Hey everyone, I run the best image host in the world, IMGZ, and wrote this article. I can answer questions and comment on our journey. I can only describe it in two words:
Bad news: in order for this to pass the threshold and be considered a real Valley-class SaaS, it's required to eventually institute a pricing plan of $4–9/mo for its introductory paid tier and force you to choose between using either that or sticking to the freerider option. You want pricing centered around resource use? What even is that?
The "Money" page gave me a few chuckles. I love how the last tier overflows the card, and in my case, caused horizontal scrolling. I do not expect a fix for that, because "Still no support".
And a quote from elsewhere “I am very happy to report that http://IMGZ.ORG, the best image serving host, has had the mythical "nine fives" availability ever since its launch.”
Dude, stop writing crap software (i remember that thing you did once where you pressed a button and shortly after had a kebab in your mouth) and write a novel instead. I think you would be a great short story SF author. No, scrub that, trashy romantic stories - the people love it and you’ve got the style.
My trashy romantic story would quickly devolve into "he kissed her passionately, like another man she had known that also kissed very passionately, like this man".
This is amazing :) "At IMGZ, we're passionate about two things: Serving images, and speaking about ourself in the plural so it doesn't look like it's the one-man sideproject it is, and we don't even really care about serving images that much. "
Quick question StavrosK: I see on this page here https://imgz.org/i9hxfgRu/ that you have a counter "Viewed 403 times". How are you able to track that behind a CDN? Won't this count how many times the CDN (instead of individual users) have hit the server? Thanks!
Such is the lifecycle of an image host. People want simple, free image hosts. So, the demand is always there. And every new simple, free image host eventually has to make money, so it becomes an ad-ridden mess. Imgur was once super simple and became the de-facto image host for Reddit overnight. It's competition back then was Imagebucket and the like. Now, it IS Imagebucket. And so we have a new challenger. (Well, Reddit has it's own image hosting - sometimes! It's limited to some clients and some subreddits, at the discretion of the mods I believe.)
(I actually got fed up that I couldn't easily upload an image to Imgur from the command line and hotlink it, so I made IMGZ, then I figured others might want to use it and made a user system; I don't really mean it as a contender, though I'd be very happy if it got lots of satisfied users)
One thing I enjoy about these things is that I completely forget what I wrote, and I go back months later and find some bits funny. I just laughed at the pricing page saying:
"Use of the Services for serving video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content is prohibited, unless purchased separately as part of a Paid Service or expressly allowed under our Supplemental Terms for a specific Service. "
I created a trial account and went on the account page. Smiled on reading this under the section "Delete your account": You think I'm going to try to dissuade you? I don't even want you here!. Hahaha
> Instead, we stored the images in a small Postgres database (yes, the actual image data itself), with a small Django app handling the business logic. Sexy.
The Correspondence Monkey is on a strict diet until he types out the complete works of Shakespeare. He's done with Hamlet but is having some problems with Othello.
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https://gitlab.com/stavros/imgz/-/blob/master/main/models.py...
Tho I have to admit that running magick outside of a sandbox is a gutsy move.
EDIT: Try now? I've changed it to a JPG and will never use new technology again.
And the FAQ link for the lazy: https://imgz.org/help/faq/
And the money link too: https://imgz.org/money/
And a quote from elsewhere “I am very happy to report that http://IMGZ.ORG, the best image serving host, has had the mythical "nine fives" availability ever since its launch.”
You made my day Stavros.
Does it look familiar? It's because stealing other people's stuff and putting text on them is the only thing I'm good at.
Dude, stop writing crap software (i remember that thing you did once where you pressed a button and shortly after had a kebab in your mouth) and write a novel instead. I think you would be a great short story SF author. No, scrub that, trashy romantic stories - the people love it and you’ve got the style.
My trashy romantic story would quickly devolve into "he kissed her passionately, like another man she had known that also kissed very passionately, like this man".
I thought it was a real deal when watching the thumbnail and when I zoom in...
It IS the real deal!
I’m loving the consistency of it all.
CDNs provide access logs.
The architecture diagram alone is just a gem!
Kudos. :)
I couldn't stop laughing, I miss stuff like this. Stavros - you are a god among mortal men, thank you for this :)
Beautiful. You made me laugh.
NO ONE CAN OWN IMGZ
IT IS MINE
"Use of the Services for serving video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content is prohibited, unless purchased separately as part of a Paid Service or expressly allowed under our Supplemental Terms for a specific Service. "
Funny stuff. Pragmatic, okay... sexy.