They say a picture is worth a thousand words. It can help illustrate a point you’re trying to make, how you felt at a particular moment or provide something to look at while you’re giving a presentation. I mainly use images to break up the writing on my posts. Using images means that I’m taking up space on the server to use them on my blog. That space can fill up quickly when you have a limited amount of space on a server too.
But there is a way around this! You can use Flickr to easily embed your own images on your site without taking up a ton of space on my account. Flickr is a ‘freemium’ web service where you can upload up to 1TB of images for free. You can organize the photos into albums and even edit the photos.
I stumbled across this solution when I was quickly reaching my storage quota for my website during ds106. I needed a way to upload all the images I created and didn’t have enough room on my website. So I thought I would show you all how simple it is to embed the images in posts and pages.
Uploading Images:
Before you can put the images on your website, you’ll need to upload them to Flickr. From the Flickr homepage, click the cloud icon in the top right corner.
You can click ‘Choose Photos and Videos to Upload’ or click and drag the images directly onto the screen to upload the images.
Once the images render, you can change the name, add them to albums, and give the item’s tags to organize them. This is totally your preference. When you’re ready, click ‘Upload’ in the top right corner. You’ll confirm the upload as well.
Embedding the Images
Once you have the images on Flickr. Click the photo you’d like to put on your website. Then click the down arrow icon. Click ‘View all sizes.’
This will bring up a new screen where you can toggle between image sizes. Select the image size you’d like to embed, then right click and click ‘Copy Image Address.’
This will give us a direct link to the image, rather than the Flickr album/photostream. Navigate to the WordPress post/page you’re working on. Within the visual editor, paste the link to the image.
Flickr will automatically change the URL into an image. You can manipulate it like you would if it was uploaded directly to the site.
I’d be wary of using flickr as part of any publishing system…. I’m figuring it’ll persist, unloved and unmaintained, and then one day a bean counter will have it twilighted, sunsetted, shutdown… See also, Alan on http://cogdogblog.com/2018/02/webs-bite-the-dust/ just the other day…
I agree with the danger of becoming reliant on any free online service, even Google, which routinely shuts down (Notebook, Picassa, Reader…) or drastically changes (Sites, Calendar…) services without input or recourse.
Even accepting this risk, though, there’s another downside: every embedded image has to be downloaded from Flickr in addition to the download of the main site from its server (and any ads or additional overhead that those downloads bring with them). Despite faster and faster browsers, actual Web use is slowing down as sites increasingly become aggregates of various services instead of being self-contained.
Most people’s sites and blogs are simple and wouldn’t require anything more than pretty ordinary HTML and some images that could readily be stored on the same server, which would make them faster, more responsive and more future-proof.
Thank you Meredith for your reply. Although coming from a primary / secondary perspective, I enjoyed Kathleen Morris’ breakdown of the options. The problem is the focus on PESOS, rather than POSSE. I vaguely remember reading about Jim Groom discussing storing your images on Amazon. Never really gone there, but at least then you are storing them.