Photobucket Update

[99 sr5 highlander]

Alright, so it seems Photobucket has officially gone insane. They no longer allow 3rd party hosting for their free subscribers, so all photos posted on T4r through them are now hidden. Unfortunately it appears that the only way to get them back is to pay them the criminally high price of $39.99 a month. The site was already borderline unusable due to the absurd number of ads.

The issue is that I can't figure out how switching to a different photo service would work with pre existing posts. I really don't want to, and I will not be able to re-do every photo I have ever posted on the forum!!!

Anyone else know a good solution to this problem?

Test:

 

[fourwd1]

Yeah, this has come up on other forums I mod on, and it sucks.

 

[gm350reratliff]

Yep, it completely sucks! I even paid those *******s for more storage and they still screwed me over. Like everyone else, I'm now faced with the huge task of moving everything to another site that allows 3rd party hosting and then rebuilding all my threads across a ton of websites which won't be easy either . After I move everything, if that even gets accomplished, I plan on completely deleting my account with PB. I truly hope they fail and go belly up for pulling a stunt like this. Their app sucked and the website is awful, especially now with all the adds. Truly, they can kiss my ass!

So now the question is, what hosting site should I go with? I've read reviews and arguments for other hosting sites but still haven't made up my mind. I don't mind paying a little bit but I'm far from a professional photographer and I'm not looking to sell my pics so I don't want to have to pay a lot. I sit in front of computers all day/night at work and I would like to be able to post pics while at work but PB, Imgur, and Flickr are all blocked at work, so it would be nice to find a service that our firewall doesn't block, if that's even possible.

 

[MissouriBreaks]

I use Shutterfly. No problems so far after 5 years of use.

 

[Slowgoat]

Lame. I'll check on everything I've put up then.

 

[Ray Dunakin]

The first free photo hosting site I ever used suddenly went belly up and everyone lost all their photos (if they didn't already have copies on their own computers, which they should have had). The second one I tried at least gave everyone advance notice and time to download their photos.

After that I decided I was no longer going to be at the mercy of someone else's business decisions, so paid for a domain name and web hosting, and started my own website. Even if the hosting service goes belly up, I can just move the domain to another one.

 

[ddnww]

YA its bs, all my pics in random pic post and my f100 build are gone.. :crutch:

 

[Ron Burgandy]

Been reading through a lot of build threads and noticed linked pics from photobucket aren't showing up anymore unless the user upgrades to a paid membership, This is gonna impact ALOT of threads on this site as I bet most people won't pay to use photobucket. :smashputer:

 

[Killer Squirrel]

Yep luckily I didn't have many photos in here yet so I just moved my links to imgur. Photobucket can suck it!

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[BrianSD_42]

In a way its never coming back. Sorry guys.

Previously I used Imagshack and recently switched to IMGUR.

Photobucket says photo-f**k-it, starts off-site image shakedown
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/30/photobucket_charging_400yr_3rdparty_pgs/

Put your stuff into the cloud, they said. It's easy, they said. It's safe, they said.

So what seems to have happened is Photobucket eliminated the function of 3rd party (eg forums) image linking to all accounts, even paying customers, unless they pay for the $400 / year plan. For real $400 a year.

Most likely ALL the threads using photobucket are f#cking ruined unless the OPs either reupload somewhere that will stay free (like Imgur) or pay $400 a year (yeah right).

Shows over. What the f#ck!

:bat:

No more freeloading graphics, it wants its $400-a-year cut
By Shaun Nichols in San Francisco 30 Jun 2017 at 22:56 SHARE

Photobucket is cracking down on people embedding on third-party websites images it hosts, until now, for free.

The photo-slinging internet elder now says that anyone who wants to use its service to display photos it hosts on other pages – such as signature banners in forum posts – will now need to open up their wallets and plop down $399.99 a year for a subscription plan.

The new policy will be particularly annoying to longtime users who have relied on Photobucket's 14-year-old service to host the images they use to place images on forums or in blog posts.

Cheaper plans, including the free account option, will no longer have an option to allow third-party hosting.

 

[phattyduck]

Imgur, here I come. Sad, really. I've been a Photobucket user since 2005. Lots of history and build threads spread across many forums.

But man, what do they think will happen? Its like they want to shut down their own site...

-Charlie

 

[Black798]

It is a really shitty situation. I would bet around 50% of the build threads on here use Photobucket, myself included, and now their threads are totally fubared. Luckily I only had about half my images in there before I got sick of the adds and switched to Flickr. I'm particularly upset with Photobucket because they completely locked my account down to the point where I can't even recover my images from them. Luckily I had most of them backed up on my laptop as well.

 

[Mark_BC]

Yes this will screw up a LOT of forums on the net going back over a decade. Too bad. Searches will now be less useful as a bunch of the photos will be dead.

It was a calculating move on Photobucket's part. 99% of the users will leave which leaves PB with much less cloud costs. A few will be so inconvenienced they will pay $400. Less costs + more revenue = more profit.

I'm lucky since I have only used PB for about a year and it won't be too too much work to switch over. I am sooo glad I didn't use them from the start.

I'm reviving my old Flickr account. But I wonder if all the other photo hosting services are going to have overload issues with all the extra space they will need over the coming weeks.

 

[BrianSD_42]

Most of these companies are start ups essentially. They have investors and are usually funded. I'm willing to bet Photobucket couldn't grow anymore and got no additional funding because the business model wasnt there. They are probably hosted on AWS which charges them every time an image is presented to end user. Amazon charges on data flowing out, among other things. The music stopped and the users are left holding the bag.

Ever heard that saying? ..... If you are not paying for the product then YOU are the product.

The users were the product and the business just went belly up.

 

[Mark_BC]

The photos are still accessible, you just have to right click and open in a new tab. How long that will last, who knows.

 

[SCRunner12]

Well that sucks, I won't be paying the money, so my build is now moot picture wise.

 

[RAD4Runner]

Always Keep Local Copies of Your Pics

I've started using Google Photos when Photobucket's Pop-ups got worse. However, there is no guarantee that ANY site on the cloud will keep work well or stay in business, so I always keep copies of my pics, both original and annotated on my own hard driveS. Yes, copies on two hard drives.

I'll update my photo links as I get the time.

 

[Mark_BC]

Well that sucks, I won't be paying the money, so my build is now moot picture wise.

You can download all of your photos from PB to your computer. Then start a new picture hosting account somewhere else, then re-upload them. Then edit your posts and change the link for each photo. Could be a lot of work if you have a big thread. Score one for me for being lazy and not updating my thread!!!!

 

[Bandit Runner]

Well my build thread sucks now. I've been using photobucket for several years.

What is a good replacement site? I've seen imgur and Flickr mentioned. Any advice?

And how do I know that the same thing won't happen with these others?

 

[BrianSD_42]

I didn't know you could use google photos to host 3rd party image presentation eg a forum.

Is that what you are doing?