Ok so this is a very basic tutorial on how to use a web host to store your photos plus a few extras.
It is possibly a bit vague but I am happy to answer any questions if you need extra help.
First of all you need to sign up and purchase some web hosting off a reputable but inexpensive provider. There are 1000's of them out there. I personally use godaddy because they are over and above when it comes to helping out, they are reasonably cheap and very reliable. And lets face it, they are one of the largest. But having said that I am certain there are many more just as good.
Here is godaddys offerings for example. They always have the $3.99 per month deal. I know it says $10.99 when you renew but they always offer the deal if you renew early or for a multitude of reasons to keep you using their servers. I buy 3 years at a time so I dont have to mess around with renewing and offers etc.
My Ozisuzu forums however use a total different package, but for this purpose a basic shared server is more than adequate.
So assuming you have done that, you are logged in, you now need to find your 'cpanel' and go to it.
For the sake of this tutorial I am going to do everything through the cpanel. There are other ways (faster and more of a drag and drop style such as you would on your pc) by using an FTP client, but we will get to that later.
Cpanel is very easy to use and easy to explain so we will stick to that to start with. And also, nearly every server provider you can buy hosting off uses cpanel so this tutorial will work for 98% of hosting providers.
This is what your cpanel looks like when you are logged into it.
What we want to go to here is the 'File Manager'. Click on it........
And this is what you will see. Mine has all sorts of folders etc in it. Yours wont have any where near as many folders or files because you havent put anything on your server. I have blurred out some sensitive info but this is the server that contains my Isuzu forums. Myswags would look very similar but of course it has the myswag forums not ozisuzu
On the top row you see +files and +folders. Click on the +folders and lets make a new folder and call it 'Photos'. You will notice that the folder is being put in the 'public html' folder. This is your root directory or in my case where my domain name points to..........
www.ozisuzu.com.au. So anything I put in there is always prefixed with that domain name.
So now we have made the folder called 'Photos' lets click on it so we are inside it and then click on the 'upload' text up the top line. This will pop up an upload box where you simply navigate to a folder on your computers hard drive to find the photo you want to upload. Or any file for that matter. It may be a pdf file for instance.
But select your photo and upload it. You will then see the photo in your Photos folder.
I uploaded a photo called myswagtut1.jpeg
So now if we go to this address.......
www.ozisuzu.com.au/Photos/myswagtut1.jpeg you will see your photo.
Simple isnt it. All you need to do then is wrap that address in the
[img]........[/img] tags and the pic will show on the forum and no one like photobucket can start charging you extra to link it!!
So that is the slow long way around putting a photo on your own server
But it shows the basic idea of owning your own server space, so now lets look at some other ways to achieve the same thing only faster and/or more organised.
Go back to your 'cpanel' and scroll down you will see 'web applications'. You want to now click on view more........
These are all the many web based applications that you can install on your server to do pretty much anything. Anything from forums such as this, to online shops, to photo organising software, to blogs etc etc ....just go there and have a look.
In fact install something and have a play with it!! Its easy to uninstall later and it does no harm to your server.
Have a look at them all, there are heaps of free and fantastic web based programs that millions of people and business' use to run their web sites. Including myself and myswag, we both use simple machines forums to run our forums.
But for the sake of this tutorial lets navigate down to one of the photos and files apps and click on 'gallery' for instance.
When you click on it, it will take you to the install page. Simply click on install this application and follow the very basic prompts.
Always write down any usernames or passwords you use and any other names it may ask you to put in such as the database name...assuming it asks you to provide a name and doesnt do it automatically (i think it gives you options but either way write it all down if you plan on using one of these apps)
So once it is installed it gives you the web address to go to, to use it. Generally all applications will have an 'admin' area, where you do all the settings such as colours, names, themes etc etc and then they have a front of house area where you see all the things you have changed in the admin area.
So in the case of myswag for instance, the administrators are seeing a whole different thing to us users that are using the front of house area...if that makes sense.
But anyway, have a play with the software provided. I tried several of them and to be honest didnt like any of them because they were too hard to use for what I wanted them for. Which is basically just organizing my photos into albums and then giving me a link I can put into forums to display those photos.
So now that we know the basics, we can give it some time for any questions to come in that I havent covered then we can look at using an FTP client to make things much faster and easier and then to installing a program such as Lychee that will definitely automate and make the whole process (photobucket style system) very simple and easy to use.
I hope this helps.
Let me know if you want me to keep proceeding to the FTP client tutorial and/or the Lychee installation tutorial??
