All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
imgur/dropbox-like static file hosting
Looking for anonymous static file hosting, where "anonymous" means username or personal domain doesn't appear in the public URL. I'm ok with giving personal details to the provider, and am not doing anything illegal or seriously edgy. I just don't like spewing the info all over the internet. Main application is to be able to upload some files and link to them on forums, like if I wanted to post pictures here on LET and didn't want to use imgur. I used afreecloud.com for this for a while but my account seems to have expired.
By imgur-like I mean urls should preferably look like "provider.com/zuC8yp.jpg" or similar. Domain name belongs to the provider, and file path doesn't include any type of user ID.
File types will be jpg, pdf, txt, maybe occasional mp4. It's ok if it's static-only but if typical shared hosting features (PHP etc) are supported that's even better.
Uploading to the server should be doable by normal scp or maybe an s3-like API or whatever. It should not require uploading through a browser, especially with any type of recaptcha. Also, no ads. Access to logs would be nice but is not required.
Bandwidth: a few GB a month tops, I'd say.
Provider should be a reasonably privacy conscious LET-style host. Particularly I don't want to use Dropbox, Google Drive, or other giant corporation that's into monetizing user data. Business model should be they host the files and I pay them.
Budget: $5/year seems reasonable since there's a zillion full featured shared hosting plans at that price, plus imgur etc. are free.
Comments
I don't think MEGA shows. They might though. Free.
MEGA the kim dotcom thing? I'm suspicious of free since that usually means that the business model is privacy invasion of one sort or another. I actually don't mind imgur all that much, except that uploading to it is a huge pain (browser and captcha). Usually any content I want to host is already on a VPS, so to upload it thru a browser I'd have to download it to my PC and re-upload it throw a slow DSL connection, or else make some kludge for running a browser in a VPS. Thanks though.
Something like transfer.sh ?
YES!
OK!
NEITHER!
TOTALLY!
GREAT!
BUMMER!
CHROMIUM!
That looks great! I think I had seen it before and forgotten about it. Main drawback is 14 day lifetime but that will often be enough.
Emgh: heh
.
I guess I should also look into object stores like DO Spaces or OVH's version. @BunnySpeed maybe you could offer something like it, basically what you already have except without the user's domain name in the url?
I mentioned possibility of PHP, but that might not work because it would allow users to XSS-attack each other too easily.
ALSO hi sir or hetzner in dutch has volumes.
You can also use 1fichier to upload (iirc they had an API) and swap 1fichier.com to 1fichier.scdn.pw to direct download or append &inline=1 to get the correct filetype returned in header.
e.g.
https://1fichier.com/?3bzboleshgwlwfxzea1g
to
https://1fichier.scdn.pw/?3bzboleshgwlwfxzea1g
or
https://1fichier.scdn.pw/?3bzboleshgwlwfxzea1g&inline=1
You can also post images on LET using inline
If you are a premium subscriber or for some reason have CDN credits left, you can enable CDN and leave the 1fichier.com domain.
Sanvit, wow, that looks great. I never took 1fichier seriously because it reminded me too much of crap like Hubic. But I will look into it. Emgh, what do you mean about volumes on Hetzner? They have block storage but that is not on the internet. Or do you mean their nextcloud: hmm that is interesting. It starts at 3 euro/m though. Maybe I could get a bigger plan (those get more economical, like 10 euro for 2TB) and offload some of my storage server stuff to it though.
Doesn't help with your anonymity/blending in requirement though. Pretty sure they stick your install on a unique subdomain.
Ah, yeah I was wondering about that. Thanks. It's still of interest in at least not requiring me to use my own domain name. Like I had willie.z1h.net on afreecloud before.
If that's fine, why not just BunnyCDN storage? You can use pullzonename.b-cdn.net and it's payg (seems to be rouded to nearest $0.001), and also has awesome features like optimizer (additional cost). Sign up using my aff link and PM me and I will send you a coupon code
Sanvit, thanks! I already have a bunnycdn account with some credit, but I thought I had to use my own domain in the url. I'll check into using just the pull zone name (I didn't know you could do that). I don't want optimizer, just ordinary static files. Do you know if it's possible to inline images? [Edit: oh, I think I see what you mean, that I do have to use my own domain. Yes that could still be useful for the same reason as Hetzner's Nextcloud, but it also has drawbacks].
1fichier looks good too. Their paid plans start at 12 euro/year which is more than I hoped, but I could try a 1 month or 24 hour plan.
What do you mean by 'inline image'? BunnyCDN just serves the file. So if the file is jpg, img tag should work, mp4 files should work with video tag and so on. iirc you can also manually change returned content-type header on their edge rules (similar to CloudFlare page rules with wayyyyy more features).
By inline image I meant put a picture into a LET post like you did with 1fichier. OK it sounds like you can do that.
here is a test image file you can check (stored on storage zoned and using the b-cdn.net domain)
https://sanvitmain.b-cdn.net/bg.jpg
Edit : I added an auto-redirect to my main domain on edge rules. Disabled it for a moment
Right, sanvitmain is your own subdomain: I hoped to avoid that.
Image test (your image linked above):
Nice! Thanks.
BCDN also has a FTP upload feature (in addition to their API) for storage zones. You can then link your storage zone to a pull zone to have ex. willie.b-cdn.net/your_image.png :-)
That's my current setup
You could also use any storage actually, so some of my files are stored in B2 (that with free bandwidth through CloudFlare makes B2 the cheapest storage available. Plus you can put BunnyCDN in front for some extra speed boost and hiding your bucket - use https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/bucket-name as your origin)
I'm still confused: is there a way to get rid of the "willie" in that and only have b-cdn.net, maybe with a random filename? If no, that's a drawback though not always a total stopper. It does sound like backblaze can do it so I should check them, though 1-fichier still looks best for this.
I'm not concerned about bandwidth costs (unless something changes) since I don't use much bandwidth. The same with storage costs since it will just be a photo or pdf now and then, a few MB total. Cheap storage is of interest for my many TB of stuff that's not exactly private but which I'm not trying to serve online. But, B2 for that purpose still costs more than LET storage.
You could create a random pullzone name, such as fiskjwjdiosjsidow.b-cdn.net
If I understood correctly, you are looking for something like this?
(Note: posting link only, not the image of a Picture of a picture from this thread)
https://d.pr/i/FlCiQi
Sure, but that's just like a random username (willie is already sort of random). Anything under that name is associated with me, unlike imgur and 1fichier which throw everything into a single domain. Anyway, I'm going to try 1fichier and/or backblaze. It looks like backblaze lets you have 10gb for free (link which is nice, because spending a penny or two a month with them doesn't sound so nice for them.
Thanks for all the help--I think I have a bunch of good alternatives to pursue now.
Btw if anyone here has access to backblaze support, maybe you could let them know that backblaze.net (not .com) is served as https but sends a backblaze.com (not .net) certificate, so the browser throws a certificate error. That makes them look careless. I tried to send this through their feedback form but it wanted me to fill a captcha that my ad blocker was stopping, so meh.
Backblaze still shows the bucket name on the link
f001.backblazeb2.com/file/bucket-name/filename.ext
Ah ok, sounds like 1fichier then. Thanks.
https://imgbb.com may be a decent alternative to imgur for the most common use case of embedding an image in a forum post.
Though it doesn't hit all the requirements, it does address at least a few of the points mentioned in OP.
Example link: https://i.ibb.co/FnpdDdG/upyama.png
Seems like a nice enough system (though I really don't have much experience with other ones to compare)
Uptime, thanks, imgbb is good to know about. The 16MB limit is fine. mp4's don't matter that much and pdfs that large are pretty rare for me (plus they can always be split up). I've used imgur a few times but it was such a pain that I don't want to deal with it any more.
Anyone use ipfs pics to contribute a server ?
https://github.com/ipfspics/ipfspics-server
Seems slow loading for hotlinked images
I don't understand your question but yes, I was looking for a way to host images that I could drop into LET posts like in your screen shot, and where the image urls don't contain a user ID. I've gotten some nice suggestions here, so thanks everyone.
Was curious to try that, but the website ( https://ipfs.pics/ ) only tells me that its webserver and my browser (Chrome 75.x) can't agree upon a common cipher ("ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH")...