ImageHost.org in 2009
It’s been a long while since my last post – to long. There are several reasons for this. One of them is that there were few issues to report: for the most part everything kept working reasonably well in November and December. Only in the past few weeks some performance issues started popping up again.
The current problem with performance mainly lies into finding out how to properly balance new uploads between the two servers used to serve the more than 3 million files that have been uploaded so far. Right now the server to which files are being uploaded to is hardcoded. I’ve got some ideas about how to have the scripts make the choice between servers more intelligently.
Unfortunately I don’t have the opportunity to make major changes to the scripts in the past few weeks. It’s not that I don’t have the time – I got lots actually, but I recently moved and my broadband connection is yet to be reconnected. This makes doing any kind of development frustrating for me.
The time I have now does allow me to think about the future of ImageHost.org. When I relaunched the site last year, I expanded the rules considerably and enabled everyone to upload any kind of file, effectively making the site a hybrid between an image host and a file host (like RapidShare/MegaUpload).
Most people don’t seem to pick up on this change however. The vast majority (95%) of files uploaded each day are the common web image formats JPG, PNG and GIF. When non-image files are uploaded, they tend to contain copyrighted material. And due to the nature of ZIP and RAR files, plus the ability to add passwords, it’s pretty hard to actually find out if files violate the Terms of Service unless someone reports them.
For this reason I’ve decided to go “back to the roots”. In the next major revision of the scripts (hopefully due in a few months), you will only be able to upload common web image formats. If you liked the ability to upload non-image files, rest assured the change won’t go into effect for some time and when it does won’t affect files already uploaded. But based on the statistics of what kind of files are uploaded, I don’t think many people will complain.
Last, I keep receiving requests for two features: the ability to delete the files you uploaded and some kind of registration system so that you can see which files you’ve uploaded from other PC or in case you lose the ImageHost.org “cookie” (which is required for the Gallery page feature). These features have been on my “to do” list for a while, but for the reasons I mentioned earlier I unfortunately can’t promise to implement them very soon.
Anyway, thanks for using ImageHost.org and a Happy New Year to you!
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January 23rd, 2009 at 17:14
It’s hard to believe that you won’t be able to upload any file any mory, but we’ll understand it!
ImagHost.org will still be great!
Have you got any fast, simple alternatives?
Thank you for your great service!
January 23rd, 2009 at 22:21
No you will still be able to upload “files”, except like every other image host out there you will be only be able to upload JPG, GIF and PNG image types (plus a few others maybe). As JPG, GIF and PNG files make up for 95% of all uploads I didn’t think anyone would really complain about such a change.
As for a good alternative file host… I don’t know. As I operate my own servers I can always upload a big file to one of my servers in a private location to share it with others. Plus my private email account at FastMail.fm (paid service) also comes with file sharing space. As for a free alternative, while I have never used it, http://drop.io/ looks interesting.
January 25th, 2009 at 18:43
NO GAMES….
January 26th, 2009 at 06:42
NO! Please don’t change Your Way “to ride to the hounds”!
- please stay resistant – keep the all-file-feature!
Thank You for this possibility!
kind regards
February 1st, 2009 at 06:12
I for one will mourn terribly the loss of easily hotlinked TXT files ): It’s a shame it makes sense; I’m sure my plaintext maps are something of a minority in uploaded non-image files.
February 3rd, 2009 at 00:21
I really like the non-standard file feature- I use it all the time for lots of things and encourage all of my friends to use it too. I’m going to be sad to see it go, but thank you for running this site anyway.
February 6th, 2009 at 19:11
Hey Jeff, maybe .TXT files will stay.
I’ve got to say, after finding ImageHost, I stopped uploading stuff to ImageShack for good.
Only images though I am aware you can upload other file types.
I just wanted to say good work on the site and on the management, you’re doing a terrific job
February 7th, 2009 at 05:56
Hey there, I don’t know if this is the right place to ask, but is there any reason why you don’t place google ads on the actual image link? (inside an html page) One would think that it’s a very reasonable thing to do, since the majority of your visitors are more likely to be checking an image than uploading one.
February 7th, 2009 at 18:09
@Joe:
If you mean placing ads on the page you get when you click on a thumbnail or text link, that’s already being done. The problem is that I can’t just put ads on just any uploaded image, otherwise it’s possible Google Ads are shown next to porn, and that would get my account terminated pretty fast. To prevent this from happening I manually moderate each image before ads are displayed (and delete the porn when I find it). This means that you don’t see any ads right away if you use thumbnails to link to images.
Another problem with placing ads on those kinds of pages is that the click-through rate is kind of abysmal, which means that a huge amount of hits do not translate into huge amount of $$$. But I suppose even the little bits help to pay the bills…
February 10th, 2009 at 08:02
Guys this site rocks I use only image Host for all my photos to display in my forum. Thanks for offering the great service, I read you may at some point introduce a registration system that would be very useful.
But from what I read you may also close down the site I hope that you won’t.
Cheers,
March 23rd, 2009 at 15:48
אני רוצה לעשות עיוותים!!