Automator folder action upload to ftp

I haven’t really tried out folder actions all that much but today I decided to give it a whirl. Usually when I write a blog I’ll end up wanting some movie poster..or like with this post, an icon, to go along with whatever crap I’m writing. I don’t really like hotlinking images from others since I wouldn’t really like anyone to hotlink my stuff and steal bandwidth.

So lately I have been downloading whatever image that I want to use and then upload it to a Google Pages account that I have and then linking to that image – this because I don’t really want to host these random images myself.

Today I wanted to make life easier for myself so I wrote a small folder action and used the automator app “Upload to FTP” in order for me to be able to just download/save and image from a webpage to a certain folder and when that image hits this folder it automatically gets uploaded o a free webhost that I signed up for.

Here is a short tutorial how to use Automator to automatically upload a downloaded image to a custom FTP:

1. Get the Upload to FTP application, install it
2. Open up Automator and create a workflow that looks like this
    
   but with your FTP/folder details filled in of course
3. In Automator, Save As Plugin and make sure to select that it’s a Plugin for “Folder Actions” and select the folder you want this action to run on
4. Boom, there you go

I also modified my WordPress install a bit so that when I insert an image from an URL now it automatically suggests my host and I just have to add in the filename.