I have a food recipe blog and have around 200 posts (will grow continuously) and each post have at least 1 to 3 images. Currently the images are hosted on various image hosting sites. I would like your comments on .... advantages and disadvantages of hosting the images on our own server instead of image hosting sites in terms of security, performance cost, SEO and other factors. Thanks in advance.
I checked traffic to my site on Google analytics , one of biggest traffic contributor to my site is a picture, after the direct traffic...
Image hosting site tend to be slow. Host your images yourself would be faster and you have more control. Also you wont be relying on the image hosting site being online.
Theres no way i would use a free image hosting service for my images in posts, not enough control, i much prefer keeping them where the blog is. Optimise the images so they dont munch on your bandwidth and host them yourself.
Well if you have Unlimited bandwidth ( Refer Hosting companies TOS ) and if you think you can manage your bandwidth then it's better to host images on your own host which make loading time better then Free hosting sites!
I am not talking about traffic. Thank you all for your inputs. How about the CPU Usage? whether hosting the images on external sites (image hosting or other sites) will affect CPU usage?
nice. i host my images because, if you consider robots, and ideas of wealth, having the images on your own server binds content to your server, and also severs outbound ties. to me this is guesswork, but it seems like a good solid practice that helps all the way around.
I would never host images vital to my content on someone else's servers. Image hosting sites come and go faster than "Make money online" and Forex blogs.