[Clicker]

How many are running their own server? I'm asking this as you all know present day concerns over image rights/intellectual property.
If you are or plan in the future; what are you running, what type of setup do you have and most important, how is it holding up?

I think in the future a lot of people will be running their own servers, once is as easy as "plug n play", to control how their images/videos are used.

[GoremanX]

I used to run my own server. In my opinion, it's not worth the time, effort or money.

For one thing, it costs a heck of a lot more to run your own server. If you use your regular Internet connection, then your server uses up your own bandwidth. If you have a monthly bandwidth limit, then a server will exceed that in no time at all. Pictures take up a lot of bandwidth, and they get re-sent over the Internet anytime someone hits "reload". For picture-hosting, expect up to 1 meg of transfer for each and every page that gets viewed. Even if you do have unlimited bandwidth (as I do), if your Internet service provider finds out you're running a web server from home and it's consuming too much bandwidth, they can cancel your account at any time. Read your service contract carefully, your ISP has this right.

This also means that at random times, your personal Internet connection can slow down to a crawl. Anytime someone is looking through your web site or downloading something, your connection can go to hell for all your personal uses. It's possible to filter the bandwidth and dedicate a certain minimum percentage to your own uses, but at that point you'd better be real familiar with your gateway settings, especially if your gateway resides on the same machine as your server.

Then there's the reliability of your Internet connection. Consumer Internet connections are notoriously unreliable, and anytime the weather gets bad enough, your server might be unavailable to your potential clients. You might not notice this unreliability in normal times, but trust me, it's there. My own Internet connection gets reset at least once a week, sometimes more, and all my dynamic DNS settings take a few minutes to get reset. That's time that a server would be unavailable.

You can get around some of these issues by getting a business-class Internet connection instead, but again, cost becomes an issue. Those types of plans cost WAY more than a normal consumer plan, mainly because they take bandwidth into consideration but also because they tend to be more reliable.

While I still maintain my own private services here at home (I have a dedicated server in the basement), these services are only used to give me access to my home computers while I'm away. I've long ago stopped running public web servers at home. I have a dedicated web address so I can access my network without having to guess what my current IP address is, and it's all protected by a separate gateway that essentially gives access to nothing unless I tell it to.

For web hosting, it's much cheaper and easier to setup a shared hosting account. For as little as $6.50 a month, you can get a web serving account with 200 MB of storage, 2 GB of bandwidth, PHP/Perl support, database access and countless email addresses, all with your own web address. It's a tiny investment, it's ultra-reliable, and every aspect can be expanded as your needs grow. I've been using the same hosting company for almost 10 years, and they give me better service than I could've hoped for. They backup my site on a regular basis (nightly), and when I break something, they can fix it within minutes. The other day I hosed my database, and they had it restored to the previous day's version within 5 minutes. I have 5 different web sites with these guys, and I wouldn't ever consider running my own from home again.

[Clicker]

Excellent advice, i've been told the same on other forums i frequent; i'm just trying to take the next step away/up from my blog, thus trying to central my "social" network. It's just so confusing because of the mind boggling social media network out there.

Thanks i hear more of your advice and less on the other hand and i usually follow the crowd for a reason, like someone else posted in here..."Moo"

[GoremanX]

To go more into the specifics you asked for, I would only consider using a hosting company running Linux servers with Apache and PHP. Stay as far away from Windows-based servers as you can, and avoid ASP and ASX scripting like the plague. Any Microsoft-issued patch could disable a Windows-based server, and their poor security has resulted in countless hackings in the past. As long as you use a reputable hosting company and use strong passwords and software, your web site will be more secure on a Linux server than a Windows one. I don't say this from a general dislike of Microsoft, but from 15 years of experience in web hosting and web design.

[maximm]

For me bandwith is not a problem, as it is for many others in Sweden. The problem is instead the cost of electricity which can escalate to enormous sums if not taken care of.

I run a small linux-host running on an old eee PC using about 10W which is great, so that would have to be my tip.

[GoremanX]

It's also worth noting that you can host your pictures in one place (ie. Google's Picasa) and link to them to display them on your own web site, thereby saving you countless megs in storage cost and bandwidth. The only time this becomes an issue is if people have "external images" disabled in their browser, which is very rare.

[justDIY]

What do you mean run your own server?

I have two online hosting accounts, which I "run", but they're not my servers, just the content. I let someone else deal with the hardware, connection, electricity, etc. 500 gig of space and 5000 gig of transfer (monthly), for about $8 a month, the other host is much smaller but allows more options.

I don't do it because I'm concerned about google stealing my images (I also use google a lot). Mainly I use my servers to host images that would 'waste' my free space on google, a lot of technical photography related to my hobby of microelectronic design.

For me, it's no headache running servers, I've been in systems design and network administration for more than twenty years. My headache however is when client's equipment doesn't behave and then I come home and have my equipment misbehave

[Clicker]

That's what i want to do, have a personal storage space where i control my images (not that they're that important) Otherwise i have my Flickr pro and Picasa for sharing silly stuff.

[Marc Sabatella]

I'm confused - if it's your own personal space, how does copyright enter into it? And you don't need a server - just a simle external drive you plug into your computer. or do you mean, you want it to be online for some reason - so you can access it away from home? In that case, simplest solution would be a networked-attached drive that comes with its own "access anywhere" software. The "My Book World Edition" I have came with something like that, but I've never tried it.

[pb_red]

with regards to IP protection, it really doesn't matter where your images are hosted because once they are on the web they are available for download - be it by actual users or scripts or bots or whatever. if the server responds to an HTTP GET request (as is the job of web servers) then your image can be downloaded.

sure, you can disable right-click-save-as option and so on but i believe those are simple javascript scripts that are easy to work around if someone really wanted to.

so once your images are available to download aggregation services such as google can and will collect them so running your own server provides very little protection of IP.

the only protection i can think of are watermarks which are big and "bold" enough that you can't cut them out of the image without ruining it. unfortunately, the most useful watermarks are really annoying so it's a catch 22.