I run a large forum that, by its nature, is best served by having lots of pictures posted in threads... We used to use PhotoPost, but had so many problems with it that we took it down. My hosting company is not interested in being the "PhotoBucket" for our user base. We've implemented a pretty neat package called iServe (Google it), but it's not free for the users. And, of course, unless something's free, it doesn't get used as much. Since a lot of our threads are often converted to articles or standalone pages, it makes sense to have a "permanent" solution for hosting images. So, my question is this: What are my options? Buy a photohosting software package and some space on a seperate server? This is an area I'm not very proficient in, so please walk me through this... Thanks in advance, all!
From an SEO standpoint, if you host these images on your domain and offer "tools" for others to embed (intentional hotlink) not only will you users take advantage of the free service, any outsiders who display the pics will be adding one way links to you - just like YouTube, etc. Of course, this comes with the headaches and costs. You'll need to weigh the options. A free software solution would be the open source Coppermine Photo Gallery. There are at least two free plug-in mods I think that provide built-in tools for image embed with SEO happy links. Embed Coppermine Images 1 Embed Coppermine Images 2 You must keep it up to date or risk security issues and of course you'll be paying for storage and bandwidth. Hope that helps a bit.
If it is important that the images are displayed with posts and you have a reasonably large userbase it makes sense to spend a bit of time setting up some space on another server. You could of course form a "partnership" with an existing image host - you refer your userbase to their services etc. If they are a solid Image host then this would be a reasonable thing to do if you don't want the problems and responsibility of running an image host yourself for your clients.
That is an excellent point to consider - just like folks do with an ad server. I'd try to do it as a sub-domain or alias/mirror sub-directory (?) for the SEO if possible, even though it is running on another box. I know it can be done with the sub domain, i.e., photos.somedomain.com, but can you alias or mirror to another box with a sub directory? somedomain.com/photos ???
OK, so if I have a seperate server, I should be able to set up something like Coppermine and have it integrate with my forums?
If your host has problems with how you use your server you quite frankly need a new host. Not that I would want to host images that people upload as it can cause some problems but your host should have absolutely zero input on whether or not you do it.
Coppermine is open source and I don't speak for the dev team, of course. From a password/UID standpoint however, there are bridges to many forums and CMS systems. You'll need to work on the templates and CSS to integrate the looks as well. I would not plan on running it in an iframe - seems to be very difficult. Good luck!