At the risk of being accused of spamming, I am going to discuss here a source of free on-line services, in particular a place where you can freely post pictures.
This is inspired by this IMHO thread, in which I complain that I cannot view images that other Dopers post at Photobucket and then link to. In that thread, a bunch of other Dopers agree that they have trouble viewing images there.
There is a Unix system (or cluster thereof, I suspect) that calls itself sdf, for Super Domain Fortress, that offers FREE Unix login accounts, including free hosting of some web space. You can create your own login name, and your own domain with a name like xxxxx.freeshell.org (where xxxxx is your login name, or maybe you can choose a different name too).
And here is their home page: SDF Public Access UNIX System … Est. 1987 You can go there to get started. To work with their system, you need to have access to telnet or SSH so you can remotely log in to their command prompt window. You can create a web site (I don’t know what, if any, web development tools they offer), and post pictures there. Anybody should be able to view them, like me, regardless of how old your browser is (withing reason), and even without JavaScript. It’s plain and simple.
As an example, here is my collection of pictures that I’ve posted there. It’s in the format of a plain web directory listing, but anyone with the initiative can make their own photo album with whatever kind of nice front page you want.
Thanks for the info. I set up a shell account but it mentioned that I can’t create a domain name unless an existing member validates me, or I pay them a nominal fee. Can you validate the account?
I took a Unix/Linux administration class a couple years ago, in which the entire class was supposed to create accounts for themselves there. Now that you remind me, I vaguely remember that this “validation by existing member” came up then. Our instructor validated everybody, IIRC. (I wonder if they have some way for instructors to validate a whole class en masse.)
I’ll take a look there and see what I can see. I’m not sure how I would go about validating someone else. Maybe they have instructions on-line somewhere.
I poked around a bit, and damn their FAQ and HELP utilities are intractable. How do you use their FAQ and HELP programs without first knowing how to use their FAQ and HELP programs? I couldn’t find the answer readily, and I couldn’t even find out who to mail an e-mail question to.
I sent an e-mail to ‘root’ with the question. I’ll let you know if they ever answer.
I mainly just use the system to post things on my little web site there, which isn’t even much of a web site. I had forgotten what an unhelpful bitch of a system Unix is to use. (And I used to be a Unix sysadmin, back in the day!)
Or you could pay them their nominal fee, I guess. I think it’s a one-time fee that gets you a life membership there, and maybe prevents your account from expiring if you don’t use it regularly. I think I’m a paid member there, IIRC. Anyway, I’m waiting to see if I get an e-mail back from somebody there.
Are they free? Do they have advertising or spam? Do they pluck every shred of information they can from you for sales and marketing, or to sell? Do they keep updating their sites every week so you need to keep updating your browser every week? Are they easy to get started with (apparently, SDF may only work for knowledgeable Unix users)?
ETA: And can people view pictures there without having to use JavaScript? Do they leave cookies around? Do links to photos actually, you know, take you directly to those photos, or does their server intercept them to give you some other page instead, like Photobucket does?
And by the way, AaronX and whomever else it may concern:
My original problem with Photobucket (discussed in that other thread I started) is now mostly resolved, with the help of various pieces of information I got from some other posts in that thread.
(Turned out to be a configuration blunder on my end, in my own machine.)
Still not ideal (IMHO), but at least I can see pictures on Photobucket if I really want to, and really make the effort.
Fine with me. I originally thought ATMB was the place, because the point of the OP was about how posters here can and can’t post links to pics that the rest of us can see.
As the above discussion has developed, though, it didn’t quite go that way. Based on Post #2 by Crazyhorse, maybe this isn’t quite the solution I thought it was, and we spent the rest of this thread talking about that instead. Besides, my other rant about Photobucket in that other thread actually led to . . . wait for it! . . . the problem getting mostly resolved! (Configuration blunder on my machine.) Yay Dope!
ETA: @Crazyhorse: I still don’t have the solution about how you get “validated”.
It’s no big thing, thanks for trying. I actually have several shell accounts here and there including my own webhost (where I could add a fartypants prefix to my own domains anyway) but if you figure it out that would be cool. It looks like a nice service for anyone who wants to learn a little more about unix - it isn’t technically ‘free’ for the full service, but it was something like $3.00 for a lifetime membership so definitely worth it for anyone who doesn’t have other servers to play with and wants to learn. The SSH shell is loaded with info and instructions you don’t normally get from a standard hosting account.
@Crazyhorse: Okay, either or both of us can continue to poke around there and see if there’s some accessible documented explanation. I’ve never done much there, other than to post a few pics and piddly web stuff. I get enough Unix-like action at home, as I use Linux.
Playing with their faq and bboard programs reminds me how primitive Unix once was (compared to our decadent GUI habits today), which still seems to be the case at SDF. A few minutes playing with their semi-inscrutable faq and bboard programs sent me screaming for the hills. I rarely log in there other than to upload photos.
I have a simple bash-script to log on. I have another simple bash script to remote-mount and remote-unmount my home directory there onto my local file system, so I can read/write files there directly from my own home machine. That’s neat. Problem though: The root of my private web site is on a different file system there, with a symbolic link to it in my home directory. I can’t access that remotely!
So to upload a file, I have to remote-mount (connects to my home directory), copy the file to my home directory there, then remote login there to move the file to my html directory.
Note that they also provide SQL access (MySQL I assume?) (for a price) and their web server supports PHP. So you get to play with those things there if you want.
In my Unix admin class, one of our exercises was to create a certificate, by which we could create an automated script to login there (without the need for an interactive password) to download files to another machine for backup. The whole semester, we were supposed to keep a log of everything we did, just like a serious machine operator would do, and blog that on our web site. I was the only one in the class who did that more than perfunctorily. (Did I mention that I really was a mainframe computer operator once upon a time?) My entire blog is still there, and written up in enough detail that I (or anyone) could reproduce everything I did step-by-step.
One Doper (Covered_in_Bees, who I haven’t seen around here for quite a while) studied my blog and reported that he found it quite educational.
They’re both free. Not sure if PWA has advertising, but neither needs verification to register, and both have help sections that are usable to people other than pro Unix users. PWA’s links go to real image files - you can use them in img codes, and Save Link As…
