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Image Hosting at Halie.com

bkervaski

Hellloooooooo!
Testing
*** HALIE.COM IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE TO NEW USERS, YOU CAN NOW UPLOAD IMAGES DIRECTLY ***

All,

I see a number of people worried about hard to use or retired image hosting services... We built halie.com, it's really easy to use and fast, free. It stays out of your way, no advertising. The platform is built on AWS+EFS+RDS and although it was built as an experiment we have no plans to take it down.

If you store an image permanently you have to put in a valid email and from time to time you get a link you have to click to keep the images from being deleted, after the initial email, depending how how many images you upload, you should only get a reminder about twice a year.

It was built specifically for hosting images so perfect for forums and you get the ability to manipulate the image with hardly any effort, for example if the image is halie.com/abc123.png you can change the link to something like halie.com/scale/50/abc123.png and it will scale it down to 50% or whatever you need.

Hope you guys find it useful!

ogF.jpg

ogF.jpg

ogF.jpg
 
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Test

Scale 20 from 12 megapixel...I might need to reduce before hosting...
oTD.jpg

Scale 15
oT7.jpg

Someday soon...
oTV.jpg
 
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very cool

Great work, Bill!

Now, just slurp in all the images from VAF before the other image hosting companies go out of business. It would be great to have a single place with all VAF images, and when you click on them, it takes you back to the thread.
 
oYy.jpg



Hopefully, my initial attempt is successful. I chose a pic of the plane on the ramp at KTVL, South Tahoe Airport, last weekend.
 
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Now, just slurp in all the images from VAF before the other image hosting companies go out of business. It would be great to have a single place with all VAF images, and when you click on them, it takes you back to the thread.

I could build a scraper to get all the images, but no way to update all the URLs in the VAF database.

If the site owner really wanted to do this I could get it done. Not trying to pickup another project, but would do it.

I see that VAF isn't using AWS for hosting, some company called fpweb.net. I'd be willing to help the owner move VAF up to AWS and take advantage of the redundancy, performance, and savings which could lead to the ability to host it's own images. Based on a few threads I've read, doesn't look like there would be much desire to do so. But that would be a better idea than trying to scape all the images off and store them somewhere. Ultimately, to be a true information archive, VAF will need to store it's own images.
 
Just remember, that VAF doesn't own the majority of the images that are shared here. Scraping them and re-hosting could be a viewed as a stealing someones property. I'm not sure how big an issue it would be with the folks here, but it might be something that the VAF site owner doesn't want to get legally involved in.

Some people are pretty picky about their images.
 
Just remember, that VAF doesn't own the majority of the images that are shared here. Scraping them and re-hosting could be a viewed as a stealing someones property. I'm not sure how big an issue it would be with the folks here, but it might be something that the VAF site owner doesn't want to get legally involved in.

Very good point. Another reason for VAF to look for ways to host it's own images [ed. No thank you! and again here is why dr]. Keep that knowledge maintained.
 
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Leadville, CO

Question:can you go back and look at all the photos placed on Halie.com, or can you not review the photos on Halie.com?

I landed at the highest elevation airport in North America, Leadville, CO. You get a certificate and everything. Here is a pic of the airport.....using Halie.com

oYt.jpg
 
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OK, I typed in the link as stated in the browser and it reduced the pic but it doesn't take me to your site. could you put in step by step instructions for us dummies. Also, why isn't the photo showing up like everybody else's?

You need to put the link in the forum's IMG tags so it gets displayed as an image and not a link .. use the little icon of two mountains with a sun in the editor, that will put the IMG tags in for you.
 
New try

Try Try again-
oYZ.jpg


YEA, finally got it. Great website!!!!!! Much easier to use than all of the others.
 
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Without advertising banners and pop ups, who pays for all of this?

That was my question. And i'd be curious to know what it costs to set up and run a site like this.

Doug, is there no way you could set up a search function that would return all posts by a user that have images in them? So someone could at least go back and find broken images they've posted, and move them somewhere else?
 
Without advertising banners and pop ups, who pays for all of this?

That was my question. And i'd be curious to know what it costs to set up and run a site like this.

We built it for ourselves because all of these photo sharing sites are hit and miss over time.

It's build on AWS+EFS+RDS (read: fast, scalable, redundant)

It's not a commercial website .. no ulterior motives .. I don't need another business.

There are only about 250,000 images hosted right now, if it ever got to the point where we needed to supplement the costs I would probably just ask for donations, or limit the number of images. Really, at the scales we build solutions, it would have to be many millions of images before it would be any kind of issue.

It's more or less self-maintaining. It will either store images for 10 days or if you put in your email forever. The service will automatically email you occasionally to verify you are still there and if you don't click the link to "check in" after X verification attempts it will just delete your images. This is all based on an algorithm that includes hits per image, number of images hosted, size of images, etc. The emails aren't bothersome, you could store hundreds and only get a few emails a year.

Right now it sites quietly among other solutions we've build, we host so much data it's not even a blip on the radar. It will be there as long as we need somewhere to host our images.

It does some clever things too .. one day .. if I feel like taking a break from building my RV .. I may write up a help doc ;)
 
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Probably one of the biggest downsides to most Forums, like vBulletin and PHPBB is link rot with photos.

We have some really great threads that I have came across in my searches from past builders, but the photos in those posts have all rotted and are no longer available. Photobucket, and a few others that were used in the past are still around, but they have changed the way they link to their photos, so you end up with the photos disappearing from a thread.

Storing the images in the actual bulletin board itself is doable, but can get very expensive after the site has been running for so many years. Photos don't compress very well, so I totally understand why most BB owners don't use the option.

Imgur.com is about the only solution I have found where an image will truly stay around forever, for free. In the years I have been using them, I haven't had any link rot, and they made a commitment to prevent link rot, because their primary user base spawned from Reddit. The problem with Imgur is that most people don't realize you can do scaling with it pretty easily since they don't publicize it very well.

For example,
This is my original image on Imgur:
http://i.imgur.com/WgXJI9L.jpg

I can have Imgur scale this image by appending one of the following to the end of the image:

s = Small Square (90×90)
b = Big Square (160×160)
t = Small Thumbnail (160×160)
m = Medium Thumbnail (320×320)
l = Large Thumbnail (640×640)
h = Huge Thumbnail (1024×1024)

In my example above, I can do something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/WgXJI9Lm.jpg <--- Notice I added "m" to the end of the random url before the .jpg. That will give me a medium thumbnail of 320x320 like this when I embed:
WgXJI9Lm.jpg


Or I could just change that "m" to an "l" to get a larger one:
WgXJI9Ll.jpg


Or use any of the above scaling options. The problem is, most folks don't realize Imgur can do this.
 
I used halie.com and it was easy to use.

But there's no provision for loading multiple images at one time. The only choices are to get a ten-day temporary hosting or to submit your email with each image for a permanent hosting. With multiple images, that gets old in a hurry.

Also, I saw no way to go in after that and remove an image.

Dave
RV-3B, skinning the fuselage
 
Problem with iPotato photos

I swear I was right-side-up when I took these. They all come out inverted. "I don't even fly acro, officer..."

oi9.jpg


oi9.jpg
 
Agree

except for one-at-a-time uploads and the inverted image problem I have with my iPhone photos. Promising, but I'm clearly not doing something right...
 
I think the one-at-a-time uploads will be a good thing for hailie.com. It forces the person uploading to pick only the photos they *need* to upload, rather than just dumping their entire memory stick. That'll keep bandwidth requirements down, and image quality up.
 
It supports multi-uploads and a bunch of other interesting stuff, just haven't had the need or time to do the updates or do a solid doc page.
 
THANKS!! For the hosting site!!

Bill,
Thanks SO MUCH for putting up this hosting site. I detest photobucket, detest the adds, and to cap it, photobucket pulled my last photo from VAF, and replaced it with a notice that because I was using third party hosting, I had to pay a subscription fee to them. They did not send me a notice, except for the link they replaced my photo with.

I used Halie in my post today. Simple and oh so easy to use. As a recently former software developer, I love, love, love it when things just work! As it should be...

Best Regards,
Sandy Thoma
 
I get the main page > "HALIE, FAST+FREE+FOREVER, EMAIL INPUT, CLICK OR DRAG".

But that's all. Can't find anything else to the site. No idea how to use it?

I might talk slow but I ain't stupid, just need a helping hand.
 
Is this a joke and I'm just slow to get it? Because all I see are various sized grey camera in a circle/slash icons.

Anyway, the best way to ensure your photos are always available is to host them yourselves. And you can use Paint or whatever app to scale them to any size you want. On the flip side, people/photos go away, sometimes by choice. A very popular build log was pulled by its owner a few years back, to much outcry. But it was his choice and it should be respected, so I don't think it would be appropriate to just rehost photos from VAF without the poster's request.
 
photos did disappear

I too only see a grey camera icon crossed out. The pictures were there.
There are a lot of options when it comes to hosting photos. They all have a risk of disappearing.
The best option is to host them yourself on a platform you pay for.
 
I am seeing only gray camera logos as well. Why is that? Something I need to fix?
Thanks.......
 
Is this a joke and I'm just slow to get it?

Nope, not a joke, our "personal hosting site", works great for us!

If you guys can't get it to work for you there are plenty of other sites out there, unfortunately we don't provide any kind of support for this as its not a commercial venture. I offered it up for people if they wanted to use it as an alternative to what was going on with photobucket.

No warranty expressed or implied, use at your own risk, your mileage may vary, etc, etc.

Prepping a makeshift paint booth for the cabin ...

ogJ.jpg
ogp.jpg
 
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Looks like expired images to me .. but like I said .. if it doesn't work for you, plenty of sites out there .. works great for those of us that started it for our own personal use .. extended it to you guys with no guarantees
 
I have used it several times and it worked well for my needs. I hope it stays available and Thanks for the effort.
 
trying to make the complicated easy

The photo uploading on this forum is a problem that seems to recur on a daily basis by someone. If the forum host site does not provide this capability "built in" as it were, there are only two choices, and neither of them are free, regardless of how they are advertised. The "free" guys are harvesting information, the "charge" guys are harvesting money. Our frequent and benevolent poster has offered his in house photo hosting site for real free. Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and learn to use it.

Now, if you are from the school that knows nothing stays free for long (part of the no free lunch reactionary group) I suggest you set up a phantom web site and host your own photos and charge your buddies to use it :) I use iPage and I have a web site for a little cottage industry business I run, but you do not need to have the web site, all you need is the location in the "cloud" that they provide. There are lots of others that do exactly the same thing, like Google, Go Daddy, Oracle, Microsoft, etc, etc.

At the moment i Page will set up your cloud location for $1.99 a month and pay your domain name. It will cost you about $12.00 to renew the domain name annually. Your cloud location (phantom web site) will cost you about $60.00 annually after the promotional period. I realize some feel the web should be free but it never was and never will be. All the providers offer blogs as well which make great family, friend, associate, etc communication vehicles if you are so inclined.

Here is some information I posted previously on this subject, including easy photo editing so your pictures don't make everybody use the horizontal scroll bar to read the entire page string, assuming you ever post any :)

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=151175&highlight=vernon+smith&page=5

One last suggestion, you can ask the forum to insert a "link" or you can ask it to insert an image. If you command a link, you get what you see above, if you ask it to insert an image, you get a picture, hopefully sized to less than 950 horizontal pixels.
 
test

here is my try. I did it once before, now I cant get it......I got it now...I just grabbed this photo off the net. This photo will expire in 10 days.

ohR.jpg
 
*image snipped*

Did this work?

Can anybody else see this image?

Yes, this worked. So, I guess the others were, as the OP suggested, expired images. But why would they be expired? No matter, nothing is forever anyway. I have even discovered that some of my images hosted on my own site disappeared (thanks web-hosting company for the overzealous support that removed them). The KitLog site has also been reliable but I am sure someday it will disappear; I just had a commercial collections database site inform me that my database of vintage comics is going away. The Internet is jello, trying to nail it to the wall is futile.
 
But why would they be expired?

Images will automatically expire after 10 days if no valid email address is provided.

I can only see about 1/2 of the images in this thread that have been attempted to be displayed.

These images are expired.
 
Portrait mode?

I have been able to get photos to display in portrait by adding halie.com/scale/25/portrait/xxx.jpg in the browser, but in the VAF photo link, it ignores both scale and portrait and just shows 100% landscape. Any tips?
 
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Turns out I can put any text at that node and the browser honors the iPhone original orientation when viewed by itself. Unfortunately, if any text is at that node in the VAF image link, it ignores all nodes except the image. :confused:
 
To anyone who has figured out the procedure:

I do keep trying to attach an image to a post.

here is the file I dragged to the "Clck or Drag" box >> 'Pg 54-02, Section 54.pdf'.

Does HALIE.COM require something other than a .pdf image (jpeg, jpg, tif, . . .)

Do I end the file name on HALIE with .png regardless of the dropped file name extension? or, do I add '.png' after the file name extension as in 'abcd.pdf.png' ?

Does the attaching file name need the "https://" at the beginning before 'halie.com/' ?

Here is the last file name I tried for atttaching to a post= halie.com/Pg 54-02, Section 54.png
for the saved to HALIE bucket that was a .pdf file.
 
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PDFs aren't be supported .. just images .. it's not file sharing but image hosting optimized for forum posting
 
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