Clever ways to host your images to save bandwidth

[soggyindo]

hey guys,
i've got a site which gets lots of hits, but is basically people looking through google images, draining a bit of bandwidth, and then moving on.

i'd like to keep the site, but was wondering if there is a smarter way of hosting my images, rather than uploading them to my own hosting account and paying for all of this each day...

eg. if i put them on flikr (or some other free hosting system), and then added (via url add) to my wordpress site?

(flikr also make you go to the site to see an image..."previewing" says "image currently unavailable"... forcing traffic to the actual site. that also would be cool!)

just wondering if any experts out there know if there is there a good, easy way to host images externally. but that an image search would still return my wordpress site in the results (rather than the flikr or wherever's location..?)

 

[gaucho1976]

you have several ways, even though I'm not sure exactly what do you mean, I guess you're looking for framebuster wordpress plugin. Otherwise, just redirect via htaccess your images folder based on referrer, so when a hit comes from images.google.com you rewrite http://www.yoursite.com/images to http://www.flicker.com/whatever. Of course you'll need each image to have the same name.

 

[soggyindo]

you have several ways, even though I'm not sure exactly what do you mean, I guess you're looking for framebuster wordpress plugin. Otherwise, just redirect via htaccess your images folder based on referrer, so when a hit comes from images.google.com you rewrite http://www.yoursite.com/images to http://www.flicker.com/whatever. Of course you'll need each image to have the same name.

cool, thanks - the frame buster looks like it might stop google "previewing" the whole image - rep added!

that's a fancy extra bit. just basically i'm after a way to externally host images...but still make google images choose/rank/find the image on my site (over the new 'home' location at flickr).

i'd thought if i was "duplicating" the images from flikr, it might rank the flikr location over mine..?

will the htaccess thing you specified enable me to do that? and could you explain it a little simpler for me (i haven't touched this sort of stuff before).

the way i read the above, someone looking "through" google images and clicking on them would still go to the flickr page?

:p

 

[unholygod]

hm, what i did, is made image hosting site (uploaded free script in to damain) to host pictures for all my other sites

and now people somehow found-out and started uploading their own pics, so i have quite busy image hosting site.

 

[soggyindo]

hm, what i did, is made image hosting site (uploaded free script in to damain) to host pictures for all my other sites

and now people somehow found-out and started uploading their own pics, so i have quite busy image hosting site.

nice idea!

but you're still paying for all your bandwidth yes? that's the bit i'm trying to avoid...

 

[weblord]

i think the image hosting is in the business of gaining backlinks as well as they are providing free hosting/bandwidth for hosting images.

what i suggest is create your own image hosting site as well to get all the backlinks.

 

[whitebark]

Why are you trying to do this? What can happen is you could have your remote image server serving up image files really slow/not at all while your main site loads without images - often breaking the layout/look of the site. Nothing drives visitors away faster than a page that doesn't load properly. Image hosting sites can be notorious for slow server speeds at times.

If you load the images from a remote server google will know the images are coming from there and won't index your images the same in their image search - otherwise your main site could lose traffic.

Since traffic = money, whatever you save you will lose by the loss of visitors. Even bottom end shared server hosting packages have enough bandwidth included to cover just about anyone's needs. If your website is so popular you should upgrade the server anyways to ensure fast loading speeds of not only the images but the entire site.

 

[soggyindo]

Since traffic = money, whatever you save you will lose by the loss of visitors. Even bottom end shared server hosting packages have enough bandwidth included to cover just about anyone's needs. If your website is so popular you should upgrade the server anyways to ensure fast loading speeds of not only the images but the entire site.

hey, thanks for this whitebark, this is exactly my gut feeling. make the images only as large as they need to be, and just pay for extra bandwidth.

i just thought before i did that i'd check if anyone had some super smart alternative, that used someone else's free hosting - but also gained the backlinks for themeselves. you never know with this crew...but here i guess not.

thanks everyone, and reps all round for your help. you've saved me plenty and removed my feeling of doubt.

:great:

whitebark, it seems i've repped you to the max - next time. cheers.

 

[unholygod]

nice idea!

but you're still paying for all your bandwidth yes? that's the bit i'm trying to avoid...

lol, yea, i have no idea how to monetise, they dont click on g-ads and are eating my space, i think I'll just remove/delete their pics when bandwith will start exceeding - bet they wont be happy :santa:

 

[Chronos]

I prefer host my own content than using third party solutions that takes your visitors out of your site and profit from your traffic.

If bandwidht theft and resources misuse are problems, implement .htaccess and redirection scripts to prevent such leakage.