Use These Scripts To Create Your Own Image-Sharing Site!
Say you want to be the next great stock photography website. Or the next big image-based social network. You’ll need an image hosting script that will help you and your users upload and manage all those images. Of course, if you wanted to be the next Photobox (which, as a sidebar, could really use some competition. That website, along with Getty Images, are way too expensive. You can get a free prints discount with Photobox at least.
Image hosting scripts can be a very difficult thing to pull off correctly. Sure, you can have an idea to start your own stock photography website, or a social-sharing image site like Imgur or Flickr. But once you create an image uploader where anyone can add content to your website, you have the potential for problems:
- Spam Bots – These terrible creatures just love to tinker with the machinery of any website and add tons of useless or malicious content onto your website. It can either be images laced with dangerous code that could destroy your server, or these bots could just upload countless amounts of useless images just to weigh down your server. Either way, you need a script that can defend itself against them.
- Server Load – Images take up much more space than text, so having your users upload images can bear down on your server. You need to make sure that you have a hosting plan than can handle that kind of server load. You may also want to create a multi-server network to help balance that load.
- Security – With lots of customer accounts the chances of someone trying to hack in is a big concern for you. There should be a limit to login attempts, captcha, etc. in place to help with such a server load.
- Image Organization – Having a gallery system to help your users organize their photos is absolutely essential. People love adding their photos, but if there is no way to organize them, they won’t be regular customers for very long.
- Space-Saving Protocols – You need to a have a protocol to encode all your users’ images, otherwise you will end up with massive hosting/bandwidth costs. Not to mention the fact that your website/social network will run slowly because it needs to load all those images. Even Facebook encodes all your images in a space-saving way.
Here Are The Best Image Hosting Scripts Out There Right Now:
These are some image hosting scripts out there to help you get started. Some are free and open source (which means that you may need to do some tinkering with code yourself), or there are premium options that you can install on your website and then forget about it. By the way, if you need website hosting do yourself a favour and check out www.couponlynx.org for some great coupons.
1. Imgshot
Imgshot is top of our list. It’s a premium script that costs $20. You can purchase it at CodeCanyon.
Best Feature?
A complete PayPal based payment system to make it easy for your users to give you money. Your users also have tons of options for uploading and managing their photo galleries. They have an adult/non-adult mode in case your website is…not exactly family appropriate. And the security/anti-spam measures are top of the line.
Worst Feature?
Virtually no social network capabilities. People can create accounts for uploading and managing galleries. But if they want to share those galleries with other users? Not happening. This script works like Imgur, where you upload photos and then share them with others on sites like Reddit.
Go With ImgShot If:
Go with them if you’re trying to create the next Tinypic or Imgur. The social network integrations are definitely the weakest feature of this script.
2. Chevereto
Chevereto came a very, very close second to ImgShot. Chevereto is amazing and clearly the superior Hosting Script if you’re looking to create a social-sharing based website. Chevereto is also premium, but comes with lifetime access to support and upgrades.
Best Feature:
Social share-ability. Or the gorgeous interface your users get to use. Or the lifetime support and upgrades to make your website more “hands-free” when it comes to day to day operations.
Chevereto also has ad-space built-in to the interface for your to make your photo-sharing site profitable.
There are also different levels for users. They can create a fully-private Dropbox-like storage locker for themselves on the cloud, or they can create a fully public image gallery like Flickr.
Worst Feature:
It’s pricey: plans range from $48 to $90. There is also no “adult” option, so if you want to create that kind of site you are out of luck.
Go With Chevereto if:
Go with Chevereto if you want to create a Flickr-type website for your business. It’s also ideal if you plan on advertising being the main revenue creator for your website (ImgShot is better at membership-type monetization websites).
There you have it! Frankly everything else we checked out was garbage and didn’t work for us. So go with one of these two if you want to create a great user-based image hosting site. Toodles!