Photobucket Hosting Changes

[Pioneer]

You can still host your own photos without creating a website. That's how I do it. I don't even have a website. I use an FTP client like Transmit to upload to my server, then I just paste the link in a forum's photo upload button.

It's all very easy once you get used to it.

This is quite interesting. I remember doing some file transfers via ftp many years ago but I will have to do some research into this. Can anyone point me to some good tutorials, or a good book (I like books), that provides a good explanation of how to go about doing this.

 

[rfaspen]

If you use Wordpress (and templates) for your website, there is a module/plugin for hosting your photos (I think its called Photocrati, or something like that). My wife is in the process of researching this stuff right now. She's the president of our local photographic arts guild and they're upgrading their web presence. They may simply go with a Wordpress option.

My wife uses Zenfolio for her personal website, and she hosts photos. I guess she simply chose a template that includes photo hosting.

I'm quite certain there are many folks here that have websites and know much more about all of this than I do. Perhaps I'll just duck out and let more knowledgable people take over.

 

[FujiLove]

I noticed the same thing after I deleted all my photos. I found this a bit concerning so I haven't literally deleted my account yet. I am not sure I trust photobuckets management not to hold onto all my photographs anyway, even after I have "deleted" them all.

I'll go back in a few days or a couple of weeks to ensure my "storage" as dropped to zero.

I had been paying their small fee to stay ad-free, I really don't have a big problem with paying for services on the web. But after I read Sepiareverbs post I went back and researched things much more heavily.

Most people probably don't pay a lot of attention so Photobucket may not experience any real negative feedback from this, but I would think that anyone who is really paying attention will be deleting their photos and accounts quite quickly.

Unfortunately there's little chance you have actually deleted the photos. Your action most likely did nothing except change a few database entries. It's the way of the Internet. Data lives forever, or until there is no value for the entity storing it.

Photobucket are probably in financial trouble and have little choice but to start covering their massive hosting costs. Personally I'd use Flickr for now, and accept that may go the same way one day. Hopefully their demise will be decades away.

 

[johnf04]

I had the Photobucket email in my inbox, this morning, and all of my photos are replaced with their notice. I joined there in 2006, only so I had somewhere to host photos posted on forums. All that I had on there were low resolution copies - the originals remain on my computer. I have deleted my account there.

 

[Rico]

My web content is on a server at my feet. I write the terms of service, retain all copyright, and control the look-and-feel. Web and email access is through my domain makino.fi which is unlikely to change in my lifetime—unless the sovereign nation of Finland is acquired by Google!

 

[johnf04]

I thought I'd check the charges at another hosting site - Ancestry, which hosts family trees and their supporting data. There is no limit to storage....they charge $NZ260 a year.
The only option I was offered at Photobucket would cost $NZ550.
I think Photobucket wants rid of most of its subscribers.

 

[Vince Lupo]

I thought I'd check the charges at another hosting site - Ancestry, which hosts family trees and their supporting data. There is no limit to storage....they charge $NZ260 a year.
The only option I was offered at Photobucket would cost $NZ550.
I think Photobucket wants rid of most of its subscribers.

If that's their goal, they are on their way to succeeding. I deleted my account this morning as well.

 

[Emile de Leon]

How do you delete your photobucket account? Cant figure this out...

 

[Bill Clark]

Would this an alternative:

https://www.google.com/photos/about/

I notice a few of my photographer friends have a large number of photo albums on Facebook. They use Facebook as a way to drum up business.

Here is one gent and his wife with their business titled "The Imagery":

https://www.facebook.com/theimagery/?fref=ts

He and I both served on the board of the local PPA affiliate here in Minneapolis.

 

[gnuyork]

This is quite interesting. I remember doing some file transfers via ftp many years ago but I will have to do some research into this. Can anyone point me to some good tutorials, or a good book (I like books), that provides a good explanation of how to go about doing this.

For me, I have a blue host account. I forgot the process, but you basically can set up a FTP type server. Blue host can walk you though it over the phone. It's just a few button clicks on the backend. All I do is put my photos in a folder on my FTP. I use transmit to upload them. Transmit makes it very easy to load and organize by creating folders. For example I tend have separate folders for the different cameras I use. There is other FTP client software like Fetch, and I think even some are free. I like Transmit best.

To access a link, I just open my ftp in a standard web browser (which I have bookmarked for ease) and click on the appropriate folder, then the photo link, then copy and paste the URL in RF forum photo button. I've never used photobucket or other hosting sites, but this method I use is fairly simple and I control it (as long as my hosting fees are paid, and they are very reasonable, especially compared to the new photobucket fee).

 

[Vince Lupo]

How do you delete your photobucket account? Cant figure this out...

In the upper right corner you'll see 'profile', then I think you click on that and then you go to 'account' and then at the bottom of that page there is an option to delete your account.

 

[Emile de Leon]

Thx Vince!

 

[Keith]

I noticed the images I posted have gone so it seems they got around to me finally!

But then again, I just went and grabbed another link and it seems to work ... seems a bit strange! And I've received no notifications from them about any change ... not even when I sourced the link for the above pic.😕

 

[Keith]

I stumbled over this article just before. They really are shooting themselves in the foot here in my opinion ... their site is nowhere near clean enough or usable enough for these sorts of charges for me, and many others I suspect.

I wish them luck! 😀

edit ... now to add to my confusion the links that were non functional in my earlier posted pics a few hours ago are now working again! lol And it's an interesting exercise to go to photobucket's facebook page ... they are copping some serious heat over there and rightly so!

 

[jarski]

Cloud computing is not inherently dangerous.

agreed. been moving lot of my photos into cloud. not to have it public, but simply to have it available without the hassle of computer, drives etc.

...unless the sovereign nation of Finland is acquired by Google!

they have one or two server farms here already 🙂

 

[Pioneer]

If that's their goal, they are on their way to succeeding. I deleted my account this morning as well.

Yeah, this kind of came out of the blue as far as I was concerned. I had been suffering through the advertising onslaught for a couple weeks. I finally checked on what it would take to get rid of the ads and decided that their $2.50 per month fee was not unreasonable. I certainly get that much value from the site. So I opted for the ad free subscription.

I received some of the notices about their new policies but I honestly didn't get too excited since I thought I was a subscriber already. Imagine my amazement when I checked the different subscription plans and found out what it was going to cost to continue to use Photobucket to upload and share with other forums.

Whooof! That was crazy!

So I checked into some of the other new policies and didn't like what I was reading at all. I am pretty sure that all my uploads to Photobucket are low res intended just for easy sharing but I still don't intend to give them all options and rights to even the low res stuff.

So, if their intent was to chase me off, they succeeded. I immediately set about deleting my photos. I'll wait a bit to delete my account. Once my ad free subscription has been cancelled I'll drop it.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Nope, totally false. I've done this and all my links remained. The links on RFF do not point to a specific host company, they point to files on chriscrawfordphoto.com. If I move the site, the domain name s moved to, and so the links will not change.

Chris, we've misunderstood each other.

Yes, with photos on your domain, you can move the domain and all the links still work.

I'm saying that if you put photos on PhotoBucket or Flickr or PBase or wherever, you can't move them; links would be broken.

I think we agree. Thanks for all your contributions here.

 

[fergus]

And I do have the basic free account. What gives?

Bad news Keith - your account has been hit too, even here in Oz.

My photobucket links still work, but I have only 44 pics, and they are linked from threads on a tiny forum.

I suspect they started at the top in terms of storage/bandwidth and are moving down through the ranks...

Fergus

 

[Pioneer]

Using My Website to Host Pictures

Using My Website to Host Pictures

Ok.

More to work out but the following is an attempt to use my own website as an image hosting site.

Just a test for the fun of it. I also posted this into the gallery and it worked there.

http://spyderpix.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/A-Spinning-Top_edited-1-e1499490448223.jpg

Nope. A quick preview shows it coming up as a link. That is better than nothing but I need it to show as an image.

 

[rfaspen]

For what its worth, I moved to Ipernity when Flickr started making weird changes a few years ago.

Ipernity is struggling much like others (I'm quite certain Photobucket was struggling hard, and made some poor choices to address it). However, Ipernity is very community oriented and very up front about their current situation, and how subscription fees are determined, etc. I like them very much, partly because its a quite simple interface, but I may end up letting my subscription lapse. I just don't have that many photos to host and I might have a more local option (albeit smaller) in a short while.

But I like Ipernity. They're in France?