Pictures in CMS

Hi there guys and girls.

I have spent a little time recently working on a simple CMS for a friends site. The whole thing is password protected, with simple scripts to add, edit, view and delete news articles.

What I would really like to do now is add a facility to include images in the news items. Now, should I look at making a some simple script to the CMS admin page to resize and upload pictures - or would I be better using a 3rd part picture hosting site, and just including these pictures with an extra link option from the CMS admin page?

Thanks in advance for any help or advise with this.

I would avoid using an outside hosting site for various reasons.

1) Your images might not always be available.
2) Your loading times will possibly increase due to more server connections.
3) You have to pay attention to the terms of use and the rights you give the hosting site to use your photos.

Also if you plan on this CMS to be reusable it would be nice to have that feature. It would also avoid having to setup another account and try to manage a website through two interfaces.