Hello,
I'm looking to install SMF as the forum to my macro photography learning site, which, if the forum and community takes off, will inevitably result in people posting lots of pictures. Which means large file sizes and lots of image bytes. I don't want to break the bank hosting all sorts of images - can anyone give me any recommendations about how to go about this sensibly? Inline external images?
Thank you for your time,
-Johan
Compression and a file size limit would probably be your best local solution. Deleting old attachments is also a pretty good idea. I suppose that people linking to places would too, but might not be ideal since your site's speed (Depending on how you have it set up) and viewing the files would be dependent on the linked sites speed and availability.
Hosting space is expensive. You can go with an oversold host with "unlimited" space or go into very a expensive dedicated server for the guaranteed space.
IMO, as you're starting, you can just go with a regular shared host (check your Hosts board for good recommendations) and try to educate your members to use external image host sites. Everyone uses tumblr or similar stuff, right? ;)
If people want to keep posted images private, then you need to consider hosting the files yourself. If that's the case, well... When that time comes you can consider more expensive alternatives ;)
If the images can be public or watermarked then just ask them to make a Pinterest account to categorize and host the images then they can be linked to.
It will save a lot of bandwith for you and Pinterest is geared for images.
Thanks folks, appreciated