Website photo hosting

[aarvig]

Hey guys,
It seems that Mark and I are having trouble with Photobucket.  I see my entire build thread now lacks any photos at all.  Frustrating.  For those of you who are posting pictures to websites, what photo hosting service are you using and is there a free option?  Photobucket now wants $400 per year to be able to link photos to websites...sheesh.

[s_reynolds]

I haven't posted any pics lately, but in the past I have just posted them directly from the pictures file on my pc. I assume you can still do that. Several of the other sites have had the same issue with photobucket. Go on the Talk@cobra registry site and there is a thread on this subject with some alternate photo services to use.

Sam

[Paul Proefrock]

I know a number of guys who have gone to Imgur. https://imgur.com/. Seems to be a viable alternative to Photobucket.

Paul

[Russ Rittimann]

I post all my pictures directly from my computer.  Everyone doesn't have access to the entire album but I've had no problem getting the individual pictures uploaded to the Hurricane forum.

Russ

[Kruse]

I can no longer see many of the pictures. frustrating.

[aarvig]

I can no longer see many of the pictures. frustrating.

Jason, who do you guys use when you post company pictures?

[Kruse]

I use the insert image button at the left side of the buttons above the dialog box. the photos upload directly from my PC (I think). I don't currently know what is going on with photobucket but I've seen complaints on Club Cobra as well. some users picture can be seen and others cannot. 

[Bob Worley]

When adding photos to your post, you have two options:  1) link the image to an external server (photobucket, el al.) or 2) upload the image here to this forum's server

1)
For external servers there are all kinds of options.  I have my own web hosting account, so I have total control over the images.  If you are using a few service like Photobucket, Imgur, Flickr, etc. you are totally dependent on them. But that's the only option for some.  Months or years later they may go away, or change names. Like Yahoo bought Flickr and screwed it all up.    I googled "Free Image Hosting" and found a good recent article:  https://www.lifewire.com/free-image-hosting-sites-3486329 

The good thing about photo hosting services is they may resize the images for you.  If you are hosting or uploading your own images you want to resize them first.  Uploading directly from your camera or smartphone the images my be 4mb or larger which is way too big.

So to link an external image to a post you put it inside the IMG tags like (IMG) imageURL (/IMG)  ... but with [ ] brackets instead of ( ) parentheses.  Click on the icon in the toolbar to automatically insert the image tags.

The good thing about this method is you can put the images anywhere in the article you want.  With the attachment method, you are limited to four images, and they are attached to the bottom of your post.    Here is an article I posted, with loads of images from my own server account:

http://hurricane-motorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=2501.0

The images links look like this:   [ I M G ] http://www.bobworley.com/images/tcc2017/IMG_6345.JPG [ / I M G ]

2)
The other option is to upload the image to your post directly.  I think this is the best option for most because everything stays right here, in this forum/server.  Just be sure the image sizes are reduced.  You can tell the images that have been uploaded here because they have a caption that is the file name, then something like "viewed ## times".   To upload the image to this server, click the "Attachments and other options" link below.  I am uploading an image with instructions into this post: