Photo hosting?

[Clint Boyer]

Rich, have you ever considered photo hosting?

I've been having technical difficulties and had to resort to an old account with "blank"snake.com to post pics

Just wondering............

[Rich Z]

Well, I could probably do this, but the question is: Am I expected to offer this for free? It would cost me a couple of hundred dollars to put this together, and to be honest, offering everything for free when I am paying for the software and some technical assistance with integration is getting a little bit old. I look at the usage of the chat system over on FaunaClassifieds and think of all the money I spent on that software....

So are people willing to help me out paying for this capability? Or do I foot the initial bill and charge for you all to use it? Or a compromise between the two options?

[Clint Boyer]

Well, I wouldn't try to tell someone how to run a business (like I'd know anyway).
I'm pretty sure other providers charge for the service after a certain amount of free space is used up.
There must be some demand for web space like that, it would have to be worth something.

[Rich Z]

FYI, I installed a Photo hosting/gallery system over on FaunaClassifieds a few days ago: http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/photopost/. I can install the same thing here, if people are interested, so take a look at it.

It will cost me approximately $200 to do this, depending on whether I need my programmer to do any tweaks with the format afterwards. I'm thinking I will offer the basic freebie access with a limit of maybe 1 meg of storage for free. Then offer 5 meg for a charge. What I am thinking of doing is implementing something similar to the Contributors icon/membership that I have over on FC. I don't know, do you think I can get eight people at $25 per year to spring for this to cover my expenses?

Let me know and I'll give this more thought.

[Rich Z]

No one at all? Hmm, guess this isn't really a hot issue then......

[drizzt_19]

I would be willing to pay the $25 a yr for photohosting service...But do you think you could give more then 5 meg...I could probably use that space up in no-time flat...Maybe 10-20 meg of space...

I am sure there are others out there that would be interested, you just need to put this post on the top...I mean heck I just noticed it tonight...It never showed up in the new post until tonight...

Oh, while we are on the subject, when are you going to open the Insider's Club Room???

[Quigs]

Well Rich, I have an opinion but it probably won't be a popular one. I too, was waiting to see what others thoughts were before I commented.

First off, I think the Contributor icon/membership is a great idea, personally.

I'm not sold on the photo hosting/gallery idea though. I'm not particulary fond of that layout for one. Second, I already have an unlimited space account with PhotoBucket, so I wouldn't use it all.

My thoughts are, people have enough trouble posting pics as it is. This would just be another thing to have to worry about and explain everytime we get a new member. Then with the space limitations, you're going to run into people that don't know how to shrink their photos down enough. People are not going to see the point in a free 1 meg space when they can only host one pic, for example. User error but I can still see it happening and probably often.

The people that do post pics and do so regulary already have some sort of photo host. I just see it as being a pain in all our rear ends and having to explain more than it's worth. Then only to have a photo gallery full of mostly crappy pics. Maybe I stand alone in my thoughts though.

I'll gladly support you and this site! I have learned so much from many here in the last year that I have been participating and about a year prior to that just lurking as a guest!

What I would like to see is this. I get alot of use out of the chat room, I'd like to see an upgrade on that! The chat room you have now is alright but as we all know, it has alot of bugs. It spontaniously kicks us out at different times. It'll pop up text that you had written hours ago. Not only that but there is someone constantly coming in from fauna and asking questions about other things or just to plain bug us about keeping "worm", call us "corn heads" or "corn holes". It gets a little annoying, sorry that most of us in "Corn Snake Chat" don't keep huge lifeless slugs! lol

In fact one of your chat moderators tried to argue with me the other day that all the morph colors and patterns in corns are "quite obviously hybrids". Quite obviously this person doesn't know jack about corn snakes, huh?

In short, I would like to see our very own seperate Corn Chat Room with our own moderators instead of the photo hosting/gallery.

Maybe this is too much too ask for, but I will certainly be contributing monetarily to the site come the first of the new year. No matter what choice you make, that is the least I can do to give back what I have taken!

Just something to chew on...

[Rich Z]

The $25 per year will be for more then just photohosting. Much like I have done over on FaunaClassifieds, there will be a Contributor's Level of membership that will give some enhanced options to some abilities that will not be available to regular non-contributing members. There are some freebie options that will no longer be available to regular members that they are using now, unfortunately. Banner ads here are not even coming close to helping this site to pull it's weight. Matter of fact, I believe I only have one paying banner ad advertiser on here. There have been a few contributions here and there, but not enough even to pay for a regular hosted site instead of running this on my own server.

So, yeah, I need to change some things to put more of this into the black.

As for the request for more storage space for the photo hosting, well to be honest, if I charge a minimal amount for this service and then find that I have to buy a larger (more $$) hard drive for the server, or worse yet, get a whole new server to handle the space and bandwidth requirements, then what have I really gained by doing this? With 5 megs, you can store a good number of photos, but you are going to have to manage them to where you have the BEST ones stored, or the ones you will most likely use. This isn't intended for people to store every photo they have ever taken.

No, at this point I believe that the caps I will set in place are reasonable enough.

As for the Insiders Club Room, right now the only way you can gain entry there is by being someone running your own personal forum on this site. It is possible I may make this open to the Contributors mentioned above as well.

As far as people noticing this thread, put it on top of what? :shrugs:

[Quigs]

Can we take a peek at what the "enhanced options" will be? Or the "freebie" options that will be no longer?

Makes no difference to me, like I said I'll be shooting you some cash just after the first of the year regardless.

Just curious...

[Rich Z]

What I would like to see is this. I get alot of use out of the chat room, I'd like to see an upgrade on that! The chat room you have now is alright but as we all know, it has alot of bugs. It spontaniously kicks us out at different times. It'll pop up text that you had written hours ago. Not only that but there is someone constantly coming in from fauna and asking questions about other things or just to plain bug us about keeping "worm", call us "corn heads" or "corn holes". It gets a little annoying, sorry that most of us in "Corn Snake Chat" don't keep huge lifeless slugs! lol

In fact one of your chat moderators tried to argue with me the other day that all the morph colors and patterns in corns are "quite obviously hybrids". Quite obviously this person doesn't know jack about corn snakes, huh?

In short, I would like to see our very own seperate Corn Chat Room with our own moderators instead of the photo hosting/gallery.

Maybe this is too much too ask for, but I will certainly be contributing monetarily to the site come the first of the new year. No matter what choice you make, that is the least I can do to give back what I have taken!

Just something to chew on...

The chances of me spending several days (or more) evaluating other chat software packages, forking out another $700 or so for the software, then another couple hundred $$ getting it debugged and interfaced with this site, are exceedingly slim. Pretty much nonexistent. I can't see me sinking any more money into this site then I already have. Now if I should decide to go ahead with that Contributor level membership and it is much more succesful then I am expecting, well maybe I will do that. But I tend to be pessimistic about such things, I guess.

Oh about the chat problems, this chat system ran pretty much flawlessly when I was on my previous server. I think there was something done wrong when the java module was added into the operating system on the server. I believe I could get it straightened up by moving *everything* to a new server and reinstalling the java module correctly. Thing is, why should I do that? It would be a HUGE undertaking now to move all my sites to a new server. And I should do this merely to *possibly* fix an intermittent problem with a free chat system? I don't know.... I have problems accepting that. I think it will take a LOT more incentive for me to do something drastic like that any more.

Oh one other thing. If I need to separate FaunaClassifieds and CornSnakes onto separate servers, the chat system will have to stay with one or the other. I cannot tie them together if both sites are on different servers. So if and when that time comes, the site which is using it the most will get it to stay with that site. The other one just loses it completely.

[LadyLaw]

Rich, I am not sure how much you pay per year for this server, but I know that the server that I currently have is 70 a year. I have a lot of abilities in what I want to do, including email capabilities. I can give you the web addy so that you can check it out, but please understand that it is my fiance's baby and he has built it around me. I will see about finding out what company it is that we use and if you would like, I can PM you the details. I also know that I can put up a forum and probably a chat program, and many more things.

Lady

[drizzt_19]

As far as people noticing this thread, put it on top of what? :shrugs:

Preferably make it a sticky in the new post section...Although this is probably impossible...

Seems like every so often the new post "empty" themselves...I check the board in the morning before work, and when I get home from work...Usually there are only 10-20 new posts in that whole 10-11 hrs...I don't think that is right, cause if I look through each individual secton, I can find probably 30 or more new post made that day that are not showing up when I click the new post button...

[Rich Z]

Rich, I am not sure how much you pay per year for this server, but I know that the server that I currently have is 70 a year. I have a lot of abilities in what I want to do, including email capabilities. I can give you the web addy so that you can check it out, but please understand that it is my fiance's baby and he has built it around me. I will see about finding out what company it is that we use and if you would like, I can PM you the details. I also know that I can put up a forum and probably a chat program, and many more things.

Lady

Thanks for the offer, but I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. I am leasing two servers (as in the ENTIRE boxes are mine), not just using a hosting service. Just FaunaClassifieds alone pulls over 100 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. Each box has dual Xeon processors with a 73 gigabyte *fast* hard drive and 1 gb of main ram (which I may upgrade to 2 gb pretty shortly). For some of the things I have done, and need to do, I have to have root access to the server. NO hosting service will allow a user to have root access to their box. Ever.

$70 per year? I wish...... We're talking about $500 per MONTH here. Which may go up if I have to add another server to balance the load with the various domains. And certainly does not include the purchase of software packages and programming help I have to pay for as needed.

But thanks for thinking of me and trying to help.

[Lexcorn]

I would go with the Contributor level membership...............this site has been & will continue to be an excellent source of information for me (& I assume, many others).

The fact that a manditory subscription has never been installed prior to accessing the site can only be a tribute to your faith in peoples' judgement.

Many 'forums' demand a fee from, potential, new members & deny the ability to assess the calibre of the established format; thus, one cannot consider the quality & sensibility of the site before committing oneself.

As for cost............that is rather a handsome sum that you 'fork out' each month, it's rather a shock!

Another subscription comes forthwith.

[Hurley]

I personally like the idea of what you did on fauna with the seals under people's names for contributing.

Helps people see who the "permanent fixtures" are around, too.

For all I've learned and all the enjoyment I get from these forums, contributing was the least I could do. You've got mail on a banner ad as well. ;)

Thanks for the site, Rich, I know I appreciate the efforts. :D

[Rich Z]

Thanks guys. I know my biggest problem is that I am not really a business man. Far from it. Most of the stuff I do is because I enjoy doing it. Othewise, why bother? Life is too short to do things that aren't fun!

But every once in a while I get this nagging feeling that maybe I am going about it the wrong way. Especially when I get my credit card bills and see how much is going into these "fun" things I am doing. :eek1:

[pcar]

I will contribute to the site too...$25 isn't much, and I am sure that it will help you out with a lot of things...Especially if you get enough people to contribute.

I have learned a lot from here, and I enjoy helping others that come asking questions. I still have questions myself, and I will be here till they are all answered...Which I doubt could ever happen.

[Rich Z]

OK, let's discuss this photo hosting thing again. I have in mind the same system I have over on FaunaClassifieds.

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/photopost/

This would be tied directly into CornSnakes.com, and all of the members registered here would be automatically registered in that system as well.

Now that I have a couple extra $$ in my pocket from the Contributors, I can think about doing something like this.

So, what do you say?

[Serpwidgets]

IMO the "best" way to do this would be to tie it in with the attachments.

At the bottom of the page it has "Posting Rules" where it says "you may post attachments" among the list. This appears to be something that can individually be turned on/off for users that belong to the "contributors" usergroup.

(http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/attachment_settings_permissions)
There are two permissions that pertain to attachments.
Ability to Post Attachments
Ability to View Attachments
Both of the permissions are controllable at the forum and usergroup level, meaning you can allow viewing of permissions by specific usergroups in specific forums and view versa.

Please view the Forum Permissions and Usergroups section of the admincp for usage.

This would allow contributors to use the built-in photo hosting (attachments) and without a clunky interface and any extra mess that comes with setting up something like the photopost thingy over on fauna. This way, photos can be attached in any forum (photo gallery, morphs, breeding, health care, housing, etc) instead of just in one special cordoned-off area. ;)

[Rich Z]

Well that is true, but there are alternate ways of looking at it. Photopost allows the photos uploaded to it to store them in member albums. The benefit of this comes into play when someone may think "Gee, I would like to see ALL of the photos posted by that cool dude 'serpwidgets'. With PhotoPost, this is a snap. Trying doing that HERE..........

[Serpwidgets]

True. It would be interesting if there were a feature in vbulletin to do just that. (Click on a user's name and select "browse all attached images posted by this user.")