I am not suggesting to remove or add your own websites. It is also not a suggestion to attach files on the forums.
Many Scratchers do not any image hosting accounts, yet still want to upload images to the forums. Many Scratchers might only use Scratch on school computers, where image hosting sites might be blocked. This could be fixed if Scratch had its own image host for the forums. This will ensure for as long the Scratch forums exist, there will always be a reliable image host.
Details: you can access other's images. Upon uploading an image, a link to the image is given. If you are a New Scratcher you will not be able to upload images, whereas if you are a Scratcher you will have a 60 second cooldown.

• Why not <insert image host here>?
  - Cubeupload: is down frequently.
  - Assets: increase size of bitmap images, and is somewhat complex.
  - CDN: the image ratio is stuck at 3:4.
  - Uploads: is somewhat complex.
  - Scratch Wiki: cannot be used as an image host; so you are stuck only using the images used for Wiki articles.
  - Photobucket: costs money, but you can have a free plan of 250 images with a watermark.
  - Imageshack: costs money after 30 days, and the images will eventually get changed to an advertisement.
  - Scratchr: is now a SMS site (it was formerly an official Scratch site), and it seems there is no way to use this as an image host as one cannot upload images on it.
  - Scratch: is somewhat complex; you are limited to Scratch's official images.
  - Wikipedia and Wikimedia: cannot be used as an image host (because after 7 days of no usage it will be deleted); so you are stuck only using the images used for Wikipedia articles.
  
• What about Scratch's servers? This could be a problem. But if you uploaded an image, you have a week to use it. If it not used after a week, it will be deleted. If it is used within a week, the image will not be deleted. If the image was used, but now it is no longer being used, it has a week before deletion.
  
• How will reporting work? You can report the post if the image breaks the Community Guidelines. Due to this, after an image is uploaded, you can not change the image.
  
• People might upload images the violate the Community Guidelines. The same can happen on any whitelisted image hosting website, but they will get taken down. An image uploaded on Scratch's own image host might violate the Community Guidelines, but it will get taken down.
  
• Will I still be able to use other whitelisted image hosts? Yes.
  
• This might cost a lot of money. It might. However, Scratch stores millions of projects, so the images hosted on Scratch’s own image host compared to the projects would be very small, since about 48,200 users have more than ten posts, and even less might want to upload an image. This will still cost money however, so there should probably be a file size limit for uploading. If Scratchers would still want to upload large images, they could use online compression tools.
  
• But as mentioned above, only 48,200 users have above ten posts, so why should the Scratch Team bother to add this update? If the Scratch Team decided to add this, it should not be the priority.

Mockup for accessing it from the forums:

Support! I mostly use a school computer, and I can't use any image host websites for my signature.

support!!! i struggle doing images cuz yee

Support, but my concern is how much it would cost Scratch to run their own image host…

Support

I don't think that scratch would be able to do this, since scratch is free and open…

No support
This will cost money (a lot)

-PizzaKing- wrote:

No support
This will cost money (a lot)

Exactly!
Great, now I have to wait 60 seconds…

I definitely agree that this would be ideal to have, but I think the main issue with this (as others pointed out) is the cost. Plus it is not really necessary, Scratchers can use the whitelisted sites, which is just a couple extra steps.

As a few people have said, this costs money. However, Scratch stores millions of projects, so the images hosted on Scratch’s own image host compared to the projects would be very small, since less than 1% of users use the forums, and even less might want to upload an image. This will still cost money however, so there should probably be a file size limit for uploading. If Scratchers would still want to upload large images, they could use online compression tools. I will add this point to the original post.

I really doubt this will use a lot of money, since barely any Scratchers use the forums alot and Scratch is able to store millions of projects
Great idea!

Bring up my post.

<removed>

Semi-Support. This would take time and money for the scratch team, and overall, wouldn’t have an amazing effect on the Scratch community, aside from the forums. However, I guess it would be convenient for people using school-provided devices.

Bring up my post.

On topics, importing an image to a project, then linking the project would help for images, when trying to give info. But you need to use image host when it comes to decoration and signatures.

Bring up my post.

ThroughTheHourglass wrote:

1% of all users being active on the forums is way too big of an estimate. Orders of magnitude too big. For the purposes of this, 10 posts means “active on the forums” (in reality active users have far more). According to postpercent, 48183 users have more than 10 posts. But not all of these accounts are active. As of Dec 2021, there were 1406000 monthly active users out of 86213254 total accounts, meaning 1.63% of all accounts are active. 1.63% of 48183 is roughly 800, meaning there are around 800 “active” forum users.

TheTrillion wrote:

… less than 1% of users use the forums …

800 and 48,183 are less than one percent, but I will edit the original post.

TheTrillion wrote:

Mockup for accessing it from the forums:

I don't think it needs to be a separate page – a button in the post editor toolbar to upload an image would be easier to use.

Is this any different from an upload image button in the forums? It seems the like the same thing but more tedious.

This post was removed by TheTrillion, since I seem to have misunderstood something.