Even though Blogger has undergone a number of improvements in the last few months, there are still some shortcomings. The most obvious being a lack of image hosting.

(8-2-05: see update at the bottom of this post)

If you're new to blogging and you aren't quite ready to plunk down the cash to register a domain and pay for server space (or your geek skills aren't quite that advanced yet), what can you do?

After a quick Googling, I came across ImageShack. They'll host your images for free.

Catches? Didn't see any. They appear to make their money via Google ads on their site pages. There's also a PayPal donation button.

Limits: Max single image size is 1024kb - more than adequate for your normal blogging needs. No limit to the number of files you can upload. Images stay on their server unless they are inactive for 365 consecutive days.

There's no software to download, and you don't even have to register to use it if you don't want to.

Personally, I would recommend registering, because it's free, and only registered users can delete their uploaded files. It also makes it easier to manage and keep track of your images if you have an account.

I've only toyed with it a little, myself, but it seems to work ok, and they have some positive reviews.

Although I can't make any ironclad guarantees, this does seem like a useful tool.

UPDATED 3-6-05: Sissy of And What Next... has the illustrated guide of how to remove the black bar (the one with the size properties of the full size image) from the bottom of your thumbnails.

UPDATE 5-24-05: [If you've found this post useful enough to blog about, send a trackback or e-mail the permalink to me at harvolson-at-gmail.com and I'll add you to my Bad Example Groupies blogroll. See this post for details]

UPDATE 8-1-05: Sissy of And What Next... found free video hosting at Zippy Videos.

UPDATE 8-2-05: Blogger now offers 300 MB of free image hosting for Blogspot sites, as I explain here.

Posted by: Harvey at 09:45 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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