I was directed here when I started googling my current question... A bit of set up: I was talking with some of my art teacher friends on Art Ed 2.0 (I don't have links available to me yet--google it!) about safe use of digital images in digital artwork, drawing inspiration, etc. The issue at hand is students stealing other people's work. The creative commons on flickr is a good solution, but flickr is blocked in many schools because the content in unmonitored. One solution I have in my own classroom is that we start creating our own stock library... skies, textures, animals, flowers, etc... which does work good. But it got me to thinking that it would be cool to have a high school commons. Students from all over the world could add to the vault of stock photos, specifically to let other people use them. If a students uses another's work in a digital artwork or drawing, they could then upload their finished piece so the original photographer could see how their work was used. It could be a huge collaborative piece. My question is this: I have no idea how to go about starting a website like this (especially on the cheap). Does anybody have any idea on how I could learn how to set up an image hosting site, or the tools I would need? Thanks!
Firstly you will need a very good dedicated host with lots of hard disk memory, or buy your own server. A dedicated host could cost up to 200$ per month, a server would cost about 1000$. Secondly, I think you could get a free or very cheap script....design as well. The main problem would be some promotion...the idea is very good, but you need to get visitors and students to your site, because they will be the ones who will actually work on it.
Suspect your biggest cost in this is going to be bandwidth as images are always bandwidth hungry. If it's really got a chance of taking off then someone like Rackspace might be a good option, depending if they do a managed dedicated server option. They'll have the ability to expand the bandwidth to anything you need (and can afford). As for schools commons - like the idea, but how are you going to prevent people from outside schools from using this? Also I suspect there could be a stack of legal issues relating to uploading of copyrighted works or students passing off work as theirs when it's actually taken from someone else. If you can get past all that lot then go get em....and wait to be bought by Yahoo for nice money. Trev