What is an image hosting service? Beginners building websites might hear experienced webmasters mention using an image hosting service to store images. New webmasters may not understand what an image hosting service is or when to use one. So, Naiba here will explain the basics of image hosting services.
What is an image host?
FromBaidu Baike's explanation of image hosting：
Image hosting generally refers to servers that store images, which can be domestic or foreign. Foreign image hosting services have slow access speeds due to factors such as spatial distance, affecting image display speed. Domestic ones are also divided into single-line space, multi-line space, and CDN acceleration.
Image hosting is an online space specifically used to store images and allow you to link images externally. Many image hosting services are free.
Baidu Baike's explanation of image hosting should clarify what it is. You might wonder, 'I have my own server, why would I need an image hosting service?' Keep reading.
Why is an image host needed?
Typically, when building a website or browsing daily, reasons for using an image hosting service include:
- Temporarily sharing images via external links on other websites;
- Insufficient server hard drive space;
- Small server bandwidth, slow network speed;
- Not wanting to store images on your own server;
- Not having a server but wanting to share images.
Image hosting is a server specifically used to store images, and more often refers to services that provide external image links. There are free image hosting services and paid ones.
Even some websites allow you to upload images without restricting external links. These websites can be used as image hosting services (using others' bandwidth and servers).
Do I need an image hosting service when building my own website?
Based on Naiba's many years of website building experience, it is not recommended to use image hosting services to manage images when building your own website, at least not to expect to use free image hosting services to store images.
Free is always the most expensive. When your website has been running for many years and suddenly one day the image hosting service collapses, all your images will be gone. Can you accept that loss?
What if I don't use an image hosting service but my network speed is slow?
You might say, 'I bought a domestic server with a small pipe (meaning the server bandwidth is small, e.g., only 1M). If I put too many images, even I get stuck when opening it. Without an image hosting service, it's too slow.'
So, how to solve this situation without using an image hosting service?
We can use cloud storage or CDN services, such as the one shared earlier.Youpaiyun CDN tutorial for website acceleration。
CDN and cloud storage actually also use third-party server hard disks and bandwidth, but your own server retains a copy of the original image, so even if the third-party service fails, you don't have to worry about image data loss.
What are some free image hosting services?
You can easily find many image hosting services by searching with a search engine. For example, imgchr and sm.ms in the above image are two well-known image hosting services.
As long as you explore, you don't have to worry about not having an image hosting service to use. You only need to worry about how to restore the images on your website if the image hosting service suddenly becomes unavailable one day.
Summary
Using an image hosting service can save your website's server hard disk usage and bandwidth usage. A good image hosting service can speed up your website access.
When using an image hosting service, you must consider (especially free ones) the stability and security of the image hosting service. Will it suddenly become unavailable one day? At that time, can you quickly restore the images used in your website articles and pages?
If not, it is not recommended to use an image hosting service. Consider using free CDN or cloud storage services (actually, paid ones are not expensive; don't believe in permanent free).