LotroShots - Online Resource for your LoTRo Pictures

[Marancil]

We are a few who met via Discord that were looking for an online resource to host our screenshots and diverse LoTRo images. Myself used direct linking to my site, but those pictures are disorganised and not easily available, others used free image hosting like TinyPic, ImgUr or ImageShack but some of those services do not work well with free persistent linking. In this I have seen the advantages of a free, permanent, spam and ad free location to host images we use to link in to these forums and other places. Thus I have created LotroShots (not my first endeavour with similar scope) for all and everyone to use at their leisure.

Some focus is also given to different collections of images, like Regions, Wallpapers and Outfits. Personal, even private, albums are a given.

This is, as I post this thread, very much a site that is being built up, a Work In Progress. We are missing a relevant logo, we are working on adapting the layout to a simple, yet self explanatory interface with powerful tools and relevant functionality. Any and all contributions are welcome. Images with explanatory text and relevant titles are strongly encouraged. Comments are allowed for registered users, ratings for all visitors.

Having said this, I have a pretty heavy focus on security and the site demands a registration, a password, a relevant e-mail address. The password has a complexity demand, the site uses spam protection with Captcha and it will be using SSL (https) shortly.

You are most welcome to use LotroShots for any and all game related images you may want to collect and make available, or just have an organised private album with your fondest memories of your adventures in Middle Earth.

CONTACT INFO: Discord > channel #lotroshots ... and of course PM to me here in the Forums, or catch any of my Characters below on Crickhollow.
REGISTRATION: Default behavior is that you will get a verification e-mail and after that your account will get registered and you can upload images, but both album and images are subject for approval until a setting is changed in the user profile, handled by me. This is protection. Anyone can register and upload anything, that is why we have the approval function. The potential spam scenario is that user X registers, uploads a few Lotro images, gets them approved, gets account approved, and then starts upping the porn or memes or anything we don't want to see here. We don't want that, thus we need to establish a bit of trust.


DISCLAIMER: Posted images are, of course, checked for game relevance and spam. Inappropriate pictures are not allowed. Videos are currently not supported. The physical location of the server is northern Sweden, the owner is a Swedish Citizen and the Host Company is Swedish; thus subject to Swedish Law for any and all disputes.

EDIT: Site URL changed.
EDIT: Discord URL revised.

[Marancil]

And now we are +1.

[Valakircka]

i really like your idea!
have hundreds of shots from my 10 years in lotro
need to find time to organize, join n upload them

[Marancil]

You are very welcome, I will try to keep an eye for you, heads up, it may take a little while, not behind a comp as much as I would like to för a couple of weeks.

[Taelivrin]

Greetings,

just joined. Pictures will be uploaded during the next days.

I love to take pictures of the usual landscape, just to imagine how it will be like wandering through that area for real.

Another topic will be passage ways or mysterious encounters (or spots) throughout Middle-Earth.

Regards,
Taelivrin

[Marancil]

Please let me know if your e-mail address may have been wrong somehow since the registration confirmation e-mail bounced. Via a PM or via the Discord Channel listed above...

[Taelivrin]

PM with another e-mail address sent and used for your website.

Should work now, I hope so.

[tuor66]

Bookmarked the site to check out later.

[Marancil]

PM with another e-mail address sent and used for your website.

Should work now, I hope so.

Checked and status A OK.

Approved your images.

[Urwendil]

Registered (Same name as here)

[Marancil]

Thanks, tad tricky to follow up on the site right now, but patience my friends...

Urwendil, you are most welcome.

[Marancil]

Small update: We are now 10 people with a collection of 423 images.

Don't forget to checkout and print out the amazing bumper sticker uploaded by ShoeMaker.

https://www.lotroshots.net/index.php...gory/shoemaker

[Marancil]

SSL has been implemented.

This means that http is replaced by https while browsing the site. You should not have to bother with changing anything in regards to bookmarks or how you look up the site since a forward from http to https is in place.

Why? Because it is safer and because the certificate for SSL vouches for the site being genuine.

[Rugongrod]

Cool! Thank you.

[Marancil]

Rugongrod... I don't see you putting up any images? Questions?

[Rugongrod]

Rugongrod... I don't see you putting up any images? Questions?

Actually yes. I guess I'm dumb but I couldn't find a way to upload.

[Marancil]

You should see this menu when entering Admin > Your Album > Add photo



I recommend adding files via this first menu since it is easiest, but you can choose the others as you wish as well. A guide:

http://piwigo.org/doc/doku.php?id=us...rn:add_picture

[Rugongrod]

Awesome thank you very much Rummy.

[Marancil]

Just a few pictures left to 500 beautiful images from Middle Earth with almost 10 different styles and approaches to in game beauty.

Bring'em on!

[Marancil]

I think we could all learn a bit from our most recent member.

Description.

Thanks for taking the effort to add descriptions to the images, Tuor66 , we all need to work a bit on that.

[tuor66]

You're quite welcome. I just felt sometimes it helps to know what the image shows, where it was taken or why it was considered worthy of capturing.

A couple questions - how does one make sub-albums? Can one contribute to another album such as the desktop wallpapers? Are there topic tags we can assign to pictures?

[Marancil]

You're quite welcome. I just felt sometimes it helps to know what the image shows, where it was taken or why it was considered worthy of capturing.

And you are of course absolutely right! I have this poor excuse that is twofold really "not worth putting a lot of effort, no one will care" - and - "this so obvious it needs no explanation". Both excuses should obviously need some re evaluation since this is actually getting some attention, and, there are always people who don't see the obvious for lack of attention, experience or in game knowledge. So lets all try to put some explanatory text to the images. Within reason...

As you can see in the picture a few posts above you should have a text link to "...or create new album" in the same place you can add pictures to your own album. You are limited to new albums within your parent album.

Tags are used on individual photo basis so if you have a picture from "rohan" you should be able to add that tag via the tag search, or ad a new tag for a new location/motive/whatever.

As for contributions to other albums, outside the scope of your own, well, I haven't given that much thought yet. The Wallpaper album is supposed to be the home of official wallpapers released over the years, and I have yet to get them. We could of course rename it "official wallpapers" and have another called "Community Wallpapers" and add tags for that.

This is very much a work in progress and I appreciate all ideas and feedback I/we get.

Please do not hesitate to ask more...

[Marancil]

For those with interest: Google Analytics: https://shots.lotrokin.me/analytics/...7-20170924.pdf

This is no longer relevant for stats. / Edited on January 2023

[Marancil]

Snag.

Seems some URL's to images stop working after a while.

Pontin had an issue with this and we have sorted it, but I think I have narrowed down what works and what do not.

A
for full image with no scaling (Original)
shots.lotrokin.me/upload/2017/...*

B
data/i/upload that goes away, probably after purging cache
shots.lotrokin.me/_data/i/upload/...*

C
with image scaling that seems to be persistent
shots.lotrokin.me/i.php?/upload/*

Option B containing _data/i/upload/ does seem to fail after unknown amount of time, which is what happened to Pontin.

I have raised a support issue at Piwigo to sort out what works and how we should use this.

[Marancil]

Maybe we could find the time to do some imagery inspired by:

Yule and Autumn