First of all, thank you for everyone's support so far. Your feedback only makes me want to continue.
I'm going to answer some questions that were asked, I hope I can clarify:
Just one question, as time goes by, won't the cost of maintaining all the images become too expensive?
(even if your tool is only for the forum)
In an initial phase, because I don't know how well accepted the service will be, I'm using cloud services, such as support for website hosting, which, as it still has little space, means it doesn't have a high cost. Let's see how things evolve, and if it goes well, I'll try new solutions. Perhaps, I can appeal for donations, but at this stage I did not think it was right to do so.
How long do you plan to run this project? You know it would be heartbreaking for the images hosted on the site that are linked to great threads in the forum to disappear after about 4-5 years when the site stops operating.
No one can predict the future, but normally I don't like to let go of this type of project. So my plan is to keep it online as long as possible.
Worst case scenario, disable new uploads, and keep existing images. But I hope to make sure that never happens. It all depends on community support.
Great work, but one issue I have with this hosting... what happens if in a few years this website hosting stops working, all images will be gone forever or there is some backup archiving solution in this case?
So that will be the next step will be to better structure the backup system so that everything can be kept online. In this initial phase I am using cloud services to ensure the hosting of the images, and based on acceptance by the community, I will readjust to keep everything safe. As I said, the evolution of the project will depend on how the community accepts it. I want to grow at the pace of community acceptance, because that's the only way I'll be able to keep everything working in a viable way.
My suggestion is to add Delete button, if user decides to delete image himself for privacy or any other reasons.
When uploading, a link is generated that serves to delete the photos. If you save the link, you can do this later. But, in a way, this is what you want to avoid, so as not to generate a post without images. And if the user wants to have greater control over their photos, they can request an account.
- What will happen to the image database if something happens to you? Would you consider give access to another (trusted) user in the future perhaps?
- How are you planing dealing with the exponential hosting costs of such service? Depending on various factors (# users, # requests, image sizes) you'll probably be looking to a hefty price in the long term. Even if you do accept donations sadly I believe you won't be able to achieve a balance at the end of the month (thus paying out of your pocket which isn't feasible long term).;
- Shouldn't the website be accessible only to bitcointalk users? Like everything on the Internet, as soon as it gets more attention surely people will start to upload dozens of images (and probably some illegal as well). I know that this would be easy to circumvent - basically anyone would just create an account here just to get free image hosting - but perhaps this could also become a tool that would only be unlocked whenever a certain amount of merit & activity was reached?
The way I see the verification happen is very manual - A user would input his/her username on your registration form and then perhaps you could have a username registered for the service here (like talkimgverification) that would demand a message to be sent from that username in order to verify that it was the owner who tried to registered in the platform.; - How will you control NSFW/illegal pictures being submitted (because it is the Internet right?). By user reports? Won't you get in problems if there are many submissions/reports of this nature? (one more reason to restrict this tool to members of our community);
- I'm unaware of the user page, but having the possibility to create groups of pictures and a gallery view would be a nice addition in the future (no idea if it is an easy implementation to do...);
Just highlighting the points I haven't answered yet:
- If usage growth is large, I will certainly enlist the help of other users to help moderate and perhaps create a plan, in case something happens.
- There will be costs, no doubt. But I'm already used to dealing with image hosting site. And that's why I can find servers with minimally affordable costs to keep everything running. We'll see how things evolve.
- For now, I think the project is still in its infancy, I didn't want to create that level of limitation. But if I really see that this is necessary, I can create this kind of limitation.
- This may prove to be the biggest challenge. It's always tricky to have highly automatic systems, but I will gradually create automatic filters. But most work will be done manually. But there will always have to be human moderation, initially me and maybe I can invite other users to be moderators.
- If you want to have an account, you can request it.
For those who know, for example, the ImgBB service, I can say that it is very similar. Therefore, these are resources that can be implemented.
