Image Hosting Test Post

Testing images embedded from various platforms to replace Flickr (which is implementing a max of 1,000 pictures for free account - we are currently at >500).

Below is an image embedded from Flickr (what our posts currently look like)

We could keep using Flickr and just make a new Flickr account every time we get to 1,000 images used. You’d have to tell all the members when to start using the new account, but we won’t lose old images.

Embedded from Imgur

Imgur is truly free, easy to use, basically identical in practice to using Flickr. But the images display a bit ugly (I have tried and failed several different attempts to remove the ugly frame put around the Imgur embed images)

Embedded directly from Wikipedia

Only works if the source of the image is wikipedia. Teaching all authors exactly how to handle embedding this way is quite a bit more complicated than Flickr, etc.

Embed from 500px

500px allows 20 pictures per week to be uploaded to an account for free. This doesn’t work well for our system where all authors upload their pictures on the same week. In order to make this platform work, we would have to have a system for spreading out the uploads of images to the account prior to publishing the live version. Could postpone uploading images to account until week of uploading the live post (more work for design team)

Derrick’s thoughts:

I believe the majority of authors get the majority of their images from Wikipedia or from an open access Flickr account. I think ~10-20% of images, at most, are personal images that the author owns or modified, or come from some other source. If that is true, we can embed directly from Wikipedia or the photos original Flickr source account (rather than upload it to our TLS account and embed from there), and reserve our TLS account for the relatively smaller number of personal images that require a separate upload. This would reduce the rate at which we approach our max picture limit on our free Flickr account. Then, when we run out of space, simply create a new free Flickr account and continue. It should take a pretty long time to get to 1,500 pictures if we are only using our account for 10-20% of photos.

If I’m wrong and we use personal images more often than I realize, then we will likely need to choose an alternative platform.