Current Photo Hosting Solutions?

[speedy_w_beans 4272]

Over the years I've been stung a few times by "free" photo hosting sites that went to a subscription model and blurred out my images.  I finally settled on using Google Sites because their file cabinet templates made it easy to store whole build threads in one location.  Well, I've just been notified Google is going to shut down Classic Sites in 2021.  This means roughly 13 build threads on TC will be affected.  Migrating to the new version of Google Sites won't work because they are dropping the file cabinet template and all my URLs will change.

Soooo, what's the go-to photo hosting solution these days?  Ideally it would be free with unlimited storage and stable for the next 30 years.  Realistically I'm guessing compromises will be required.  I'm thinking about acquiring a domain name and some inexpensive web hosting so I can control the URLs and never have to update build threads again; are there any easier/cheaper/more stable options?

I'm kind of bummed; this will be the third time I've had to update image links, and the job just gets bigger each time...

[Re-Bugged 10099]

I have an imgur account with quite a few images on, but is was a bit of a pain to use on the phone app.

I now use the Tamiya Club hosting service offered to subscribing members and haven’t looked back.

It was set up primarily as even if your subscription falls away the images stay live (even though you won’t be able to access them until you renew again)

[Mad Ax 9292]

tcphotos for me for sure.  Nobody can absolutely guarantee it will last forever, but it's been around a while and Netsmith was still promoting it recently.

You can have albums, but you can't have sub-albums.  That's the only real compromise I've had to make.

The interface is good, although it has its flaws.  Sometimes if you drop a heap of images onto the uploader at the same time, it uploads them in the wrong order.  Stuff like that upsets my perfectionism and there's no way to re-order albums once loaded.  But it's certainly not a deal-breaker.

The interface for getting all the different link types is good.  There are lots of ways to share.

For many years I had my own web space, but I found the annual admin hassle of renewing domain names and hosting services too much effort.  Price-wise, photobucket (once they'd got over their initial ransom phase) would have been cheaper.  At the time, I couldn't find a host who would just sell me a few Gb of web space to attach a domain name to - everybody wanted to sell me a full service with mailboxes and page hosting and everything.  Which would be OK if they were Microsoft servers because I'm a Microsoft stack developer and could make use of some web hosting, but MS servers are much more expensive to host and back in those days I couldn't develop fully-functional web pages that would run on non-MS servers.

If you an always-on internet connection (who doesn't these days) and if you can get a fixed IP address (some ISPs will provide it free, some have a small admin fee and some want to switch you to an astronomically-priced business account), you can host your own web server, although if your images are popular your bandwidth might take a hammering.

[speedy_w_beans 4272]

Thanks for the thoughts, guys.  Fortunately there's some time before my photos are dead.

[Mirrorman 248]

I've been using https://www.flickr.com/ since that rubbish photobucket pulled a while ago. 

[Juls1 1660]

tcphotos.net is the semi official Tamiya Club photos hosting, since I used up my 50mb on tamiyaclub forum I’ve been using this service. The best part for me is that it works perfectly well from my phone or tablet, meaning I can upload photos directly then post them later either from my phone or PC. 
 

id assume as long as tamiyaclub is live that the tcphotos.net service will also be. You just need to contact netsmith either through tamiyaclub or directly from tcphotos. I will say however that contacting him through tamiyaclub can be very slow to get a response (potentially weeks) when I contacted him through tcphotos.net website I had my account up and running in a matter of hours, I did mention my username on tamiyaclub, I assume that is a requirement.
 

im not aware of any costs as such? 
 

Juls
 

 

[speedy_w_beans 4272]

So on TC Photos, can you upload 50-100 photos in one folder or album?  I just want to keep my build threads organized by folder and not have to span multiple folders/albums if possible.

[Juls1 1660]

I just make a new folder for each build thread. I’ve not noticed any limits. You do need to pay attention when you upload that it goes to the right folder. 
 

it will generate whatever type of link to the photo you want, so your threads can be made seemless without any hint that it’s not hosted directly. 
 

it is free, so I guess getting an account and having a test run will only cost you a hour or so.