Attention Image Magican Users & Those who can Help

[sara]

Naturally the Imagemagican people put this notice at the bottom of the control panel page. Hmmph!

I really can't blame them too much, after all it was a free service with no ads, so alll you expect was crap or that it would eventually turn into crap. Also the other image hosting site I used to recommend, www.ranchoweb.com/ no longer is a free service. Village Photos has lousy bandwidth. Boomspeed doesn't allow remote loading save for auctions, and they freeze accounts. Neopets will eventually ban people from making extra guilds to host images. I can still use the Tripod/Angelfire bypass loophole, but if too many people do that they'll figure out a way to stop it, the bandwiidth ain't great, and it makes me guilty anyway. I'm sick ot it all, and I think I will finally pay for my hosting. In the long run it's the only way to avoid this crap, I've got the money, and I don't have the energy I used to have to finagle with free services.

The Image Magician price for the cheapest package isn't that bad (85 cents a month for one megabyte) but if I'm forking over any money, I'm willing to put in a few dollars a month for a good service.

I'm considering paying Tripod/Angelfire, going with Cyberpixels (Oddhatter.net's host) or Rahul which I alreay pay every month for my internet service.

However I need some new option for those who can't pay and want to host images for the NTAG FAQ, so if anyone has any ideas, I've got an open ear.

[LDF]

Seeing that, I will have the people who request art from me to put it on there OWN WEBSITE.

Bye-bye pictures. Must reload all of them to a different place... Maybe I can get my dad to help me with that site I wanted...

[sara]

OK, for me this is a showdown between Tripod and Cyberpixels

www.cyberpixels.com/plans.php

This is actually cheaper than Tripod if I buy it for the whole year. The thing is, will I be using this all year, and what if six months after I sign up I want to switch to something else? Doubtlessly why they make the yearly signup cheaper than the monthly signup, but it's sitll a dilemma. Also, I would have to get a domain name from somewhere else and pay more.

Tripod offers enough benefits which I need, but it's slightly more expensive than the Cyperpixels yearly, and I can't have the multiple subdomains and FTPs and whatnots. Also when people see "Tripod" they automatically assume that it's some page with ads. I could again register a domain name to mask it wihout spending that much, but that's additional bucks as well. However I can be sure Tripod will remain a while and not go out of buisness, though they may reduce the benefits.

However I really don't need a domain name, and if cyberpixels is still usable without an extremely long URL without a domain, I may very well choose it. If there is some other decent web host which is inexpensive and does not offer domains, I may also take that. Ideaa?

[peachifruit]

I saw that! They didn't even send an e-mail to tell us that this whole 'Two-Week Trial' thing was going on!

Well, I certainly won't be forking over any money just to have someone host my pictures for me, no sir-ee. I understand why they would start charging, but I do believe ImageMagician could have handled that just a leeetle bit better. You know, more professionally?

[sara]

peachifruit said:

I saw that! They didn't even send an e-mail to tell us that this whole 'Two-Week Trial' thing was going on!

Well, I certainly won't be forking over any money just to have someone host my pictures for me, no sir-ee. I understand why they would start charging, but I do believe ImageMagician could have handled that just a leeetle bit better. You know, more professionally?

I think the Imagemagician people will get their just deserts when the trial time is up - people complaining that their accounts weren't working to the support staff, and when the staff tell them about the trial thing, people will get irritated at them claiming it wasn't clear enough. Probably only the desparate will sign up for the paid plan, the others will just find another service.

Also I'm not going to just pay for image hosting services, but for a whole web hosting shbang. I am sick of alll the free junk. I already pay for my internet service provider so it's not too big a step to pay for web hosting either.

[Linnen Malfoy]

www.100best-free-web-space.com

A helpful littel website for you.
Also, if any of you have AOL (not AIM), you can have 12mb on each screename.
It's how I get all my petpage images and such up. ^_^

[calvinseviltwin]

I'm going to try and talk my dad into letting me have my own site. It seems cyberpixels is the best bet.

[sara]

Thanks Linnen! That looks like a great website. I'm a little cooler on the topic of paid webhosting now, but I'm still considering it.

As for the AOL Hometown image hosting (and yes, AIM works, just use you AIM screename), Linnen, I seem to recall it being stating in their terms and considtions that it is not allowed to remote load any materials (i.e. images), and if anyone using Hometown to host images on neopets gets their Hometown account frozen, don't be surprised. As I aaid, free image hosting ain't a nice world.

[oddhatter]

You need a domain name for a Cyberpixels account, although not necessarily with them.

Besides, it's around $10 a year(9.95, or something like it) for a domain name at godaddy.com , where I registered both oddhatter.net and sheepofdoom.com.

Of course, you can also register your domain name through cyberpixels, but godaddy is cheaper.

I pay monthly for cyberpixels, mainly because I can't afford to pay it for an entire year.

But if it is something you need, they have very good tech support.

(note: sara, I'm willing to host any images on the ntag subdomain, as long as they are related directly to the guild. so if it's for the faqand not just personal images - go right ahead)

[spectrum]

I have no business whatsoever posting here, but I couldn't care less. This has been a pointless announcement brought to you by Spectrum.

[sara]

oddhatter said:

You need a domain name for a Cyberpixels account, although not necessarily with them.

Besides, it's around $10 a year(9.95, or something like it) for a domain name at godaddy.com , where I registered both oddhatter.net and sheepofdoom.com.

Of course, you can also register your domain name through cyberpixels, but godaddy is cheaper.

I pay monthly for cyberpixels, mainly because I can't afford to pay it for an entire year.

But if it is something you need, they have very good tech support.

(note: sara, I'm willing to host any images on the ntag subdomain, as long as they are related directly to the guild. so if it's for the faqand not just personal images - go right ahead)

I know, but this is personal stuff. Now that I take things into perspective, I'm not so sure I want to be spending $120 (half for INS, half for webspace) bucks (half for INS, half for webspace) a year for internet services - I'm already paying $60. but I think it's time I get some paid reliable service to fall back on.

From what I've seen, Ranchoweb was much better about suspending their free accounts than Imagemagician (not so sneaky and cute) and they offer a pretty cheap rate, and from what I've seen even the images on their free accounts used to load pretty fast. I might get their service, and use the free Angelfire and Tripod services like I always have for webpages, ads and all (after all, I don't have anything really important website other that NTAG stuff which Oddhatter already courteously hosts)).

[daisy]

yeah, i saw that. i talked my mom into letting me pay the $10 a year so i can keep my images. then when my image space gets used up i switch to my geekshelf account.

[spectrum]

Can you guess what I'm doing?

[sara]

I just discovered this email in my inbox-

Dear sara

You are being sent this letter because at some point you signed up for an
ImageMagician account. This letter is regarding the two-week trial membership
which was introduced to all accounts on January 19th, 2003. If you are not
interested in continuing a membership at ImageMagician, then please ignore this
email. You will NOT receive another email from ImageMagician in the future.


ImageMagician has grown tremendously over the past year, and it has been our
pleasure to provide free image hosting to all of our members. On January 19th,
2003, ImageMagician.com introduced a two-week trial system which is effective on
all accounts. The goal of the two-week trial system is to allow you to decide
if ImageMagician fulfills your hosting needs. If you should decide to stay with
ImageMagician, you can become a supporting member for an entire year for only
$9.99. That is less than 85 cents a month! You can learn about all the
available membership packages by visiting
www.imagemagician.com/hosting.html - We accept credit cards through
PayPal.com, as well as money orders and personal checks.

At the end of the two-week trial, your account will become disabled. This means
that you will not be able to manage your images as normal, and you will no
longer be able to link directly to images in your account. If you later decide
to become a supporting ImageMagician member, your account will become active
again almost immediately, and your images will be restored.

Due to conerns from a number of members about not having enough warning, we have
extended the cut-off date of the two-week trial from February 3rd to Febraury
8th. This should give everyone plenty of time to determine if they would like
to upgrade or not. Thank you for your time, and we hope you decide to become a
member at ImageMagician!

Seems like they got complaints from people like Peachifruit and decided to compensate. Of course I noticed a few typos in the above message but I make typos too.

Hmmm, I wonder, if I upgrade will I have the 2.9 Megabytes I got when I first signed up, or the 1.1 Meg which they claim to give. If the latter, it's kind of a downgrade

What I think I'll do now is upgrade my imagemagician account, and if I only get 1 megabyte, I'll get another paid account at Ranchoweb. Between the two, I think I can manage Also, when Imagemagician starts disabling accounts, the servers will be running faster, although they work fine right now.

[spectrum]

Keeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkhhhhhh!!!!!!!