Pinning Your NFT collection
The first three posts in the series can be found here:
Can You make and sell an NFT collection for free?
Generate your own NFT collection - No coding experience needed
If you have followed along, your NFT collection have now been created, including your metadata.
To recap, I have followed the steps in these two videos by Daniel from Hashlips
A few important notes:
- Make sure to insert YOUR crypto wallet address into the code
- Remember to name your collection in the code
- Insert the percentage that you want on secondary sales (don't about worry pricing now - that is dealt with later when we come to deployment of the smart-contract)
If you are new to creating an NFT collection like me, you may also think that its almost done. Well not quite.
You have now created thousands of beautiful generative images with the Hashlips code. In layman's terms, the images and metadata now needs to be uploaded to the internet. It is done via the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. It is NOT a data storage service as we know it, and we therefor need to use a data storage service to pin the data on the internet while it is distributed via IPFS.
The steps are set out in both the linked videos above, including pinning services that may be used.
The recommended service in the videos is Pinata. What is NOT mentioned in the videos though is all the restrictions on making use of Pinata's free service. The obvious restriction is the data restriction. Your images and metadata files cannot be larger than 1 Gig, unless you upgrade to a paid package. What is not so clear is that are are also limited in the amount of files your folder may contain. I couldn't find anywhere what exactly the allowed amount of files are, but 5 000 Able Seaman Yachts were to many.
NFT.Storage is also mentioned, but would require knowledge of coding, which I don't have.
Enter Filebase
The service I would recommend is Filebase.
Whereas Pinata limits you to 1 Gig, the limit on Filebase is 5 Gig. I don't know whether there are limits to the amount of files a folder may contain, but I do know that I could pin 5 000 images and 5 000 metadata files using Filebase. (And in case you're interested, even their paid service is cheaper than Pinata's)
Simply create a bucket first, then in the same bucket upload the two folders containing your images and metadata separately. And viola, you'll have your CID's that needs to be inserted in the code on Visual Studio.
Points to remember when using Filebase
- Filebase differs slightly from Pinata in that you need to create a bucket first, but from there it is similar to the tutorials in the linked videos
- You upload the folder containing metadata and the folder containing the images seperately
- Make sure your folders contain everything, i.e. your image folder contains ALL the image files - you CANNOT add files after it has been uploaded
- If you make ANY changes to the images or code in Visual Studio Code (the metadata will also be changed by the code), you will need to delete the folders pinned by Filebase and re-upload the folders again
The next post will deal with creating and deploying a smart-contract, and that's where things get hairy!
