As a member of a few other forums*, it's good to see pics on threads (although it's refreshing not to have any on UKC, it's enjoyable just to read) and I occasionally would like to put a pic or two on myself, leading to my questions:
1. What's the best i.e. simplest, easiest to manage photo-hosting site for use by a non-tech-savvy person like me? I've tried imgur but found it confusing; I have since read that wasn't intended for getting photos on to forums, although plenty seem to use it. Any other suggestions? I'm just after getting the photos onto the forum, not neccessarily storing all my pics on the site. This does lead on to...
2. As with almost everyone, I take pics with my (Android) phone; what is the easiest way to move/copy the pics from the phone's store to the hosting site?
3. What's a good way to store photos for the longer-term? Memory-stick, hosting-site or other? I guess a hosting-site carries the risk of going bust or imposing restrictions, memory-sticks may be obsolete in 10, 20 years.
*Why am asking here and not on the other forums? Well, I know that I'll get some sensible, comprehensive answers here so I thank you all in advance and apologise for asking about things that are probably blindingly obvious to most of you.
Essentially for photos in the forums (none of which will display in-thread) your choices are:
1) Load into your personal gallery on UKC - sizes are restricted though, and Iquite often find a photo needs to be resized before it will be accepted.
This has the added bonus of giving a small thumbnail on the link so they can be viewed more easily from UKC - this isn't likely to work if you want to load non climbing related photos, and there is a delay between upload and approval
2) Use a third party hosting site like: imgur, Flickr, Irista (Canon), Google Drive, Drop box etc. - these have various advantages and disadvantages depending on the site, but are usually easier to link to your devices, with some offering mirroring of data storage e.g. google photos. Most of these will need you to set permissions carefully for who can view.
In terms of safe storage, duplication is key.... get yourself an external HDD drive to back up photos onto, make sure you have them in online galleries, maybe think about something like NAS storage devices too if you are creating a large volume of files or memory cards etc. Don't scrimp on back ups and remember that some storage devices e.g. memory cards can degrade over time.
It can be devastating to lose your photos like my GF did when she got hit with the Windows 10 upgrade bug a few years ago - all her photos lost except the few she had on social media (poor quality copies)
edit: it appears the thumbnail thing isn't working or I need to post it slightly differently
I should have been clearer: when I said 'other forums' I meant those other than UKC, in which threads have photos displayed within them.
From the hosting-sites that you list in your point 2, is there one which you would say is easier or simpler to use than the others? I've tried imgur and found it awkward.
Also, is it possible to set things up (an app, or a setting on the hosting site?) so that whenever I take a pic it will automatically copy to the hosting site as well as being on my phone?
I think it will depend on the forum you are using, some will restrict certain sites. Of those that I use, dropbox, and google photos can be configured to automatically upload photos you take on a certain device to their service, but you will need to make the photos public before you can link to them. Drop box in particular has overall storage size restrictions (which I'm sure you can pay to expand).
You may find that some of the forum apps e.g. Tappatalk will manage file uploads for you (i.e. choose a photo from phone album and it uploads it to a service like IMgur) but I don't use these so maybe not.
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