I am Gay

Stop Using Free Image Hosts For Fark Contests

QuickDraw was winning a contest earlier... when her makeshift image space/host over at Google Pages crapped out on her. Sorry about that, QD. The sad fact is that Google Pages should never be used as an image host.

Not that Imageshack, Photobucket, and other free image hosts are reliable, either. If your image uses too much bandwidth within a certain (yet unknown) amount of time it will be deleted. In fact, they'll probably disappear after a while anyway to free up space or due to site maintenance. Even if you have a 'pro-account' there is no guarantee that you'll avoid problems (like a system-wide outage). These photoshops are your legacy people! Don't you want your image to stick around for years to come? At the very least... the entire life cycle of one contest?

There is a solution and it's a simple one. If you can afford to pay $5(US) dollars a month to subscribe to TotalFark, then you can afford to pay as little as $7(US) a month for your own web hosting and domain name. Think about it, quickdraw. You could have Quickdraw.us, Quickdraw.net, or even Quickdraw.com. You could have your own email address. Even make novelty ones for your friends... Ratchet@quickdraw.net. If you have the time, you could even put up a semi-professional website for your freelance work. Nothing screams 'out-of-work freelancer' like having a site on google pages, tripod or geocities.

So. Web hosting companies. Two come to mind. Midphase.com and MediaTemple.com. Both offer at least a 1TB of bandwidth transfer a month. Considering that an image can use up to 3 GB of bandwidth in a popular contest, a terrabyte should be plenty.

Now, a lot of people will tell you that Dreamhost is the way to go, but don't be fooled. They have more system-wide network problems then they would lead you to believe when you sign up. Last summer, they had a huge meltdown and some sites were down for nearly a week. There is nothing like having your image disappear in the middle of a contest... especially when you are paying for that hosting. In fact, they just had a system-wide outage earlier this week. The short answer is, stay away from Dreamhost.

You'll notice that I use ImageShack for all my image hosting needs. Just remember that these free image hosts were made for blogs and Myspace pages... and not for Fark Contests.

So, if you take the contests seriously enough to complain about Red Xs in the middle of a contest, then you need to do get your own web hosting. Pure and simple.