thoughts advice -- online photo sharing

[fwellers]

I'm hoping to get some extra insight or some advice on what people do, or what I should do for online photosharing.

I'm pretty new, and have been setting up accounts on flikr, picasa, photoshop etc...

But what I really am thinking I'd like is to have a real nice place that people ( family friends and whoever else ) can come to see my pics. I want to be our family's keeper of the photos, so to speak, and as I grow, have different sections for artistic photos etc...

For now, I don't think I need the power of photoshop as the new Picasa and my capture nx2 seem fine, as I can dodge and burn a little, crop, fix lighting etc...

I like zenfolio, because for only about $40/year, you can store unlimited photos of FULL SIZE. Plus lots of neat features for displaying and organizing them. seems purtier than flikr or picasa ( unless I'm missing something )

I'm thinking that storing the full size photo is a little much maybe, as the uploads will take longer, but at least people who want the pics for maybe printing, can download something useful. But I guess it would be best that only a web image is displayed at first, so that it doesn't take forever to load in their pc, and if they want, then they can get the full image. Is there a site that does that for you ?
Plus, storing the full images online, seems like a good way to have another backup.


Well those are just some of my desires, and thoughts on the subject, this post is too long already, but can we discuss a little about what others are doing and I can glean some good info ? I may be way off base in what I'm thinking. I don't know.

Thanks !
Floyd

 

[Captain IK]

I use Google's Web Album for family pics that I want to share.
It integrates well with Picasa and when you upload to it you can send a notification to your family members automatically. They click on a link and...their in.
This helps keep it private if that is important to you

 

[Captain IK]

Photobucket works also, but it doesn't integrate with Picasa for uploading multiple files so easily

 

[lockwood81]

I like smugmug. www.smugmug.com

 

[table1349]

I have a Flickr pro account as purty doesn't really matter to me. Keep in mind that unless you take some precautions, once you put those photos up they are there for 6 billion people to see and steal.

The way I solve it, my site is by invitation only and is only for those that have a reason to see the photos. The photos are not even searchable in the public gallery. If you need to make distinctions between different people and folders then smug mug might be the way to go.