that in the next installment we can experiment w/ creating thumbnails and inserting them in the template.
The thumbnail thing has been on my mind. I USED to know that. I have a Picture Trail account and a freebee account from Photobucket. I tried to post a linked thumbnail the other day and discovered that the HTML provided by PictureTrail doesn’t work at the frogpond. I haven’t yet checked Photobucket, but HTML versions very greatly so we need to be aware of that.
To post a linked thumbnail, don’t you use the [a href] command putting the thumbnail address in the spot you usually put the text, and the larger linked picture is the http address? I probably am not asking the question correctly and am not sure how to post html in my text, but I’m going to try that later.
Don’t worry, Kahli, there are folks here who can guide us through the HTML thing and the Photohosting thing one step at a time.
I can show you how to do a linked thumbnail, but I’m not familiar with how the photo hosting sites work because I don’t use them. So, I’ll just use some dummy names and you can work with it.
Let’s say that your images are all at http://www.photosite.com/mypictures.
Let’s say that your thumbnail is just called thumb.jpg.
Let’s say that the real image is called bigimage.jpg.
In that case, the html would be :
<a href=”http://www.photosite.com/mypictures/bigimage.jpg”><img src=”http://www.photosite.com/mypictures/thumb.jpg”></a>
You should be able to copy and paste that html, substitute your filenames and hosting site, and be all set!
Thanks, works like a dream.
That’s a great explanation! 🙂
For clarification…am I correct in thinking that it is permissable to use both of one’s diaries for a day for the fotofair, with 10 photos in each? So all told any one member could post up to 40 photos over the 2 day fair?
There was no diary limit last year … And looking through the list not too many submitted 2 or more diaries.
What you’ve suggested fits w/in the site rules ej … so if everyone’s okay w/ that as the limit, then we’ll go w it … how’s that?
Could I just throw a nerdified link into a diary that leads to an album of my best images on photobucket? Or is it important to have the images in the diary?
I’m thinking that the images can be bigger and clearer at photobucket… Or does sizing them down for embedding in the diary make them faster for folks on dial-up?
I’m not sure about your first question, but as to the second, sizing pictures down only speeds it up for people on dial up if you actually change the size of the picture. Using the “height=” and “width=” attributes in the img tag won’t do the trick, because it still forces the browser to download the full sized image, and then it resizes it on the fly.
Did that make any sense?
If I remember correctly, we limited the sizes of pics allowed in diaries for two reasons:
1 dial up users
2 BooMan’s bandwidth
What we did was resize pics to a certain size, bigger than thumbnails, and those who wanted to linked those to larger full sized pics on photo services did so on their own. That’s where the volunteers came in, resizing pics for diaries. If you just post a link to full sized pics, there are those who would not be able to view them, or it could take forever to download. I’m not sure how it will be handeled this year, but there it is.
If you just shrink down the height and width it doesn’t change the file size (KBs), so large files will stay take too long to load even if they are thumbnail size.
That’s why each thumbnail is then linked to a larger version of the photo — the viewer can click on the thumbnail to see the larger image. This allows the diaries to load quickly (especially for those on dial-up) but allows easy access to high resolution images.
Any reason why I can’t host my photos on my own web server? Not that I have anything against Imageshack or anything like that, I just, well, happen to be geeky enough to have my own domain and my own server.
I’m guessing there’s no reason why you can’t do that Omir, I’m planning on doing the same.
If you have your own server or other photo host site that is fine.
And geeks are kewl! 😉
OOO!
I can’t wait to look!!
The Queen of the Froggy Bottom Photo Fair herself!
You can’t wait to look … and submit? 🙂
Look’n & Lurk’n most likely. At least judging by the last couple of months.
(How are you doin’?)
I hope you stop by for another visit. I’m really sorry to have missed you.
And Olivia, (sorry to have to chatise you) she’s the “Goddess of the Photo Fair”. And Goddesses don’t submit, they provide. 😉
Consider me suitably chastised! 🙂
Hi, Andi!!
I’m sorry I missed you last night (was it last night?)
I’ll try to drop in later, but I just got back from my walk and (I’m sure this won’t surprise anyone) I’m going to couch for a while.
(and sometimes I just end up staying put)