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i have provided the space and bandwidth
Although I have a handy host, I know others here don't, and I'm brave/skilled/foolish enough to rush in and test the waters.
It works fine. Server-speed is excellent.
The user interface makes you go around in circles: creating an album, uploading a picture, adding comments. For "our" use, it should auto-generate one album per person; I bet it was made for group use (everybody at a wedding, for instance).
Or should we all put pictures in one album? (That was not clear.)
The picture page shows a URL to link to the upload: this links to a page, not the naked image. I ended up right-clicking on the image and getting the URL there, so I could host my avatar (mostly as a lightweight test) via this forum's Profile tool. There may be another way to see the naked-image URL.
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Can a text or info file go with each picture
Yes:
"Tori the Corgi" "Picture of the late Tori Corgi." It does also allow you to upload
a .TXT file, and will display it in the browser (not the best way to read TXT). Any description can have a URL link to anywhere else, including another file on that album, so an image's description can be a link to an essay. (It also lets you "crop and rotate" a text file; not sure what that is about.... probably just an oversight.)
Today it would not take a GIF file (I tried two), claiming they were "Not a GD extension". This may be a bug, or it may be political (the alleged owners of the GIF format tried to collect royalties; I think the GD graphics toolkit developer refuses to play their game).
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Can the descriptor be amended if needed ?
Yes: "Edit description". (I assume you must be logged-in as the uploader or admin.)
It also seems to be possible for strangers to add "Comments".
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Copper mine is just the name of the online software ????
Similar to the "phpBB" tag on this forum's pages, it is a PHP or Perl script that generates the pages and stores the data. Just that CopperMine is intended for images in albums, not messages in forums. Not a whale of a lot of difference at some level. I bet Twin-x can edit that logo to a Group-DIY logo or Twin-x's smiling face, whatever; same as Ethan edited the default phpBB logo to his employer's logo. While CopperMine may ask for a link in return for use of their software, the link at the bottom is probably fine. They know the user's logo goes up top.
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what happens when you get LOTS of pictures ?
If everybody posted every DIY-ish image they found, Twin-x would run out of space.
But in fact there are only about a dozen of us active and creative enough to do a lot of uploading. And some of us have hosts. Say 10 folks keep 10 Megs each: 100 Megs, worth about $0.20 at today's drive prices. Even if 5 folks stash 100 Megs each, Twin-x is looking at about $1.00 worth of space. His true costs are higher: connection costs, PC costs, electric bill. But while generous, it isn't a fabulous expense.
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How will things look and get sorted?
I'm not sure. I thought the main idea was to host hot-linked images inside messages. Twin-x specifically mentions that, and it is something not allowed by many other free/cheap hosting services (because they need to show ads). The "Album" thing is nice: it appears I could keep all my forum-related files together under my name. Each file has a Title, Description, and Keywords.
Search instantly found all (one) files about "Tori". I assume that even if there were 20,000 files and you searched for "API", it would return the API keyword files in a jiffy, just as this forum finds messages with keywords. (Assuming, of course, that people actually put decent descriptions on files.)