Free Image Hosting Sites

Many of the free image hosting sites are free only if you stay under a certain size and many restrict the number of people that can access your files per day. Some even go as far as hosting your files on an extremely slow system to encourge you to buy the professional package.

Those of you that have a web host and are not sure how to share your images are going to love this next part; those of you that don’t have a web host should check out something like 1and1.com’s $3.99 per month plan. It puts the free image hosting sites to shame and best of all, you get as many websites as you like, free domain name, FTP accounts and more!

Regardless of the plan you have, here is how to do it for free.

You’ll create a directory on your website called downloads. Use your FTP program to accomplish this; FileZilla is a free FTP program and works great for transferring you images to your hosting site.

Then create a text file on your computer, call it imagehosting.txt; use notepad for this, not word.

Inside that file, add this line:
Options +Indexes

Save the file and get out of notepad.

Now, with your FTP software, copy that file over to your downloads directory you created above.

Using your FTP software, rename imagehosting.txt (the one your just copied over to the server) to .htaccess [note, make sure to include the period in front]

That is it – Now, whatever you copy files over (using your ftp program), your friends will have access to those files by simply visiting [name of your website/downloads/]

Your friends will see a listing of all the files you placed in that directory.

No monthly fees, no hassle and unlimited file sizes and types (zips, jpg’s, tiffs, mp3’s, etc)

I created this tip because a friend called and asked how he could host images rather than send emails with massive image attachments.

Note: Many of those free image hosting sites will claim no fees, but when you reach a size or the image is viewed too many times, then you get billed or account is put on hold for being past due! So be careful and read the terms closely.