Today I decided it was time to find another site to host images other than photos. I currently use Flickr for photos and haven’t been happy about diluting my account with screenshots and other non-photo images to display on my site. One of the big reasons I chose Flickr was due to the great WordPress plugins available for it. I currently use FAlbum to create galleries, Flickr Post Bar to insert photos in posts, and use FlickrRSS to display recent photos in my sidebar.
I had considered doing this a while back, and wanted to use Photobucket but couldn’t find plugin support for them or any other site. Today I decided it was time to look again. I started my search and very quickly came upon a story Mashable over at Mashable for a WordPress plugin released from a file hosting service called Divshare. I hadn’t heard of them but since it was exactly what I was looking for I decided to give it a try.
As an added bonus Divshare doesn’t just host images they support MP3s, videos, and pretty much any file type. They also offer an embedded flash player for MP3 files. So I quickly downloaded the plugin so I could get started. Installation was a breese that only required the standard file transfer followed by a step to acquire a key from their site to enter in the plugins options. That’s it.
My next step was to write a new post to see this plugin in action. So I decided to start writing this post as a way of testing it. My first concern was that the plugin had replaced the standard WordPress uploader but they offer a link that reverts back if you need to use it. It also played nicely with my Flickr Post Bar as well. So it was time to start filling up their hard drives.
I decided to start by uploading an MP3 file as I was curious to see how the embedded player functioned as well. So I browsed my local drive for something I could share without getting a letter from the RIAA and found a nice 9mb file of a cool mix called Whistlers Delight done by DJ Riko which I got from his site. I enter a description for the track and click upload. There’s a nice progress bar showing the speed and completion percentage in real-time that I’m watching as I type this.
After the upload completes I click on over to the “My Files” tab where I’m given two options of inserting the song. The first is to embed a player to allow playback within the post. The second is to simply create a text link to the file. Below I have embedded the player for you to see. There is a disclaimer provided next to this option which states to Turn off Visual Rich Editor”. Not a problem as I have to do this often based on other conflicts I have with the visual editor reformatting php within posts as well.
Here is the player:
Now I’ll use the plugin to upload the images in this post. The first is that upload progress bar I mentioned above, and the second is to show you what the options look like when you click over to the “my files” tab. You can see the options listed on the image to the left. You have 3 sizes you can insert directly into the post as well as a text link. You can also see the options for the MP3 File I mentioned above. Once the images is inserted into the page the default link is to the full size image on the Divshare server which you can change the target to a new window if you want. It would be nice to offer a link to the full size image without having to navigate away from my site which is what I can do with the Flickr plugin but hey, I don’t mind helping promote them for their service. They do however offer you the ability to co-brand by uploading your own image to be shown on their pages.
One small concern I have is that your files list can grow pretty big and there currently isn’t a method to filter the images returned. Not too big of a problem since after you upload a file you can immediately be taken to its insertion options but nonetheless if you reach back for old images to place in the post you may be digging for a bit. I’m sure future versions will offer improved functionality since this is a 1.0 release on the heels of a beta test period. So far so good and I will be using their service to see how it performs.