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Hack 59 Host Your Own Photos
Bypass eBay's photo
restrictions by hosting auction photos on your own server.
Any photos that appear in your
auctions must be stored on a web server somewhere; which one you use
is up to you. When you use eBay's Picture Services,
you're instructing eBay to store your photos on
their own dedicated picture server and link them to your auction
automatically. While this is the easiest and most convenient way to
host photos, it's also fraught with limitations.
Hosting photos off-eBay has tons of advantages over using
eBay's Picture Services (ePS). For instance, you
can:
Include as many photos as you like in any auction at no additional
charge.
Include photos of any size with no
"supersize" fees. With ePS, photos
are limited to 400 x 300, or, for an additional fee, 800
x 600 (supersize).
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Control the quality (compression) settings of your JPG photos. ePS
has a tendency to over-compress photos, which reduces detail and
increases fuzziness.
Use very long or very wide images that don't conform
to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio. These would otherwise be shrunk
beyond recognition to conform to eBay's 400
x 300 size limit.
Make changes to photos while an auction is running, even after it has
received bids. You'll also have control over how
long the images remain in your auctions after
they've closed.
Place your photos directly in the text of your auction descriptions
or use a more creative photo presentation, such as [Hack #60], [Hack #61], or [Hack #62].
Reuse the same photos for multiple auctions without having to upload
them repeatedly.
Include logos and section headers right in your text.
All that's required to host your own auction photos
is access to a web server on which you have an account. If you
don't have access to your own server, see Looking for a Good Home.
Looking for a Good Home
If you want to host your auction photos outside of eBay but you
don't have access to a web server, never
fearthere is always help for those who need it.
Start with your ISP. Most Internet providers offer free web space to
their customers, so you might have 20 MB or so of space with your
name on it (literally). However, some ISPs specifically lock out
image hosting, so if your photos don't load in your
auctions, that's probably why.
If your ISP turns you away, you have other options. There are a
number of companies that offer space (for a fee) specifically for
hosting auction photos, such as www.ipix.com,
www.pongo.com,
www.pixhost.com,
www.inkfrog.com,
www.eaph.com,
and www.andale.com.
But since one of the goals of this hack is to save money by hosting
the photos yourself, you may want to look elsewhere.
Some of the sites that offer free auction picture hosting include
www.freepicturehosting.com,
www.easypichost.com,
www.boomspeed.com,
and www.villagephotos.com.
Each site works a little differently, so make sure to read the fine
print.
When selecting a site to host your images, there are a few things to
look for. First, make sure the images can be placed in your auctions;
you don't want your customers to have to click a
link to see your photos (because they won't).
Second, since most free sites are advertising-supported,
you'll want to make sure the ads
don't interfere with your auction (and never pay for
image hosting with ads). Finally, the site you choose
shouldn't impose the same (or worse) restrictions on
your photos that eBay does (see the beginning of this hack).
If you're resigned to paying for image hosting,
consider paying for web hosting instead. Simple,
no-frills web space is often the best choice, whether you pay for it
or get it free with your Internet connection. You'll
not only be able to insert photos into your auctions with none of the
nonsense that accompanies most image hosting services (ads, logos,
restrictions), but you'll also be able to use this
space to host an entire web site, including the CGI programs detailed
in other hacks in this book.
5.6.1 Sending Photos to the Server
In most cases, an
FTP program is
required to transfer your images from your computer to your web
server. (The exception is when you're using a
dedicated picture hosting service that requires you to upload photos
through a web page.)
Although nearly every modern computer comes with a command-line FTP
client, you'll probably want something a little
friendlier and more streamlined. Popular FTP programs include
Fetch for
the Mac (www.fetchsoftworks.com) and
WS_FTP
for Windows (www.ipswitch.com). All
you'll need is the hostname (the name or address of
the server), and your username and password.
Users of most modern versions of Windows (Me, 2000, and XP) can also
access FTP servers right from Explorer by typing this URL into
Explorer's address bar:
ftp://my_server.com
where my_server.com is the hostname or IP
address of your FTP server. If you want Explorer to log you in
automatically, include your username and password in the URL, like
this:
ftp://username:password@my_server.com
The FTP server then acts like any ordinary folder, where files can be
drag-dropped, deleted, renamed, or moved into subfolders.
5.6.2 Placing Photos in Your Auctions
The most direct way to include a
photo in one of your auctions is eBay's Sell Your
Item form. On the Pictures & Details page, choose
"Your own Web hosting" and then
specify the full URL of your photo:
http://my_server.com/my_folder/image.jpg
where image.jpg is the filename of the
photo, my_folder is the name of the folder
in which the image file is stored, and
my_server.com is the hostname. No HTML is
required to specify your photos this way, which makes it especially
convenient; your images will simply appear beneath your auction
description.
If you have more than one photo or if you prefer to place your photos
directly in your auction text, use the <img>
HTML tag to reference them, like this:
<img src="/image/library/english/10062_image.jpg">
You can include as many pictures as you like, but
it's up to you to present them in an attractive and
efficient manner. Figure 5-8 shows some photos
placed right in the text; see [Hack #40] for more information on the
<img> tag, including parameters to control
alignment and text wrapping.
Figure 5-8. A self-hosted photo appears beneath the auction description unless you insert it into the text with HTML
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Other means of image presentation include [Hack #60], [Hack #61], and [Hack #62].
