Anybody know what happened to Photopoint? Have they gone belly up?

Bill Martino

Bill Martino

Joined
Mar 5, 1999
Messages
34,096
As most know Zing recently closed their doors. I had 542 photos stored on their site and it took me three weeks to get all of them transferred over to Ofoto.

I also had 500+ pix stored on Photopoint. About a month or two back Photopoint said they were no longer free and now members would have to pay to store pix there. I paid. Today their site went offline and any photo link to them is not working -- which shuts down all the photos on my shopping site. And, Smoothsale where I have my shopping site is not doing so well.

Do I know how to pick winners or what???!!!
 
Sorry your having so much trouble with them!:(

I don't have an answer, but I thought I'd reply if only to comiserate:) It will BTT the topic till one more knowledgeble than I stops by...

Rob
 
I sent email to Photopoint and got back a canned response saying they were not accepting photo submissions at this time.

If you want a job done right do it yourself. I should have my own site for storing pix.
 
I do not think that Geocities allow an image to be linked from their site to another site like BF. You can only list the URL address.
 
try a ftp server, its fast and uploads fast too. the only dreawback is that u must have some computer know how
 
Fire Horse said,
I do not think that Geocities allow an image to be linked from their site to another site like BF. You can only list the URL address.
Click to expand...

<p align="justify">I believe if you pay Geocities the $4.95 you are no longer considered a free site so you are no longer hampered by many of the restrictions the free site offers, but I could be wrong.</p>
 
I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get some space of my own -- but where. Whoever I get it from will probably go belly up in 3 months.
 
Its my understanding that Interland is the best for hosting services but you do pay for it. They have outstanding customer service per someone that had to call them in the middle of the night for tech support. They would be my first choice for hosting a commercial site.

http://interland.net/
 
I can't help with the details of hosting space but I do know from talking to friends in the computer/ internet business that sites that had "free" services supported by advertising are going down in droves. The economy is down, spending is down and there just wasn't a return on the money they spent to attract people to their sites. MSNBC has lost affiliates recently, Alta Vista and other services are allowing pop up ads for tacky secret web cams, Sparks is talking paid memberships to BF, money is tight all over. Bill, does your ISP not offer hosting or is the price too high? I know that you operate on a shoe string but maybe there is someone on the fourum who can help with advice on getting your own site set up with ordering and everything included instead of relying on third parties like smoothsale.
 
Uncle Bill, when Photopoint comes back online (keep those fingers crossed), please begin copying/downloading all your unique, one of a kind images to your harddrive. That way if Photopoint does go down for the count you will not have lost so much.

Since you have DSL, the phone Co. probably provides you with a small (10MB) amount of storage space on their servers as part of the package deal you are paying for with the DSL. While this may not be enough for all your images, it would be more than adequate for ALL those SmoothSale images. What I'm saying is, you might already have reliable hosting for the SmoothSale images at no extra cost. If an FTP client is required to transfer files to/from their servers, no problem. I can provide you with WS_FTP PRO 6.7 at no cost. Using FTP is actually easier than using your web browser. If you have ANY difficulty accessing or transferring files to the phone CO. servers, I will gladly do that for you. Sir with all that you give to the forum/forumites it would be my pleasure to help :) ...Come to think of it, even if you don't use this 'free' phone Co. provided storage space as your main hosting site for the SmoothSale images, you may want to consider having them there as a backup. That way if your primary image hosting site goes down, you can just change the links to the backup and businees goes on as usual for HI.

Lastly, with an eye toward inexpensive, long term image storage please consider the following... Please inquire with the phone Co. as to the cost of an 'static IP address' (estimate $10/mos). You already have an old, spare PC, right? Proccessing requests from the internet requires very little CPU power, so if your spare PC has a 200-300MHZ CPU and a couple of GigaBytes of harddrive -you've got an image server (again no extra cost). You will require one additional piece of hardware to allow you to use both PCs online at the same time. Its called a 'router' (one with NAT capabilities), CompUSA has some that are good enough for what you'll be doing at less than $100. The static IP address will allow you to link to your 'image server' on the internet. The router will channel incoming data to either your PC or 'image server' as appropriate. To be honest, with this setup you could host the HI forum from the Cantina itself, if it ever came to that. Please feel free to E-mail me with any questions :)
 
Uncle Bill doesnt your ISP offer webspace? I know mine gives me 10 megabites free and options to upgrade my website to have more space tools, etc... It may be the safer way to go, unless your ISP happens to go belly up as well.
 
I've posted the same question over in the community forum. I don't know what's going on, but I hope they are not counting on my renewal. Even if they have gone out of business this is no way to treat your customers. The least they can do is put up a simple public service announcement.

N2S
 
<p align="justify">Uncle Bill, I pay $14.95 a month for my website and I've it had for about 2 years. They give me 10 e-mail addresses and 100mb of space. The initial set-up fee is $14.95, you can find out more information about this service at <a href="http://website.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!Website Services</a>.</p>
 
I know my ISP provides 5 megs of space. I made a request for it this morning.

But, since I've never done such before, I don't know how to set up a website to accept photos etc, so I can post them here.

Anyone know of any free cookie cutter software to make such a process painless?

Also, Uncle Bill, if you paid for the Photopoint (as I did) with a credit card, perhaps you should contact your credit card company and request a credit for non-delivery of goods purchased. They should probably cover you.

Blues
 
Blues,

If you using the web site to store photos/link photos, you can just copy/ftp the image file (jpg or gif) into your site/site folder. You can link to that image by the URL address.

If you are using the web site as a photo gallery, you will need to create web pages using by hand coding html or using an editor that does the html coding which I use (Dreamweaver & Golive). Photopoint & other similar companies who ever they are have done all the work by setting up the photo gallery template.

I hope that I was able to answer some of your questions. Good luck.
 
For those of you afraid of html dont be its a super easy code to use. Its mainly just meta tags and what not. My isp actually provides a free editor in which you have the option to use their premade templates kinda like photopoint or actually write out the html code via an editor. They also have a free ftp as well as tutorials on how to do things. I got most of my website done in about one night starting with no knowledge of html at all.
 
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