From Linda Roeder,
Your Guide to Personal Web Pages.
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People have been creating photo albums on their Web sites for many, many years. It used to be a lot of work creating photo albums on Web sites. First you had to scan your photo. Then you had to convert it to a .gif or .jpg file. Then you had to crop or resize the photo so it fit your hosting services guidelines. Then you had to upload it to your Web site's server. Then you had to find out what the URL for the photo was. Then you had to put the code on the page so it would show up. If you have a digital camera it might be a little easier, but not much.

If you had too many photos on one photo album page then the page would take forever to load. You might have had to create thumbnail graphics for all your photos so the photo album page would load faster. Then you would have to link to each graphic from the thumbnail. All very time consuming.

Your life is now easier. In the past few years a new type of service has popped up. They are photo album hosting services and they're free. You upload your photos into photo albums and there they stay. You can send the URL of the photo albums to your friends and family and they can come and see the photo albums for themselves. The photo albums can be password protected too, if you want, so no one else can see them.

A really great feature that these photo album hosting services provide is the ability to get hard copies of your photos sent to you or to someone else right from your photo album. For just a few dollars you can pick out your favorite photos from your photo album and have them sent to your mother as a gift or to yourself as a keepsake. They also sell photo album calendars and photo album books among other things. You can really have some great gifts and keepsakes made up from your photo album for many occasions or for no occasion at all.

Here are a couple of them for you to look through:

Ofoto
Create whole photo albums. Share your photo albums with your friends and family or have your photos printed with Kodak film and send them. When your friends and family view your photo albums they have the option to purchase some of the photos and have them sent to them too. A great way to distribute your holiday photos. Keeping and sharing your photo album is a free service. If you want Kodak photos you will have to pay a small price for them.

PhotoWorks
Upload your photos to their site or send them your film to have your photos put on your Web site for you. Get your photos put on a CD, create gifts with your photos or just store them on your photo album for your friends and family to see.

PBase
This photo album site is not free but it doesn't cost much and you get a lot of space to store your photos and create your photo albums. It's just $23/year for 100Mbs of space or $60/year for 300Mbs of space.

dotPhoto
Create photo albums for free. Then you can get prints at low prices or sign up for one of their plans and get your prints even cheaper.

Shutterfly
Send prints to your friends and family or share them using your photo album. Signing up is free and then you get your first 15 prints free too. You can upload your photos from your computer or send in your film to have them process it for you.

Snapfish
Send in your film for developing or upload your photos with your digital camera and order prints for a low cost. Share your photos with your photo album and get unlimited storage to keep them on the service.

Webshots
Upload and share your photos using your photo album. Keep them private or share them for all to see. You can create screensavers and wallpapers, order prints or create great gifts with your favorite photos on them.

* If you just want to store your files try File Storage Services.