Long-term persistence, funding of account

joemajoema Registered Users Posts: 8 Big grins
edited April 1, 2010 in SmugMug Support
I have some family historical images on Smugmug, which will likely be of interest to future generations. Is there any procedure for pre-paying the account to ensure the long-term persistence of these over a period of several years or decades?

Has anyone encountered heritage/legacy situations where long-term persistence of web-accessed digital images are desired? Would appreciate any guidance or suggestions.

Comments

  • timk519timk519 Registered Users Posts: 831 Major grins
    edited March 30, 2010
    joema wrote:
    I have some family historical images on Smugmug, which will likely be of interest to future generations. Is there any procedure for pre-paying the account to ensure the long-term persistence of these over a period of several years or decades?

    Has anyone encountered heritage/legacy situations where long-term persistence of web-accessed digital images are desired? Would appreciate any guidance or suggestions.
    That's assuming the company will (a) still exist (b) in it's present or similar form for the same time period.

    If you want to do archival storage of imagery, check out organizations that specialize in that kind of work - like your local museum.
    • Save $5 off your first year's SmugMug image hosting with coupon code hccesQbqNBJbc
  • jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited March 30, 2010
    timk519 wrote:
    That's assuming the company will (a) still exist (b) in it's present or similar form for the same time period.

    If you want to do archival storage of imagery, check out organizations that specialize in that kind of work - like your local museum.
    I think the idea is to have the images online and available to family members, sons, daughters, grandkids, great grandkids, etc... long beyond your ability to keep paying for it. If these electronics albums are substitutes for the old photo album book we used to make, how do we ensure that these electronic albums last at least as long as those?
    --John
    Homepage • Popular
    JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
     Always include a link to your site when posting a question
  • BigRedBigRed Registered Users Posts: 288 Major grins
    edited March 31, 2010
    jfriend wrote:
    I think the idea is to have the images online and available to family members, sons, daughters, grandkids, great grandkids, etc... long beyond your ability to keep paying for it. If these electronics albums are substitutes for the old photo album book we used to make, how do we ensure that these electronic albums last at least as long as those?

    And let's not forget that captions are a critical element of those albums (especially identification of subjects). So image-only backups just don't cut it.
    http://www.janicebrowne.com - Janice Browne Nature Art & Photography
  • f300f300 Registered Users Posts: 7 Beginner grinner
    edited March 31, 2010
    Short/medium term (3-5 years) SmugMug (and probably anybody else) would probably be happy to bill you in advance unless there's too much trouble. However nobody can say what will happen 10 years from now. Yahoo bought Geocities for a staggering 3.6 billion and killed it. Also technology is moving way too fast and we can't expect any type of online service to work in 5-10 years just like it works today, without any kind of maintenance.
    I think the only reasonable chance at this point is to pass the torch to some youngsters from your family.
  • timk519timk519 Registered Users Posts: 831 Major grins
    edited March 31, 2010
    I'd suggest setting up a website on one of Amazon's hosted services - one can be reasonably sure that's going to be around for a while.
    • Save $5 off your first year's SmugMug image hosting with coupon code hccesQbqNBJbc
  • f300f300 Registered Users Posts: 7 Beginner grinner
    edited April 1, 2010
    Amazon is very, very reliable but they don't have any "picture hosting" direct service. This means you have to program it (either yourself or to use something already available) and also means permanent maintanance. API changes, hostname/IP changes, IPv6, security issues, Y2k-like problems (just had a big one in 2010!), etc. If you leave a bunch of pictures on sites like SmugMug, Fotki, Flickr they might still be around in some years (or not... ImageStation, geocities). I still have some pictures on fortunecity from 10 years ago which I can't even delete because I forgot the password... But if you leave a bunch of scripts running on Amazon I highly doubt they'll still be doing what they're suppsed to do in 5-10 years.
  • timk519timk519 Registered Users Posts: 831 Major grins
    edited April 1, 2010
    Agreed. There are distributions of drupal,etc. which provide image-hosting functionality which could be setup and run, and maintained by applying periodic updates.

    Of course, one would need to have someone who could perform those updates over time in order to make this work.
    • Save $5 off your first year's SmugMug image hosting with coupon code hccesQbqNBJbc
  • LPCLPC Registered Users Posts: 481 Major grins
    edited April 1, 2010
    joema wrote:
    I have some family historical images on Smugmug, which will likely be of interest to future generations. Is there any procedure for pre-paying the account to ensure the long-term persistence of these over a period of several years or decades?

    Isn't that what Children/Nephews/Neices are for?

    My Will is going to contain strict instructions to the relevant party (haven't decided who the lucky recipient is yet) with the neccesary funds to keep my site going for as long as possible deal.gif
Sign In or Register to comment.