I started with PhotoPoint, way back when, and it was good because they didn’t require a sign on for those who wanted to just view the albums.
When that went belly up, I switched my albums to Ofoto, and was able to find a way around the sign on requirement for viewers only. But now Ofoto is KodakGallery, and while I am enjoying the huge amount of storage, it is becoming increasingly frustrating of those viewing my albums.
I am my chorus’ webmaster, and “keeper of the online albums”, so the website has one pic from each album, which is a link to the album on KodakGallery, BUT now that KG is being persnickity about signing on, even merely to view, I’d like to find a new site.
I notice Troy McClure SF uses Flickr. Tell me about Flikr, Photobucket, and the others. I’m looking for something not too terribly expensive (free, of course, being best) with lots and lots of storage (I already have almost 200 albums)
With all those albums, photobucket’s probably not for you, as you only get 50 MB storage (and 2500 MB bandwidth a month) with the free account. Pay accounts are $25 a year for 1 GB of storage (and unmetered bandwidth (although they say they’re likely to get shirty if you hit ~100,000 MB/month)), if that’s inexpensive enough for you with those limits.
Flickr forms a pretty cool community- groups, users, and sets are all intertwined pretty well, so it’s easy to just click around randomly, sorta like you can do with Wikipedia. And just about everything is designed intelligently & intuitively, and with the exception of one non-essential feature, everything is plain ol’ HTML.
In addition to just simply uploading, you can organize your photos in to sets. You can add a given picture to as many sets as you want (or none at all). You can also add your photos to community groups, which are based on content, and can be totally private or completely public. And you can also loosely group your photos by tagging them. Click a given tag to see all your other photos with that tag (so I can see all of my Bay Bridge pictures at once without manually updating a set every time I take a picture). One more click will show me all public photos with that tag by everyone else on Flickr. And if a particular tag is really popular on the site, they will “cluster” the tag with certain other ones, so you can refine your search and make your results a little less muddled.
On normal pages, your pictures are shunken down to a friendly size, but it also retains the original (if you choose to allow it), along with a few other sizes, along with handy HTML links to let you C&P directly to your LJ, for example.
Your disk space isn’t limited, they go by uploading bandwidth. For $25/year, you can upload 2 gigs a month (which has been overkill for me, and I’ve put up ~1900 pictures since September). I’ve never spiked bandwidth, but it appears that if you do get FARKed or something, they’ll but banner ads on your age (something I’ve never, ever actually seen happen).
Mr. Athena and AthenaMom both use www.smugmug.com, and they seem to like it fine. Knowing Mr. Athena, he spent 2 weeks researching all the options before he chose that one, so it oughta be good. There’s a charge, but it’s minimal.
Ditto on Smugmug. It’s great. Unlimited storage and access to your photos in multiple resolution–including original. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and I’m very happy with it.
thank you and **Athena ** for the recommendation - looks like I’ll be going with SmugMug
Thanks again for the Flickr recommendation. It was easy and fast. Now I have to get the other 50 albums uploaded and I can quit KodakGallery
btw - If you want to see the album, email me, and I will send you the link
I reccomend Zoto. You get two gig of space, can store the pictures in their original size, and can crop and rotate them. You can tag your photos (which I LOVE) and create all sorts of galleries. Plus it’s free, and it’s a relatively new company and the people there are VERY helpful. You can also comment on other people’s photos, and communicate with them by putting them on your friends list or private messaging them!
If you want to check it out, you can visit my account at http://razz.zoto.com. If you click on “My Menu” at the top, you can see how the tags work and how convenient it makes it to sort and find your photos, especially if you have a lot.
Oh yeah, and don’t laugh at my retarted photos.
Yet another satisfied Smugmug user. It costs but, like almost everything in life, you get what you pay for. That reminds me, I gotta upload something soon.
I’ve been thinking about it
I will probably put one album on each site and see how they “crowd reaction” is before I decide who gets my pieces of green paper with dead presidents on them
Winkflash and Snapfish are pretty good, but are probably more intended for people who want to print their pictures fairly cheaply. But, you can upload everything and share with others.
Have you considered simply registering your own domain and getting web hosting? Today’s web hosting is very inexpensive and with the free programs out there to organize your albums, it may be a cost-effective way to present your photos.
Try Tigertech. They have a webhosting package - 2GB storage, 50GB bandwidth (that’s one heck of a lot), 20 e-mail boxes, AND free domain name registration, for only $6.95 per month ($6.25 per month if paid annually).
Domain ownership is not scary - and there are many free HTML programs out there to help you write pages. Free FTP programs to upload your pages, as well. And if you run into problems, turn to the Teeming Millions and someone will be able to help you! And you get your own personalized email addresses to boot - something I really enjoy.
I’m sure there are other alternatives out there, Tigertech is simply the one I use and recommend.