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Connect your Space

Your pictures are kept in storage that belongs to you: a Space at DigitalOcean, in your account, on your bill. This page makes one and connects it. It takes about ten minutes.

What you will have at the end. A private bucket, a key that opens only that bucket, and a library that knows where to put things.

The labels below are the ones DigitalOcean showed in November 2026. If a button has moved, their own guides are linked beside each step.

What it costs

You pay DigitalOcean for the storage, separately from ImageStoria. As of November 2026 a Spaces subscription is about $5 a month. That includes 250 GiB of storage across all your buckets and 1,024 GiB of transfer out. Beyond that, storage is about $0.02 per GiB a month and transfer about $0.01 per GiB.

250 GiB is room for tens of thousands of photos. Video fills it faster. Check the current numbers on DigitalOcean's pricing page.

The links to DigitalOcean on this site are referral links. If you sign up through one, DigitalOcean gives us credit. It costs you nothing extra.

The steps

  1. Make a DigitalOcean account

    Go to DigitalOcean Spaces and sign up, or sign in if you have an account. They will ask for a way to pay.

  2. Create a bucket

    In the left menu click Spaces Object Storage, then Create Bucket.

    • Datacenter region. Choose the one nearest to you. It cannot be changed later. Note its short name, such as ams3 or nyc3. You will need it in step 4.
    • Storage type. Choose Standard Storage, not Cold Storage.
    • CDN. Leave Enable CDN off. Your library hands out links that expire, so a CDN is not needed.
    • Bucket name. 3 to 63 characters: lowercase letters, numbers and dashes, beginning with a letter or a number. The name must be unique across DigitalOcean and it is permanent.
    • Project. Select any project. The default one is fine.

    Click Create a Spaces Bucket.

    A new bucket is private, and its file listing is set to Restrict File Listing. Keep both as they are. ImageStoria never makes a file public.

    DigitalOcean's guide: How to create a Spaces bucket.

  3. Create a key for that bucket

    Still under Spaces Object Storage, open the Access Keys tab and click Create Access Key.

    • Under Select access scope choose Limited access.
    • Pick your bucket and set its Permissions to Read/Write/Delete.
    • Give the key a name you will recognise, such as imagestoria.

    Click Create Access Key. You are shown two things: an access key ID and a secret key.

    The secret key is shown only once. Copy it now and keep the page open until step 5 is done. If you lose it, delete the key and make a new one.

    DigitalOcean's guide: How to manage access to Spaces.

  4. Type the details into ImageStoria

    Open your account page. The storage form asks for six things.

    FieldWhat to type
    Endpointhttps://ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com, with your own region in place of ams3. Only the region address. Do not put the bucket name in front.
    Regionus-east-1, exactly that, whichever region you chose. DigitalOcean asks for this value. The real region is in the endpoint.
    Space nameThe bucket name from step 2.
    FolderOptional. A folder inside the bucket to keep everything in, such as photos. Leave it empty if the bucket is only for this library.
    Access keyThe access key ID from step 3.
    Secret keyThe secret key from step 3.

    The regions that have Spaces: nyc3, sfo2, sfo3, ams3, sgp1, lon1, fra1, tor1, blr1, syd1, atl1.

  5. Check the connection, then save

    Click Check connection. Your library writes one small test file to the bucket, reads it back and removes it. If all three work, click Save.

    Your library opens. The secret key is sealed before it is stored and is never shown again, to you or to anyone.

If the check fails

The message under the button names the cause. These are the common ones.

MessageWhat it means
SignatureDoesNotMatchThe secret key is not whole. Part of it was missed when copying, or a space came along. Paste it again. If the page with the secret is gone, make a new key.
NoSuchBucketThe Space name is misspelt, or the endpoint names a different region from the one the bucket is in.
AccessDeniedThe key is limited to another bucket, or it may only read. Give it Read/Write/Delete on this bucket.
The address cannot be reachedThe endpoint was typed with the bucket name in front. It should read https://ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com, not https://my-bucket.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com.

What your library puts in the bucket

Four folders, and nothing hidden. The files you upload are kept exactly as they arrived. The other three hold smaller copies made for viewing.

originals/2026/11/{item id}/IMG_2041.jpg   the file exactly as you uploaded it
display/2026/11/{item id}.webp             a copy for the screen, long edge 1600 px
thumbs/2026/11/{item id}.webp              a small copy for the grid
full/2026/11/{item id}.webp                full size, only for formats a browser cannot show

More on this in Leaving.

A second copy

Your bucket is the only place your pictures are kept. ImageStoria does not keep another copy. Keep one yourself, on a drive at home or anywhere you trust.

A Space can also keep older versions of every file, which protects against deleting by mistake. Versioning is turned on with DigitalOcean's API or a command line tool, not in their control panel. It is optional, and it uses more storage. See How to enable versioning.

Changing the key later

Make a new key at DigitalOcean, type it into the same form on your account page, check and save. Then delete the old key at DigitalOcean. Nothing in the bucket changes.

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