I don't use photo hosting with any dedicated photo hosting service, I use the storage I get (for free, or rather included with their service) via my Internet Service Provider. This is like having a blank hard drive where you just put the photos in a map and then post the link to them.
I think most people here in Sweden are set up like this, in the early days of Internet I suppose the intention was that you could build your personal homepage and upload it to your storage area in order to bring it online. Blogger, Wordpress and social media killed that quickly
! Of course I'm not sure how common this is in the rest of the world but this is the way I do it.
If you think this is your situation, go on reading, otherwise, go back to building a model
!
You will need a file transfer program to upload your pictures (FileZilla works fine and is free) and you'll need to gather a bit of data that you probably have in the paperwork from your ISP, alternatively it could possibly be found online if you have some kind of user profile with your ISP. There you will find the address to your storage/home page area, the settings required in your file transfer program (FileZilla or other) and the password required. When you have it all dialed in it is just drag-and-drop from your computer to your storage area and suddenly you will be able to access your photos for sharing them online!
Disadvantages? Well, my ISP changed the naming convention killing all the links, I went through my build blogs and fixed the photo links but that might be a bit too Rainman for many people... If you want to change your ISP, your photos will likely disappear, if not sooner so at least later. But that doesn't change anything from the situation many have had with Photobucket and all the others that either charged outrageous sums for keeping the service going or simply went bust and off-line...
There are things one can do to avoid all the things in the above paragraph (getting your own domain name and setting up a DNS pointing to your storage so that you can move the photos and re-point to the new storage address from one single interface, sorry if I got the finer details wrong in this case but this is how it should work) but I've decided to be content with using my ISPs address directly and living with the consequenses if they go offline or get sold or whatever... After all, even if modelling is important to all of us it isn't strictly speaking a matter of life and death like in Air Traffic Control or medical records
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Magnus
