webhosting for a photographic website

I've tackled doing my website myself, I'm 75% done putting

together the individual pages, and then I'll tackle linking everything

up, but now that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm now

confronted with a bewildering glut of webhosting services.

 

A couple of years ago I copied a recommendation for a webhosting

service that seemed to be specifically for photographers off of one of

these forums, but the this page is now hiding from me.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on webhosting for a photographic website

in terms of security, the smallest amount of downtime, and an outfit

that's going to be around for a while, at a resonable cost? I'm not

looking for the cheapest, but some of these webhosting services seem

overly expensive, my initial audit on reviews for webhosting services

doesn't give up much in terms of webhosting from a photographic slant.

If you are writing your webpages in standard html, I don't see why you need anything special from a webhosting service to support your photographic website. The only technical aspects that will differ from mostly text webpages is that you will have larger files for your images, and probably more bandwidth will be needed to serve the images. So when you compare hosting services and prices, check how much diskspace and bandwidth they provide.

Thanks Michael, I'm net to this aspect of it, so I don't know what I need, the construction and linking together haven't been a problem(yet) to me, what I'd like to do is cut through the BS and find a good solid reasonable priced webhosting service that's going to be around.

 

It may be that there's no difference in these webhosting services in terms whether your website is a photographic website as opposed to something else, but I was thing in terms of security, for instance, there's an outfit out there that charges $50.00 a month which supposedly protects/makes it very difficult to copy your images, so thinking about that, my questions are how much security, what security works, what's a reasonable price for that security?

Don't waste your money on services that claim they can protect your photos from being copied. They are full of B.S. There's no way anyone can guarantee you that you're phtos will be safe from web thieves. And an extra $50 a month is a very high price to pay.

 

The best way to protect your photos is to register them with the copyright office and put a copyright notice on them.

 

If you're not doing e-commerce, any web host will be adequate for your purposes.

 

I use ADDR.com for my sites and they are wonderful. They offer three plans from $9.95 a month to $14.95 a month. They even offer e-commerce and merchant accounts.

 

GoDaddy.com is another good host that also offers domain registration services and e-commerce. They're hosting plans are cheap too.

I've started here......http://www.websitemaven.com/webhostingratings.html?wcw=google..

there's an outfit that will either sell you Copysafe, or provides it for a fee included in its webhosting services.

 

These reviews include top -rated(according to them) webhosting services for a very little a month up to $50 a month for the outfit that protects your images with Copysafe, or they'll sell you Copysafe for the street price of $500.00, I wouldn't mind paying the for Copysafe if it does what they say it does, I don't think I'm gonna pay $600.00 a year for a website, but after thing about this, I'd like to make it very difficult for somebody to lift my images if I can do it in a cost effective way.

Dean.............is Copysafe a waste of money?

I use simonweb.com and they seem to work fine for me. They have good tech support and have helped with any problem I had. I'm only into basic html and I don't know anything about security. Your security issues are up to you and may be handled by programming that you put on your site (scrambling html, cgi scripts etc). If you find some site that claims security I'd be interested in trying to "swipe" your photos (not with a bad intent, just a test).<p><a href="http://www.simonweb.com/"> Simon Web Hosting</a></p>

These are the folks I've checked out.......http://www.artistscope.com/secure_image/pro/...........they sell Copysafe, and I'd be interested if anybody can swipe photos from files protected by them, go for it, I'm not into wishful thinking, so I'll be satisfied with the results one way or the other.

Are your trying to sell prints, or just display your images?

 

If you provide an image for display in browers, then it can be stolen by a screen copy -- I don't know any way around this. The simplest, effective anti-theft strategy is to provide your images only in sizes that are large enough that viewers can appreciate them on the screen, but without enough pixels to make good prints. You can also add a copyright notice on the image. Images that are too small or have annoyingly large copyright notices might be counter-productive by turning off viewers.

 

Generally you don't want to provide very large images anyway because they will take too long to download for those with slow connections.

 

It's probably best to accept that a few will steal small versions of your images. Is it worth $500 to you to make this more difficult?

 

By studying the server access logs (if the webhosting service provides these), I think that you can find people who are directly linking to your images. I'm not sure what the current legal situation re in what circumstances this is considered legally fair use.

<em>"... I'd be interested if anybody can swipe photos from files protected by them..."</em><p>

-------------------------<p>

Try it and see. Usually, the <em>File/Save As</em> command will get everything for you.

I believe they have a section on their website where they offer anyone to test out their files, were you able to copy them?

 

If I can make it extremely difficult for just anybody but techno-geeks to swipe my images, and I find that it's possible............then yes......it is worth $500.00, but that's the question I want answer for myself.

 

Has anyone gone to their site and readily copied their files, if so, so be it, but please let me know the results. I will eventually market some of these images, I will be copywriting them, and based on some more research in combination with what I learn here, I'll decide on a strategy.

I'll put in another good word for godaddy.com. They're not doing my hosting, but their customer service was excellent when I was registering a domain. And their prices are tough to beat.

 

On the issue of preventing people from stealing your images, you need to consider whether that theft is really going to cost you anything. It's one thing if a company steals a high-res images and uses it in a nationwide ad campaign--that would represent a significant loss of income. On the other hand, if it's some petty pilferer copying your image as a base for some Photoshop creation to submit to photo.net--well, it's annoying, but it doesn't really cost you anything. The simple fact is that, if you have images posted on the web, people will be able to copy them (no matter what scheme you use to prevent it). You need to weigh the benefits you get from having those images online against the likely damage you'll suffer from their theft. Spending $600 a year just to keep other web surfers from snagging your shots for non-commercial uses doesn't make much sense to me (especially since it won't really stop them).

I've gone to the Artiscope website and tried to open up their online demo, but can't find the plug-in to get it to open up, can somebody better at this than me go to their online demo to see just how easy it is to lift their files, and let me know what happens?

Mike............if somebody uses one of my images for an bigtime ad, I don't know if that's all that bad, the exposure that I would get from that, might be enough compensation for not getting paid, as I've said, I'm not paying $600.00 a year to keep up a website.

 

I would spend the money for the program if it in fact makes it more difficult for just anybody to swipe the files, but I would ask again for some specifics from somebody who's willing to test 'right click' and the other ways of copying their so-called protected files to see what happens.

 

I'm having trouble onto Artiscopes online demo where they evidently have 'protected' files, if it's useless Bullshit, fine, but I'd appreciate somebody actually testing their files so I can see for myself.

I've been using 1and1 hosting... they offer pretty good packages from time to time, and

customer service has been top notch when i've hit any snags (user error of course).

Ones I use and recommend:

<ul><li><a href="http://www.webaxxs.net">Web Axxs</a>, <a href="http://www.olm.net">OLM</a>

<li><a href="http://www.fatcow.com">Fat Cow</a>

<li>And amazingly enough, <a href="http://www.godaddy.com">GoDaddy</a>

</ul>

Jonathan -

 

I'm not familiar with Copysafe, so I cannot say if it's worth it or not. $500 seems a little expensive to me though.

 

It was not clear from their web site exactly how they protect your images. It seems to be some sort of encryption at the server level, which means if someone tries to download your photos, all they will get is gibberish. In theory this sounds great, but there are ways around this too.

 

I would not worry so much about people stealing your images. For one thing, you're not Ansel Adams (and I don't say this to be mean), so why would someone want to steal your images anyway? If they do, chances are they will only ise them on their personal web site and not try to make any money off of them. If someone uses one for commercial purposes, your best defense is the courts.

 

I've found that most of the people who steal images from my web site without permission use them for their personal web sites and blogs and not for commercial purposes. They do not try to pass them off as their own and they leave the copyright notice intact, so I don't bother complaining about it.

 

The ones that do try to use them for commercial purposes get a strongly worded letter. I'll e-mail the webmaster of the site and an executive in the company if necessary. I've resolved all of the sticky situations this way.

<p>The Secure Image / Copysafe products appear to use Javascript to display encrypted images, and to refuse right click / save requests. This prevents the easiest way to download an image to one's own harddrive, but doesn't prevent screen capture. It doesn't seem worth the money to me. The online demo doesn't seem to work, which doesn't generate confidence that the product works reliably....</p>

 

<p>Your first website should be simple. The more technology that goes into webpages, the worse they tend to be. Just keep your images to a size that they aren't suitable for quality prints.</p>

 

<p>Paul Butzi has some suggestions at <a href="http://www.butzi.net/articles/website.htm">http://www.butzi.net/articles/website.htm</a> and <a href="http://www.butzi.net/articles/website2.htm">http://www.butzi.net/articles/website2.htm</a>.</p>

'I would not worry so much about people stealing your images. For one thing, you're not Ansel Adams (and I don't say this to be mean), so why would someone want to steal your images anyway?'.........Being a portrait photographer, I could care less about being Ansel Adams, your estimate of my skills or lack thereof, is a non-issue with me, it doens't make any difference whether I'm gifted, mediocre, or clueless, I need some info.

 

I'm working pretty hard on this website, I've put quite a bit of time into it, and I want some specifics info about how copysafe holds up against what they say you can't do.

Thanks Michael for the specifics, that's what I needed to know, and I will check out Paul Butzi's suggestions.....thanks again.

I've taken Paul Schiligers advice which I never forgot, so it's going to be ultra simple, I don't know enough to make it complex.

all you have to is hit the print screen button and its copied into the copy/paste buffer ...its a basic windows function thats been since it was first released ..a sort of low level dos screen grab.

My website is hosted on <a href="http://www.pair.com/">http://www.pair.com/</a>. I know other people who also host there. I have not heard any problems so far.

Try lunarpages.com for inexpensive web hosting. It's about $114 per year. Don't expect security for your images. I'd suggest you overprint a copywright stamp on the bottom of each image. Of course, it can be cropped out, but it sends the message.

Copysafe uses java, not javascript, to "encrypt" the images. A javascript solution is almost useless, especially those that attempt to disable the rightclick. As I, and many others, don't allow their browsers to run java, I have not tried the demo. Any "solution" of this type, i.e. java, activeX, etc., is going to put people off, which restricts who is going to view your images. Besides, the more you try and stop people, the more they will try.

 

Steve