The Frame Room

There are a number of organisations who will do some of the hard work, and provide a hosted photo gallery for you. They provide a method of squirting your photos up to them, usually via a web page, and often other facilities such as E-mail addresses.

However, any Web hosting company can display your photo gallery, so I’ve also included a number of links to convential hosts that don't specialise. It is very definitely worth shopping around to get the deal that suits you, and please read the small print before signing up for any of these services, especially with regard to your rights to images - it is quite possible to sign away your exclusive rights to photos, particularly when using public or semi-public albums. Note that some of the hosting packages, especially the free and budget ones, do not provide the specialist facilities like Perl and PHP that some of the gallery software requires. Your ISP will probably also offer some Web space with your connection package, though you may have to put up with a unmemorable generic domain name, rather than something of your choice.

Photo blogs are websites that allow you to publish photos on a regular basis, in date order. Similar to a web log (or blog), but for images rather than words. They usually don't have features like photo printing, but are richer in other areas such as sharing.

Gallery and photo blog Hosting Specialists

All Dog Photos - A nicely presented niche gallery that registered users can use to display their dog photos. A number of the pictures are very good indeed, well worth a look.

Dotphoto - Mainly a photo printing service, but offers facilities for sharing photos (and videos) online.

Flickr - A well-featured photo sharing site. Easy uploads by a number of methods, including email, which is ideal for cameraphone users. Well suited for blogging, and a reasonably sophisticated privacy system (public/friends/family), and public and private groups can be created. Built in mail and commenting system as well as RSS and Atom feeds. There is also a photo organiser (“Organizr”). For programmers there is the Flickr API, which allows access into the innards of Flickr from programs and websites. Basic accounts are free, with higher capacity accounts available at a price. Example Flickr site.

Fotki - Photo hosting for web sites, blogs, auctions and emails photo. Printing and a number of other facilities such as traffic monitoring are available. No limit to how many images you can host, no limit to image size, and no need to register

Fotolog - Classic photo blog. Free, though contributions are encouraged. In February 2009 it was holding 610,302,517 images.

Fotopic - An interesting host. Initially 250 MB of disk space is available, without expiry. Uploads can be via a web browser, E-mail, or FTP. There is a sophisticated control panel to manage the gallery and account. Other features include access via WAP-enabled mobile telephones. The service is free, but there is a premium service (which includes removal of the Fotopic branding) for a small monthly charge. Just to prove that a gallery can hold more than just photos, check out Menumania, who are hosted by Fotopic.

Grove Street - A charming and very uncommercial hosting site that is run more as a hobby than a business. Free.

Image Host Direct - Free (10 MB) and fee (200 MB) hosting service.

ImageShack - Free hosting of of an unlimited number of images, but with image size limit of 1.5mb on free service.

Kodak Gallery - Formally Ofoto, and before that Kodak Easyshare. Whilst designed to offer a printing service, this site will host a gallery for you for free. As polished as you would expect from Kodak.

MAGIX Online Photo Album - A range of services (from free upwards) including good support for PDAs and mobile phone cameras.

Pbase.com - A photo sharing and hosting web site. Pricing is based on disk usage, but free trial accounts are available.

Phonebin - Delightfully seedy site site catering to phone camera exhibitionists and voyeurs.

Photoblogs.org - A resource aimed at helping people to find specific kinds of photo blogs. Many thousands are listed.

PhotoBox - UK based print service and image sharing service. 30 MB of image space for free (100 MB after your first order). Good range of products over and above just prints, including such things as photo mugs, jigsaws, and deluxe handbags. Rated well by PC Pro magazine in a price/quality comparison with ink-jet printers.

Photobucket - Free hosting of photos, with direct linking (for example, for eBay) allowed.

PhotoGalaxy - A UK hosting service, offering a basic but free service and also more sophisticated chargeable options.

Picasa Web Albums - Google's picture sharing service provides a fair amount of free image storage and tight linkage with the Picasa image editing software.

Picasa Web Albums also has a Data API, enabling users to create albums, upload and retrieve photos, comment on photos, and more directly from websites and programs.

Picturetrail - A couple of free packages (with limitations). A good selection of cheesy music to accompany your albums. Some interesting albums featured - I liked the Prison Dog Project.

Pixum - More of a print service than a public gallery, but cheap prints and a generous 200 MB of space for images.

Pixagogo - A nicely put together printing service with photo gallery and unlimited storage. Free trial. Based in Belgium.

The PhotoStation - Free photo sharing service, and more. Useful discussion forums, reviews, downloads etc. Well worth a look.

Smugmug - Slick online photo hosting service. Prices start at around $40 per year. No ads or spam.

Snapfish - Mainly after your photo printing business, but they offer “unlimited” online photo shared via personal albums. Based in San Francisco, with operations in the UK and Canada.

Snapmania - Swiss online photo manager with editing facilities such as cropping and the excellent concept of "tourist removal". Basic free trial, and various paid-for plans. Nice pictures of the team.

Village Photos - Free account for up to 25 images.

Web-a-photo - This American outfit offers a free 90-day trial. Easy to use with a friendly browser interface.

Weblogimages - Specifically designed for holding images for web logs, for example LiveJournal. Free basic service

Webshots - Apparently the “World’s largest photo sharing site”. A very easy to use American online photo album service, though the albums are accompanied by plenty of “marketing”. An example album I set up for the Frameroom can be found here. Lots of extras, including the ability to download a large number of stock photos and managing your PCs wallpaper via the Webshots uploading/downloading/photo management software.

Zooomr - Flickr looky-likey.

Web Hosts

BargainHost - Based in London. Offer a lot of features for a good price. PHP and Perl included with all packages.

FreeByte.us - Free web hosting, which currently (Feb 2009) includes 5.5 GB space, 200 GB bandwidth, 1 FTP Account, PHP 5, 50 MySQL Databases, phpMyAdmin, 50 Addon Domains, 50 Subdomains, 1 Catchall Email Address, 24/7 Technical Support, No free TLD, Free CO.CC Domain, cPanel with Vista Panel theme. Not bad.

HostingPhotography.com - Hosting service designed for photographers. Administered in the UK and hosted in Dallas, Texas.

Ideal Web Hosting - Good functionality with budget packages. Excellent control panel.

Heart Internet - A wide range of services, keenly priced. Recommended.

Just Host Me - Extensive resources in their various hosting plans but extremely affordable. Super-fast and very knowledgeable support. This site is currented hosted with Just Host Me.

Netfirms - In the past have provided a free hosting service with advertising banners on each page. Other (advertisement  free) hosting services are available for a monthly subscription.

OneandOne - Germanic efficiency and a good range of packages. Not the cheapest but well worth considering if reliability is what you are looking for in a hosting service.

RedRival Internet Services - Offer a basic free hosting service supported by advertising. They can also provide a free e-mail account.

Tripod - Free hosting with 50MB of disk, and a site-building package. They also offer paid-for packages without the advertising banners. Worth investigating, especially if you are new to the world of Web hosting.

For those interested in the surprisingly available and well-featured world of free hosting try the directory site free-webhosts.