Store images on a free server to save bandwidth?

[Magic2K2]

Does anybody see any problems with getting a free account in addition to my paid account and storing my images on the free account to save bandwidth? Obviously, I slow load time a bit, but if the free server is reliable, I can't see any major problems.

Your thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

[Rob]

Free hosts offer free hosting based on the simple fact that they cover their bandwidth costs with advertising which they put on your site. If all you have on your free account is images then the host makes no money and is only giving away 100% free bandwidth. So I think its safe to say that if you attempt to host images ONLY on a free host you'll probably get busted and have your account revoked.

While the idea is crafty it is also flawed a bit. It would be great if we could all save money by doing that but sooner or later someone gets stuck with the bandwidth bill and then everyone downstream of them will be affected.

One option you can look at is using something like mod_gzip (I think that is what it was called). There are posts somewhere in one of the geek talk forums regarding this. It reduces the size of your pages and such that apache serves.. might help bring your BW bill down.

Thats my thoughts on this matter...
Rob

[singloon]

yeah i agree with what gtek said.. mod_gzip is nice but it won't do anything to help a graphic and image intensive site anyway

what i do now is get a rackshack.net server and i basically sell off image/file only hosting bandwidth to webmasters for very low bandwidth costs US$0.90 - 2/GB depending on the amount

you might want to do that so you can

1. host your own images remotely on your own raq4 server
2. make some extra $$$ to cover the raq4 server costs as well

just an idea

[batcavenet]

I run a freeserver and it's reasons like this that free webspace is slowing going away Most hosts like mine don't allow image linking remotely for obvious reasons. I would suggest for paying for what you actually use since it shouldn't be that much, and if you don't make enough to cover your own bandwidth costs then you are doing something wrong..

[cyburrr]

Sites like Geocities and Tripod don't allow this anymore. I know several webmasters who had to a huge number of red X's where graphics used to be - so even if you found one that worked - it might not last, and might cause a lot of work.

If it's not a huge amount of graphics, you might want to try the space your ISP provides. That at least is built into the price, so you are paying for it, and if you're a good customer, it's less likely they'll just pull the plug on you.

[singloon]

actually tripod can do it still but you need to change urls to

downloads.member.tripod.com/file

i think