Sick of Your Images Disappearing?

[Jrpkg]

Saving an image, then uploading it to a hosting service, then finally getting the new URL and embedding the image is time consuming. Some people don't even bother hosting the image and hot-link instead leeching bandwidth from the source site. Webmasters have their servers set up to prohibit hot-linking so images disappear.

ImgRed.com - Image Redirection

Examples are listed on the site.

Here's how to post a thumbnail with the link included. It's not HTML code.

[url=http://imgred.com/http://www.industcards.com/Germany.gif][img]http://imgred.com/tn/http://www.industcards.com/Germany.gif[/img][/url]

Here's the result:

[Weltschmerz]

Is it really a solution to the problem though? At the bottom of the page is written:

*ImgRed is not an archive service, and occasionally its cache is cleared out (once a month or so), so images are not literally cached forever.

And other services like imageshack, badongo and so on also time out, don't they?

[Jrpkg]

According to their FAQ:

Hard-drive space is easy to trim by simply deleting old images. If someone tries to view it, it'll just be pulled from the original source again and re-cached.

I explored through the "Intarwebs" for images cached by ImgRed, and it appears that images that are several months old are still visible.

I'm not sure, but the process of using ImgRed is much quicker than using a hosting site. The servers are rather quick as well.

[Menydh]

Though bandwidth and hard disk space have become so much cheaper in the last years, such services will go commercial at some point.

We are getting used to many free services which one day will not be free anymore.

[Jrpkg]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Though bandwidth and hard disk space have become so much cheaper in the last years, such services will go commercial at some point.

We are getting used to many free services which one day will not be free anymore.

Yes, the service going commercial is a possibility. I won’t deny that. In my opinion, it just seems more unlikely as the one man operating this service is providing the actual source code and allowing others to create mirrors with it. It does seem particularly spooky that only one man is behind the project.

It could be possible for this forum to implement the source code. I’m unsure how much more bandwidth and monetary cost this would outlay the forum.

On the other hand, I find it rather aggravating seeing images magically disappear out of the blue. Perhaps there should be a rule forbidding hot-links.

[I-Bleed-Russian]

I'd just like to know how to get my avatar uploaded, I thought my profile picture would be it.

[Menydh]

Ketutisturbo has not read this thread yet. Wait until he does to hear that it is the FSB/KGB that is removing all the images.