When you add images to your blog posts, where do you upload them? Do you store them on an image host like TinyPic.com, or do you prefer to keep them on your own server somewhere?

There are advantages to both methods, and of course, disadvantages.

As of this writing, I put most of my images on TinyPic, though I’ve lately been a little worried about that. What if TinyPic decides to delete them? What if something happens and they lose a bunch of data? I happens. It would be lot of work to re-upload images and edit all of my posts, but it would be “safer.” Though on the other hand, I’d be storing more files on my server, and transferring more bytes as well…

I’m still undecided, but what’s your preferred method?

It depends. Theoretically, the less images on a page the better, as your pages will load faster (and put less strain on your server).

There are two types of images. There are template-level images and post-level images. Template-level images exist in your blog’s header/footer/sidebar template, and therefore appear on every page on your site. Post-level images are part of your content, and they belong to an individual posts.

In your template, you should have as little images as possible. When you create a design, you want to keep the essential images to a minimum. Use tiles, well-optimized image blocks, etc. As of this writing, this blog’s design consists of two images (the logo and the tiled edge image). Once you have your mock-up of the design, figure out the best way to break it up. You want as little images as possible, and you want to keep them as small (as in kilobytes) as you can. (more…)

Need some images to make your posts more interesting? You need stock photos.

A stock photo is a royalty-free image sold or given away for free that can be used in things like flyers, brochures, and of course websites. Have you ever seen the same photo used in more than one place (for example, I’ve seen the same image of people watching TV in more than one satellite company’s ad)? Chances are, it’s a stock photo. Paid stock photos are frequently being used as book covers even (generally with some adjustments in Photoshop).

Obviously you don’t want to buy stock photos for use on your blog, as that could quickly get expensive (iStockPhoto may be cheap, but those $1 images stack-up pretty fast…). There are plenty of places to get totally free images for use on your blog. Here are a five sources that you may find useful:

• Stock.Xchng
• StockVault
• YotoPhoto
• Flickr (look for images licensed with Creative Commons).
• Creative Commons Search