Why back when I was a whippersnapper, they didn't have video on the Internets. [sic] We had some animated gifs, sure, but the images we dealt with back then are nothing compared with what we see on websites today.
Serving large files, and in some cases video streams is a whole different can of worms than a couple of promotional product photos and a mug shot of the chairman of the board. As a hosting provider, I understand some of the technical challenges involved, but this article is not about that. Today, I want to write briefly to let you know about two websites that face challenges related to images, and how they face those challenges. It is also interesting to me that although the sites show vastly differing levels of visual development, I suspect they both accomplish the business goals they set out to achieve about as well.
Both are photography web sites, but they could easily be video or any other visual medium for the purposes of this article. The author of the first site is a professional photographer. Within a few weeks of posting this article, my close associates and friends may chuckle to remember this post when I launch a site that looks very much like James Duncan Davidson's site. This similarity is because his, like the site I will launch, is managed with Movable Type's Universal Template Set. (The MTUTS?) I think this is an effective choice, both from a cost perspective and from a communication perspective.
As a photographer seeking to sell photographs, he is concerned with the details of how his product will be presented, and also issues of quality in the production of the prints which visitors can purchase. He has, wisely in my estimation, chosen to outsource both those functions.
At the same time as he outsources the ecommerce and fulfillment function he maintains full control over his ability to promote the "store" using his own website. He uses his MT based site to publish articles about his work, which of course use all the right keywords for the product he is trying to sell. In the comments he hints at future articles he will write to attract viewers, including details of how he works with his printing company to communicate color information:
Indeed, I can post something up about that at some point. The short versions is that I run totally color managed here and check prints on my printers to have a good idea what happens in the translation between transmissive and reflective color and then I ship the photos up to Zen tagged as sRGB, the profile that Zen and Mpix recommend using for the process.
Davidson has started very small, so the image issues he is seeking to resolve (quality of presentation, ability to sell prints cost effectively, ability to have orders fulfilled by yet another service) do not so much center around storage, which is usually one of the central issues with image collections.
Web space is sold based on two metrics, how much is stored, and how much is transfered. Rates will generally vary depending on the quality of the network and platform, and the level of personal attention required. My friend Jesse at PlasticMind has his own private server and he uses Movable Type as the foundation for many of his web design projects, including his own. But every one of the photos he shows in his photoblog, are in fact stored on his Flickr account.
I know of two benefits Jesse gains from this. The first is performance. If you are serving large multi megabyte images files off the same web server as your thirty kilobyte HTML files are served from, one or the other will suffer. (For the other web server administrators out there... OK, this is a gross generalization, but you know its true! If not why would there be so many web servers such as Apache, Mongrel, Lighty, Ngix, Lightspeed, etc? )
The second is sheer storage. If you have ever managed more than a few hundred megabytes of files on a remote server somewhere you know that the just issues of backups can be pretty costly to deal with, both in terms of dollars and time. Not only does Flickr provide a particular kind of storage (pictures) at a good price point (free and professional accounts are available) but their service also helps to promote the images thought their own business model. (Well, Yahoo's business model anyway.)
All of this reinforces my thinking that traditional small web hosting providers and the sites they host need to become the glue that holds together their client's extended Internet presence. Small providers that are aware of and promoting this idea to their small clients will help their customers use the Internet to its maximum impact while keeping costs inline with the scale of their customer's business.
