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Where to host images for SER articles

DeeeeeeeeDeeeeeeee the Americas
Recently, I had to move all my GSA SER images off the server that hosted them. I had thousands of images I had collected, organized into categories.

Now, I guess my articles that had links have a broken link. That sucks...

So going forward, where should I host my images? Should I get a cheap hosting specifically for them with a different company than where my money sites are located?

You're not allowed to "store" files on some/most of these hosting company's servers; it's explicitly prohibited in the TOS.

These images were also for an on-server CAPTCHA resembling reCAPTCHA V2. So I did have a reason for them being there.

Any ideas about this? Just curious. I'm trying to keep all MS servers within TOS. The hosting company didn't care if I had a use for the files or not. I am pretty sure the files were auto-flagged b/c I kept way too many images in each directory. It seems every directory I did that with on that server was flagged.

But now I have to re-do this, and I guess I want to do it right. Thanks.

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  • s4nt0ss4nt0s Houston, Texas
    I've used Amazon S3 for hosting images embedded in forum posts and that worked well for me in the past. It seems like S3 or a similar cloud storage solution could work? I'm not sure what would be most cost effective though. :/
    Thanked by 1Deeeeeeee
  • DeeeeeeeeDeeeeeeee the Americas
    edited May 2020
    Thanks, s4nt0s. I made a few big mistakes. One, I actually linked to the images via  a money site's domain.  I could have used any domain, so it was a bad choice placing them where I did and accessing them that way. I should def make a 301 redirect for them all to the new host, wherever that ends up being, just to deal with the images that are still missing on existing posts.

    Going forward, going to be using some unused domain I have...

    As far as hosting, I will look into Amazon S3. That's on a pay-per-access cost basis, no?

    Of course, I'm looking to save $$ when possible, as long as it doesn't affect anything.

    I guess I should also use smaller directories. The bigger DIRs open slowly and seem to have issues. Any suggestions on file limits per DIR on linux hosting? Thanks...
  • s4nt0ss4nt0s Houston, Texas
    @Deeeeeeee - For the cost I believe it was based on traffic to the images, but it never cost me more than a few $$ per month. There might be better solutions, I was just throwing it out there. :)
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  • DeeeeeeeeDeeeeeeee the Americas
    edited May 2020
    @s4nt0s ..there are various data plans Amazon offers. Which one did you find sufficient?

    "...Amazon S3 offers a range of storage classes designed for different use cases. These include S3 Standard for general-purpose storage of frequently accessed data; S3 Intelligent-Tiering for data with unknown or changing access patterns; S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA) for long-lived, but less frequently accessed data; and Amazon S3 Glacier (S3 Glacier) and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive (S3 Glacier Deep Archive) for long-term archive and digital preservation..."

    Thanks.  And it's just set up/accessed as a simple domain with directories, I'm assuming?
  • s4nt0ss4nt0s Houston, Texas
    @Deeeeeeee - I'm pretty sure my account is just a standard account because I don't remember seeing any other options back when I signed up in 2010.

    All I did was create a "bucket" which is kind of like a folder, then I would drop my images in and grab the file URL.

    You can create different directories for different files, etc.


     There probably is a better solution out there for what you're trying to do ... I just don't know what that is :P

  • DeeeeeeeeDeeeeeeee the Americas
    edited May 2020
    "All I did was create a "bucket" which is kind of like a folder, then I would drop my images in and grab the file URL. "

    Thanks, @s4nt0s! I think I'm going to try this.

    I have a Google drive account but that was not simple files and directories and I had to individually get a weird link to each file.

    This seems like I can quickly set up a lot of images this way.

    Much appreciated. Trying to refine my GSA set-up. Lots to do! :)
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