RideForum.NET

I thought with the ride season gearing up, a discussion about web photo cache sites would be useful. I know I could use some help figuring out which site will meet my needs to post photos from rides.
I noticed when I was on the OK dualsport site, they had their "Let's Ride" equivalent broke down into 1)upcoming rides and 2)ride reports. Was kind of a cool way to go directly to the ride reports and photos from recent rides without scrolling through a long forum thread.

Short version: Go setup a http://www.smugmug.com account.

LONG version: First, some background on the subject....

The reason I don't simply add the ability to upload photos is because, first of all, it's not simple. This forum use the popular, free phpBB software. You'd think by now somebody would have developed a slick photo gallery module. Well, there are some solutions, but I've looked at them, and in my opinion they stink. I'd rather have no solution than a half-baked solution that reflects poorly on the quality of the system.

The second biggest reason is that unlimited photo uploading for even a relatively small community like ours can easily consume Gigabytes of disk space in no time. The most common reply is "disk space is cheap". It is not if you are renting a server with hardware that you are not allowed to upgrade without upgrading your hosting plan to a new server. I pay about $90/mo for my dedicated server. That gives me a decent server with only a 60GB disk. To upgrade to a larger server with bigger disks will run me closer to $200/mo.

Another factor involved is that so many people already use one of the many decent photo hosting systems on the Internet. My personal favorite is http://www.smugmug.com. If a person already likes to create their photo galleries at smugmug, they don't want to also upload photos at RideForum.net. They'd rather just link people to their smugmug gallery.

Smugmug charges a small fee, but offers unlimited space. I'd have to charge a fee to provide Gigabytes of disk space for hosting member's photos.

Here is the good news, though. Your photos do not need to be hosted by RideForum.net to be displayed in the forums. As long as your photo is available online somewhere, you can display the photo in our forum using the IMG tag.

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Regarding the separate forums--one for preparing for a ride and one for reporting on the ride...

That sounds organized, and I understand that some ride discussions can be several pages long, so the ride report (and photos) would be buried on page 4 or something, but I like the single thread. To me, they belong together---the beginning and the end. The alpha and omega. Many times the preparation discussion includes links to route files, maps, etc. When looking at the photos and reading the report, if you get excited about the route, just scroll back in the discussion and get the route file.

That said, I do have a vision for a custom ride report tool that would be a unique feature of RideForum.NET. This tool would be optimized for photo-journal style reporting. (Photos would be optional, though.) The user would be able to easily paste links to their photos hosted elsewhere OR upload photos directly to RideForum.NET. The system would automatically resize and optimize the photos for the web.

In addition, there would be a place to link to the route file(s) so everything you need to really see what a ride is about is in one organized place.

Another custom tool I keep talking about (but not doing) is the route library tool. This would be integrated with the ride report tool. So if you were in the route tool viewing a route, you could see links to all the ride reports based on that route.

When you code all day long for a living, it's hard to get motivated about writing code in the evenings and weekends.

Most everybody that has an ISP (Internet Service Provider ... the folks that connect your home to the internet) has disk space available to them as part of what they already pay.

Using this disk space is not always straighforward.

Microsoft FrontPage is one web-authoring tool that I find easy to use.

Another way to upload is to FTP your picture file(s), GPS route, MS Word document, etc to your webspace and then use that link in your post on RideForum. You can FTP using MS Internet Explorer.

For instance ...

I have a picture titled IMGP0456.JPG on my local machine (hard drive) that I want you to see in my post.

First, find out from your ISP how you go about uploading files to your webspace. Find out how much webspace you get (MB, GB, etc) too. Some ISPs limit monthly bandwidth (how many bytes of info sent out ... how many times that picture is accessed), some do not. I don't think Everest in KC does.

Open up MS Internet Explorer.

Type in the address bar: ftp://your.address.com [This will be provided to you by your ISP. Sometimes it is your email address ... ftp://joemama@roadrunner.com ... and your email password is your ftp password.]

Now copy [cntrl-C] the file, and paste [cntrl-V] it into the ftp window that is open.

The address to link to the file will be different than the ftp address. Again, your ISP will have this info.

To post that image in a forum, I type
" [ IMG ] http : // home.everestkc.net/malsin/IMGP0456.JPG [ / img]", but without the quotes or the spaces.

So it shows up like this:


So I guess to summarize, contact your ISP, or look in the book they gave you, or look at their online help pages to find out how to use the webspace you may already be paying for.

No, this isn't as elegant as Photobucket or Smugmug, but if it works and doesn't cost you any more ...

Thanks for the tips and instructions, Safiri!

He points out something most people either have forgotten or never realized. Most ISP's include "web space" for you to create a personal website. I'm going to say some things now that are redundant to what Safiri said, but hopefully between the 2 of us, we'll help more people catch on to this techno mumbo-jumbo!

Like Safiri says, your first step will be determining what your ISP provides. You can start by looking on their website or just call them and ask. No doubt, they will explain that you need to use "FTP" to upload and download files. Don't let this scare you! FTP simply means "File Transfer Protocol" and there are many free FTP programs available. But if you use Windows XP, you don't need anything extra!

You will be given an FTP address, a username, and a password. The address may look something like: ftp.kc.ks.timewarner.com

Most people are familiar with opening folders and dragging & dropping files between them. Once you have your FTP address, username, and password, you can create a "network folder" on your Windows XP computer to make it so you can simply drag & drop files to your web space as simply as copying files to your local folders.

From My Computer, find "Map Network Drive" in the Tools menu. a window will pop up asking for a drive letter and a folder, and at the bottom is a link reading "Sign up for online storage or connect to a network server." click that link, select "Choose another network location" from the Add Network Place Wizard, and follow the wizard's prompts to add the location and login information. There will be a checkbox to save the password. If it is safe for you to do so, it will make it so you don't have to enter the ftp password every time you use the network folder.

You'll have your own online file storage for whenever you want to link to a route file, photo, or any other file in the forums. Like Safiri said, you already pay for this storage space.

troy wrote: you can create a "network folder" on your Windows XP computer to make it so you can simply drag & drop files to your web space as simply as copying files to your local folders.

From My Computer, find "Map Network Drive" in the Tools menu. a window will pop up asking for a drive letter and a folder, and at the bottom is a link reading "Sign up for online storage or connect to a network server." click that link, select "Choose another network location" from the Add Network Place Wizard, and follow the wizard's prompts

Awesome. I learn something new every day.

Wow, slushy headache! Let me clarify my inquiry.... the smugmug, flickr, etc. angle is what I was asking about. Sure hope we can keep the cost and maintenance at a minimum for our hallowed webmaster. I'll have to experiment with the ftp, I use it at work all the time.
Now, of the various internet-photo caching services. What sites does everyone use. What's the pros and cons in your experiences?

I use Yahoo Photos because my internet provider SBCglobal is connected with Yahoo. It has real nice features and I have lots of room.

I don't use any of them personally, but I visit them when people post links. 2 things stand out the most to me -- allowed max photo size and site speed. From what I've seen, smugmug beats Yahoo in both areas.

Do your research, Google, all that. There are lots of options. Smugmug, Yahoo, Flickr, Webshots, on and on.

One of these days Im just going to take that bike home with me Mike and give it a gooooood washing.

T

Hayden wrote: One of these days Im just going to take that bike home with me Mike and give it a gooooood washing.

T

But the different colors of dirt remind me of where I have ridden ... red for Moab, dirt from Arkansas, clay from Troy's Atchison route, dust from grey from Colorado, ...

I have discovered what I think is the best online photo album system currently available. I'm calling this best because not only is the online album clean, fast, and high quality with excellent features such as a slideshow viewer, but the offline component is the slickest photo organizer tool I've ever seen and makes uploading photo albums as easy as one click.

Both the offline and online components are FREE applications from Google. Man, I love Google.

First download and install Picasa. This is a tool for managing all your photos--very powerful and almost scary fast. I'm not sure how it can do what it does so fast.
http://picasa.google.com/

Second, sign up for your free Picasa Web Albums account. This is the online component. When in Picasa, you can click "Web Album" to upload your a photo album from your local computer to the Internet to share with your friends and family.
http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_us/web ... icasa.html

Check out my Picasa Web Albums!
http://picasaweb.google.com/wolf.troy


Even without the Online Web Albums part, Picasa has a nice feature that can create a web-ready photo album (a set of files with thumbs and an index page) that you can upload to your own web space.

I've been wanting to try it. The computer magazines really talk it up.

Troy: Just before I called today to see about uploading photos to the web I went to Google first and looked into Picasa. I meant to ask you if you knew anything about it. Google is the bomb! I'm downloading Picasa now.

All: One thing to consider(like Mike stated) is storage space. Cox is my ISP provider(I know the "provider" part is redundant) With Cox, I only get 10mb of "free" storage space per e-mail account. With Google's Picasa, you currently get just over 1gb of storage for free.

I will probably figure it out when I start using Picasa but...will I still need to "Map a Network Drive" and so forth in Windows to smoothe the uploading process?

KC wrote:I will probably figure it out when I start using Picasa but...will I still need to "Map a Network Drive" and so forth in Windows to smoothe the uploading process?

Nope. In true Google fashion, they take all the technical hurdles out of the process.

Once you start using Picasa Web Albums (or any other online photo system), you can then embed your photos directly in your posts here on the forum. You do this by right-clicking your photo--wherever it is on the web--and choose 'Copy image location'. Then you can click the 'Img' button in the post tool, then paste in your image location, then click the '*Img' button in the post tool to close the Img tag.

Below is a url to my Picasa Web Album on Google. Do you think it would work to have a listing of url's to everyones album?


http://picasaweb.google.com/rideklr

BigO wrote:Do you think it would work to have a listing of url's to everyones album?

Nice photos, Larry. Good Picasa name, too (rideklr)

Having a way for members to post a link to their photo album system is a good idea. For now, why not simply use the "Website" feature of your profile. Click "Profile" in the menu at top. Then, whenever you want to see if a member has any photo albums, you can just click their name which opens their profile where you'll see their web album link.

I could hack the profile system to include a separate field called "Photo Gallery URL".

I have yet to encounter a problem with my Photo Bucket account...and it's free!

http://photobucket.com

maxplay wrote:I have yet to encounter a problem with my Photo Bucket account...and it's free!

http://photobucket.com

There are lots of good systems. Photobucket is a nice one. I know Yahoo Photos is popular and free, but I don't like the relatively small photo size limits and their systems are usually slow when I visit. Smugmug is excellent, but you do pay a little---but their system is worth it.

Google software (including their Picasa Web Albums), like Apple software, has a knack for clean, simple, fast, easy. I like those qualities in my software interfaces.

I have a Google account and use them for:

• Custom home page with stocks, weather, mail, news, favorite links, etc.

• GMail email

• Google Documents including word-processing and Spreadsheets

• Google Calendar for keeping my schedule organized

• Picasa Web Albums in concert with the Picasa desktop app for managing photos. Picasa manages photos and has excellent editing features on the desktop, then you can publish to a web gallery with one click.

• Google Maps

• Google Earth

• Oh, and I use Google for search, too.

I guess I kinda like Google.