I have noticed of late the large variety of sites people use to host their MOC pictures and got to wondering...

What site(s) do you use and why?

What sort of communities are on the non-LEGO specific hosting sites?

and finaly: Do you find you get more traffic using a certain site?

I use MOC pages as it was linked from wikipedia, shortly after I had internet access at home and started to explore LEGO online beyond Lego.com. I sometimes wonder if I would get more views and comments if I moved to or started using another site.

I used Brickshelf for years, and it gets a lot of traffic. But I moved to my own site recently to have a permanent home for the links (which I control). My BS gallery clocked up over the 50k mark in visitor terms. My new site, NTbricks.com has gotten around 7k in it's first 2 months. A slight drop, but not to bad... And I can now finally share my set reviews and building techniques without having to worry about masses of links disappearing. My blog is also proving to be a refreshing outlet. It's not meant to be read daily, but it is a nice way for me to share my lego opinion's visually without flooding a Brickshelf equivalent.

I do post on MOC pages, but generally only a teaser of each MOC.

And I, for one, have always really hated Flickr's navigation system. I'm told it's brilliant, but I just don't seem to understand...

God Bless,

Nathan

Brickshelf clocks up the most hits, but there's no commenting function or favouriting e.t.c.

With Flickr, the commenting, favouriting, pooling, seeing new stuff from your contacts e.t.c. is all very useful. However, you have a 200 image limit before you have to pay, and the navigation system is questionable.

I can't see the appeal of Photobucket at all, and MOC Pages never gained any appeal to me really.

I put a few MOC shots on Flickr, and then link to Brickshelf, thus getting the best of both worlds.

MOCPages has finally gotten back on track in the latest version, so It's a fine place to host your pictures.

I hear there are a lot of ads there, but I guess people with browsers with ads enabled are used to seeing that.

I put a few MOC shots on Flickr, and then link to Brickshelf, thus getting the best of both worlds.

I'm actually the other way around (Since I got Flickr a month or so ago), I put the ones that I want to deeplink on Brickshelf, and all the of them of Flickr.

I find flikr confusing and slightly daunting, the same goes for brickshelf. I like the rating/commenting feature on MOCpages but it does become disheartening sometimes... I think I will be sticking with MOCpages for a while to come. (I use photobucket for my non-lego pictures that I wish to share/post online.

Its intresting to see the sites people use.

I use primarily Flickr, as I like the ability to keep track of my contact's pictures and the commenting features. Plus I find it easy to use and navigate.

One downside to it is that it's not an only LEGO site, so it can take a while to get a solid basis of views.

Brickshelf I use to deeplink images to Eurobricks, as it's quick and easy to do from there. But I don't really like the way it works, mainly because without a commenting feature you don't feel as connected to the community. I also don't like the folder set-up.

MOCpages was the first place I used, but I grew extremely tired of the 100s of kiddy Star Wars "Elite Commander Bla-bla-blas". It has some great members, but far too many immature ones as well.

So, for me I like Flickr.

I dont do MOC, but when i need to upload an image i use the 50mbs webspace my isp gave me for free.

Brickshelf clocks up the most hits, but there's no commenting function or favouriting e.t.c.

With Flickr, the commenting, favouriting, pooling, seeing new stuff from your contacts e.t.c. is all very useful. However, you have a 200 image limit before you have to pay, and the navigation system is questionable.

I can't see the appeal of Photobucket at all, and MOC Pages never gained any appeal to me really.

I host my pictures in Photobucket. The appeal of it to me is the limitless free storage capacity it offers, along with a nifty editing program for last minute changes. I can tolerate a few commercials for those...

But my albums are secret, I just link the pictures here to get feedback on them. I don't want any comments or views to pictures I don't want to show.

Of course if showcasing MOCs is your main purpose for posting the pictures to a hosting service, Photobucket would not appeal to you. I just host the pictures there and showcase them elsewhere through links.

I always use Brickshelf. I tried using Flickr once but i got annoyed with not being able to deeplink pics to eurobricks. Brickshelf is good for just deeplinking pics but it need more of a community as Erdberries says it needs a commenting feature like Flickr. As for Moc pages, i have never tried but when searching it

I do tend to find a lot of boring things that Just waste many pages.

These are the three main ones in my opinion and I think that each has it's own features that others do not posses but overall I prefer brickshelf.

When I finally bought a digital camera and started uploading photographs, I did that with brickshelf. I still like it and still upload pictures of my new MOCs every once in a while. Most of my older stuff is also there.

I also have pages on MOCpages. Over the years my views on MOCpages have changed a few times. I used to really like it back when I started using it in 2005. I got to know quite a few people who I still am in touch with. The interactivity is what made it attractive. When it looked as though brickshelf was going under, I also used to host some of my pictures on MOCPages. However, things went a bit downhill over time. I didn't like the behavior of some of the users and the amount of crap that was being uploaded got so far out of hand that the few nice things that were still being made and uploaded there were snowed under. I moved to flickr. Sean Kenney has recently made a lot of changes to MOCoages, adding a lot of useful features that make it easier to find things you like and to ignore things you don't like, and I have once again started to update my pages. I don't upload pictures there, but still host them on flickr. You can actually also deeplink pictures from flickr onto Eurobricks. I do it all the time.

The main site I use nowadays is flickr. The only drawback that I see is that it is not very user-friendly for people who don't have an account. Once you do, however, it is great. They do have free accounts that come with a few limitations, but you can already do quite a lot. I initially feared that because it is not dedicated to LEGO, LEGO pictures would get snowed under by people's holiday pictures, for instance, but that turns out not to be the case. You can really set it up such that you get to see just what you want to see and Flickr has a very active group of LEGO users (many of whom I already knew from MOCpages). I am very happy there.

The fact that it isn't just a LEGO site is actually an advantage. For me it has meant that my MOCs are also being seen by people who aren't AFOLs and I get a lot of great reactions from them. This has also lead to my models being blogged all over the internet -not just by The Brothers Brick, but also by non-LEGO sites such as autoblog and gizmodo.

Cheers,

Ralph

I use Brickshelf. I don't care about the lack of commenting function on there, I just use it as a place to host pictures that I post on Eurobricks.

:skull:

I use Brickshelf most of the time. It has its issues and lacks some simple functionality with managing files and folders, but I like its generally clean look and lack of any limits on the quantities or sizes of images. It's also nice to be part of a dedicated Lego picture archive, rather than a general image hosting site. I also have a bunch of webspace on my ISP account, which I sometimes use for hotlinking.

Flickr's commenting features are nice, but the free accounts are limited and I don't like some other aspects of the interface there. The default sizes for both pictures and their thumbnail previews are too small.

Well, the comments about MOCpages certainly ring true...

I started this topic to try and find somewhere new to go without creating my own site.

Brickshelf. I don't know why everyone doesn't! Maybe if you could post comments it'd be cool, but other than that Brickshelf has the fastest image uploading and easiest to use and store.

Brickshelf because it's easy to upload and deeplink pics, whereas MOCpages takes a long time to load (at least on my computer) and on flickr, you can't deeplink

Brickshelf because it's easy to upload and deeplink pics, whereas MOCpages takes a long time to load (at least on my computer) and on flickr, you can't deeplink

That's the second time somebody mentions that you can't deeplink to photos on flickr. It's not an issue of it not being possible, but of not knowing how it is possible.

I do it all the time here on eurobricks and on MOCpages. In fact, almost all of my photographs on MOCpages are actually hosted on flickr. You can grab the deep link to a photograph by clicking on 'all sizes', and choosing one of the sizes. I normally use 'medium'. That way the photo doesn't become too big for the forum. If you do that, the url of the actual photograph shows up underneath it. There are two caveats.

You may not be able to deeplink to a photograph that isn't yours, because users can set who can download their photographs (and see the direct link) and who can't. In my photostream the dafult is that only other flickr users can download them. It's one way of limiting the opportunities somebody else has to copy your work.

Flickr's guidelines stipulate that a flickr photograph on another website should also link back to flickr. In html that is very easy, because in addition to the url for deeplinking the picture, doing what I described above also produces the html you need for using it elsewhere. You just copy that and paste it in the code for the other website. That's what I do for MOCpages.

Now, on a forum it's a bit different, because it doesn't use html directly, but here's an example of a picture on flickr using a deeplink and simultaneously being a link to its flickr page:

The code for this is

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/2908290068][img=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3215/2908290068_1fd7cb41aa.jpg][/url]

with the first url being the url of the flickr page built around the photo and the second url, between the image brackets, its deep link.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited March 13, 200915 yr by Ralph_S

That's the second time somebody mentions that you can't deeplink to photos on flickr. It's not an issue of it not being possible, but of not knowing how it is possible.

Now, on a forum it's a bit different, because it doesn't use html directly, but here's an example of a picture on flickr using a deeplink and simultaneously being a link to its flickr page:

The code for this is

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/2908290068][img=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3215/2908290068_1fd7cb41aa.jpg][/url]

with the first url being the url of the flickr page built around the photo and the second url, between the image brackets, its deep link.

Cheers,

Ralph

Thanks for this.

This looks like something for the deeplinking tutorial index