When did Image Shack change to a paid service?

[Dustinsfl]

When did image shack become a paid service? I tried to use it today but I need to upgrade to upload.

 

[Nono713]

Most "free hosting" services are going that way. There are literally no file upload websites that don't require at least registration these days, and many are not free. Image hosting services will eventually follow the same pattern, but so far imgur is holding up well. I haven't used tinypic in a while but I think it still works, though you might need to be registered to get direct access to your image (not embedded).

 

[Jameson]

This is why we want to host all images locally. You never know when an image hosting site could go offline or start charging. I believe reddit uses imgur.com, which is free.

 

[SuperSonic4]

This is why we want to host all images locally. You never know when an image hosting site could go offline or start charging. I believe reddit uses imgur.com, which is free.

Indeed it does although of course you can use imgur without linking it to reddit.

 

[Jameson]

Indeed it does although of course you can use imgur without linking it to reddit.

Wise guy, eh? I suppose I set myself up for that. Yes, imgur can indeed be used without linking to reddit, but besides reddit and MHB I don't know what other sites are important.

 

[Chris L T521]

Wise guy, eh? I suppose I set myself up for that. Yes, imgur can indeed be used without linking to reddit, but besides reddit and MHB I don't know what other sites are important.

The Stack Exchange network hosts all of their images on imgur as well. As you can see in that link, we can contact that person to have something similar set up on MHB, but I don't know if it's really worth it financially (I mean, we would have to pay for such a service, right?).

 

[Nono713]

The Stack Exchange network hosts all of their images on imgur as well. As you can see in that link, we can contact that person to have something similar set up on MHB, but I don't know if it's really worth it financially (I mean, we would have to pay for such a service, right?).

It would only be worthwhile if you have too much image traffic to realistically store it yourself, in which case you would get imgur to provide reliability, availability, and caching services for MHB images. But considering we only get a couple threads a day, and most threads don't contain pictures, MHB is probably not the target audience just yet :p (and yes I imagine it's not free)

 

[Dustinsfl]

It would only be worthwhile if you have too much image traffic to realistically store it yourself, in which case you would get imgur to provide reliability, availability, and caching services for MHB images. But considering we only get a couple threads a day, and most threads don't contain pictures, MHB is probably not the target audience just yet :p (and yes I imagine it's not free)

When the site started, we, the user, could only upload very little kb in image data. If MHB is going to host, we all user have unlimited upload ability? What if someone post a lot of images with their questions? They may have delete older images which will mess up the continuitity of an older thread when that image is gone.

 

[Nono713]

When the site started, we, the user, could only upload very little kb in image data. If MHB is going to host, we all user have unlimited upload ability? What if someone post a lot of images with their questions? They may have delete older images which will mess up the continuitity of an older thread when that image is gone.

I think the idea of these special imgur accounts is images never expire. But yes that is a good point, if MHB hosts images then members shouldn't be able to delete them later I think, otherwise it will make old threads confusing to read and lower the quality of the site. But ideally there should be very little images anyway, if people posted LaTeX instead of scanned text it would already cut down significantly I think (so perhaps those should be edited when reasonable?)

 

[Dustinsfl]

I think the idea of these special imgur accounts is images never expire. But yes that is a good point, if MHB hosts images then members shouldn't be able to delete them later I think, otherwise it will make old threads confusing to read and lower the quality of the site. But ideally there should be very little images anyway, if people posted LaTeX instead of scanned text it would already cut down significantly I think (so perhaps those should be edited when reasonable?)

I was thinking of scanned images with that comment. I refuse to read threads that don't have TeX in principle. What I meant, is I upload Tikz images I created in LaTeX to go with questions or answers when appropriate, but if there is a limit, I would have to delete an older image ruining a question or answer.

 

[Jameson]

When the site started, we, the user, could only upload very little kb in image data. If MHB is going to host, we all user have unlimited upload ability? What if someone post a lot of images with their questions? They may have delete older images which will mess up the continuitity of an older thread when that image is gone.

We increased the upper limit quite a bit and no one has reached it yet. Eventually we will have too many images on our server and will show signs of slowing down because of it. At that time we can simply start using a CDN like Amazon S3.

 

[MarkFL]

We had one user close to the limit, but fortunately that was resolvable without gutting images from threads. I am now the one with the most space used in attachments and I have almost 300 images attached and my usage is just over half the limit. So, we should be fine in this regard for quite some time.