Image Hosting is More Than Just Clicking Add Media in WordPress

Updated April 6, 2018

Image hosting is a lot more than simply clicking the Add Media button whenever you add a new post in WordPress.  Find out what image hosting can do for you and what options you have in the market.

Image Hosting for Bloggers

Photobucket

Over 100 million people have an account at Photobucket. With more than 10 billion images and videos on their database, Photobucket is considered to be one of the most popular and renowned image and video hosting website right now.

Launched in 2003, Photobucket gained recognition and acknowledgement from users all over the world within a few years. The website did not charge any amount for uploading and hosting images on the servers of Photobucket.  The service also allowed users to embed the uploaded images and videos on other websites, for example blogs, forums, etc.

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The recent change of the business model of Photobucket did not receive appreciation from the users.  According to the new policy, Photobucket charged $60 to $400 per year for the photo and video hosting service.  As per the new policy of Photobucket, users won’t be able to embed the images of Photobucket on other websites, in fact, the images will not load on any other website. This is called the restriction on third party image hosting.

What was the implication of this new policy?  Countless images all over the internet went down and were replaced with a placeholder image.  The placeholder image stated that in order to have the image displayed, the user will have to make a payment.  The users who had such images placed on other websites were required to make a payment for the images, and if they did not want to make the payment, the only option they had was to replace the image.

Users can, however, download their images from Photobucket. Here is how you can download your images from Photobucket:

• Log into your account
• Go to Library page
• Find and View the image
• Download the particular image

Alternative Image Hosting on Blogs

Webmasters, particularly Blog owners who use a blog platform like WordPress, Blogger or Squarespace, can conveniently upload the photos and images to their blog posts and pages if they want those images to be hosted on their own blog. This is in fact recommended, because it is not an endorsed practice to host the images on any other hosting website and rely on it.

What often seems to be tricky for such bloggers, is the way to upload images on the side menu and the widgets in the footer.

Pro Tip: When adding images to your blog, make sure you follow these recommended practices:

• Optimize the images by reducing the file size of the images.
• Save the file with a descriptive and relevant name
• Use the image with the appropriate and correct dimensions, i.e. the proper length and width that should be used.
• Make sure that the file type and the web format is correct.

Perfectly tailored to meet all your website’s needs, KnownHost’s shared hosting is hard to beat.

Host images on Blogger

Blogger is one of the top blog publishing service that does not need to be installed in the server – instead it is hosted at Google servers.

If you are the owner of a blog that is built on top of Blogger, you can use the following instructions to upload images on the blog and have those hosted on your blog instead of any image hosting website.

1. Select HTML mode at the Editors Toolbar
2. Click on Add Image icon
3. Select image and upload it
4. Under image alignment choose None
5. Under Image size choose Original
6. Insert the code snippet. The snippet will include the image code and the image link in the directory.

Host images on WordPress

WordPress is the most widely used Content Management System right now. Besides being used as a platform to have websites built on top of it, WordPress servers as a fantastic blogging system as well.

The WordPress Media Library is an excellent feature that allows the webmasters to conveniently manage and organize the images and media files.

Here is how you can upload images to your WordPress driven blog:

• Log into the account
• On the side menu on the left, click Media
• Select Add New
• Select the image from the directory and upload the image
• You will be given the image URL. Copy the image URL and use it in the code snippet of the image throughout the blog.

Image Hosting Websites

Due to the change in the terms of Photobucket, many users stopped using the website. They preferred to choose other options. The other options included:

• Imgur
• TinyPic
• Flickr
• Fotolog
• Pinterest
• Dropbox
• 500px
• Amazon
• Google Photos
• Imgbox
• ++++

Let’s explore some Free Image Hosting websites that are preferred by webmasters globally.

Dropbox

Dropbox is often used as an image and video hosting service. Well, actually it is a file hosting service which allows cloud based storage of all types of files, including images and videos. It is just a virtual box, where you can upload your images so you could be able to access it from anywhere.

Besides storing the images, Dropbox also allows the users to share the link of the images so others will be able to view and download the images as well.

500px

500px is a photography community website which hosts the images of the users, and also allows acts as a marketplace by facilitating connections between the users.

With a user base of about 12 million from all over the world, 500px is one of the best social network for people who are fond of photography. With a monthly subscription, you will also be able to sell your images on the website.

Flickr

Flickr is a top of the line image hosting website. However, the image sharing feature of Flickr is what made it more popular among users, as compared to its image hosting aspect. Users create and join groups on the web application, and sharing creative and innovative images can make anyone a star on this medium. Flickr gives the user the following privacy related options:

• Use Flickr simply as an image hosting service and keep all of your images private
• You can make your images visible only to some people that you select
• For maximum exposure, you can make your images public by making your account accessible by everybody over the internet.

Conclusion

TIMTOTDI – there’s more than one way to do it.  Although that’s a motto of Perl, it’s also very fitting when considering image hosting options.

Before continuing down the same path as yesterday, consider some alternative ways, and their advantages and broaden your horizons.  If you want a hosting advantage, consider KnownHost, your dependable, managed hosting provider. Buying your VPS hosting is easy with KnownHost.