CPA Scott,

I like www.d2hosting.com for price and service. About images... Make sure they are .jpg images, then reduce the image size, and if you still want to squeeze the size you can lower the image quality by increasing the compression.

Choi
----- Original Message -----
From: cpascott
To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 14:16
Subject: [LbNA] Web Hosting


For those of you who have your own letterbox sites, are you using a
web host service? I'm looking for a low cost host for our site which
currently resides on Comcast's Personal Pages server. Because we
chronicle all of our finds and include pictures, we are fast running
out of room. We estimate that we'll have over our 25MB allowance
within the next month.

Hints on how to reduce the file size of our pictures without
impacting the site's quality would also be helpful!


CPAScott


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At 02:16 PM 9/22/2004, you wrote:
>For those of you who have your own letterbox sites, are you using a
>web host service? I'm looking for a low cost host for our site which
>currently resides on Comcast's Personal Pages server. Because we
>chronicle all of our finds and include pictures, we are fast running
>out of room. We estimate that we'll have over our 25MB allowance
>within the next month.

You might look at Netfirms.com. Their personal plan is $4.95 a month and
includes 250mb of space, and I've used them for years for several sites.

>Hints on how to reduce the file size of our pictures without
>impacting the site's quality would also be helpful!

Just about any graphics program can help you resize a photo and then save
it in the compressed JPEG format and thus balance image quality with file
size. For starters, you should try simply sizing the photos on your site to
the actual size at which they will be displayed. On your Boston Tea Party
page, for instance, I looked at the photo of the Bunker Hill Monument and
saw that the image is actually 1200 x 1600, but is displayed at 300x 400.
If you saved the image at 300x400, the file size would be much smaller than
359kb. If you crop the photos, as well, you can also reduce the image size.

From there, when you save it as a JPEG, you can select the level of
compression in the file. At 1.00, the file is only minimally compressed,
with a larger file size but higher quality. After resizing your original
image with no compression, the file size dropped down to 80kb. When you
compare that file to the image as it's displayed on your site, you can see
a difference, but it's largely due to the browser doing the resizing of the
image and the quality is fairly comparable.

As you increase the compression level, the file size can drop quite a bit.
At 0.85, the file size gets down to 22kb or so, but you can see some
"splotchiness" particularly around the datestamp text. Otherwise the file
might be acceptable for web site viewing. You can play around with the
compression levels between 0.85 and 1.00 and get the right balance of
quality and file size that works for you.

I wish I had a good recommendation for a user-friendly and inexpensive
graphics program; I've been using The GIMP for Windows, an open source
graphics editing programing that's pretty powerful but also pretty clunky.
But since it's free, it works for me.

Ignite (http://www.ignite-it.co.uk/) might be another program to take a
look at for simple graphics file optimization.




|-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-|
Silent Doug, P41 F521 X73 E11
silentdoug@letterboxing.info
http://www.letterboxing.info


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I have a few sites (none of them letterboxing yet) hosted by djara.com. Go there and email the webmaster and tell him you know The Prynce and he'll set you up with much more than you'd ever need! And he's a cool guy.

-=The Prynce

>
> From: "cpascott"
> Date: 2004/09/22 Wed PM 02:16:56 EDT
> To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [LbNA] Web Hosting
>
>


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