Hey Zep,
First part yes you got it! Second part needs to be done so all them photos can be put back in the correct place if the hard drive died or if pondboss went down and that drive did not come back up in essence they need to be what we I.T. guys call mirroring that drive so they have an exact replica of it all if one goes down. Sure you can keep all your own photo's everyone can, but what if your pc died that has all your pics on it? Would they all be gone from the PB fourm then? I don't know anything about eZimba and how it works,but if it's just a link convertor and each one of us would store our own pics that could be a nightmare for PB. What if they went that route and 6 or 7 folks out here got a new laptop lost all their pics, got mad at the forum and got rid of all their links to their stuff.... Bottom line is for the PBF to have and keep there pictures of all the AWESOME stuff out here they need to really be able to host it themselves and back it up. Or your always gonna be subject to Picture Ransom somehow. The key here is 2 fold.
1. Keep 3rd party folks or anyone but PondBoss from having to intervene / host pics.
2. If PB backed it all up on their drives they could restore it much easier if something went wrong.
Now with that said that's a lot easier said then done in most cases and may take a bit of work on their part that's for sure. I mean right now if I use my 10 step procedure above where is that pic residing? I would guess out on the PBF somewhere?? I assume. They just need to make sure they have enough space and a good backup or a secondary server they are backing up to.
I'll use this for an example. I would hate to lose all of Bretski's pictures out here because of photobucket, or his pc crashed and burned or he got ticked off removed all his links to his pictures. Just saying as an example....
