Photobucket Hosting Changes

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.

I registered a domain name this afternoon, and set up a website. I downloaded Wordpress and loaded pictures into a basic photo gallery. I can copy a link from there, and use the "insert link" feature here to display the photo.

IMG_3241s.jpg
 
The sudden change in Photobucket's policies were evident when I was browsing some other enthusiast forums, and I wondered why so many images were gone. At a guess, Photobucket's management has made that price based on the number of subscribers they think they will get vs the amount of bandwidth is being used.

Is it really a high price for what amounts to a very high number of images hosted on a server for a year? I'm not up to speed on what other image servers are doing.
 
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?


They are in France.
I moved there too because of the Flickr changes but kept my Flickr account.

I don`t post on Ipernity these days because it just seemed to lack any sense of community and I missed my Flickr contacts.
 
Finally ... they have cut me off at the knees! lol

I wonder who in their right mind, having had free hosting for all these years, is going to turn round and pay these idiots $400 per year to get that back? Surely they must realise that there are other sites out there that offer that as a part of their free, or even basic plans for the ones that don't actually have a free hosting service. I suspect they are going to have to make some sort of back peddle on this or they will persish for sure! Even if they turn around now and say OK we'll give you hosting on our basic plan they will have pi$$ed off enough people that it could be too late.

I've never really liked the place and only used it for stuff that wasn't really all that important to me but the gaps in imagery in the pages of RFF threads will leave a bad taste for years to come.
 
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.
You forgot to put the image link in square brackets using the "picture" button in RFF's toolbar...

PS: what on earth is that a photo of!?

A-Spinning-Top_edited-1-e1499490448223.jpg
 
Photobucket want $399.

I registered my domain name and paid for hosting, it's Au $9.95/month = $7.22/month after-tax, = approx $5.40 / month.

This, or ZenFolio. Why would anyone pay for PhotoBucket?
 
This shows the potential problems with links to images on branded photo sites.

I have not used the "Gallery" feature here, put photos here on RFF, then link to them in our posts. Those links will last as long as RFF is around. Anyone with experience, pros/cons?
 
For years I had very nice custom web sites on Wordpress, Squarespace and others. But comparing the cost over the years with the views and feedback, that approach just did not seem justified for what is a hobby for me. If I was making money from my efforts, that would be different.

But I'd rather put those funds toward paper, ink, books and such. Flickr and tumblr, at least for now, are free with no ads, which is pretty great. Sure hope they stay that way.

John
 
My assumption is that most users of this service are not affected by this change simply because they don't link their photos outside of this service. If they want someone to look at their photos, they send those persons a link to the webpage of the service.

I'm always amazed about the high expectations some people have in the long term availability of a free service.
 
My approach, might serve as a quick tutorial:
- Register a domain name at https://www.networksolutions.com
- Obtain a hosting provider at DreamHost.com or Netfirms.com or whatever
- Set up DNS to point your domain name to the hosting provider
- Take their default template for the home page. Don't mess with WordPress or anything else.
- Figure out how to upload files and create directories. I do so through an FTP client. I use Fetch on Mac, but there are many. Provider may have a web interface for uploads.
- Create a directory named images
- Move image files, usually .jpg with sRGB profile, into the images directory
- On RFF in a posting, hit the picture icon, then paste http://yourdomainname.com/images/filename.jpg

Hope this is helpful to someone.
 
Just posted on the PhotoBucket Facebook page:

PhotoBucket -- You have your users cornered and now you have applied the squeeze. You have broken zillions of travelogues, forum postings, and other wholesome activities of your users. $500/year to allow outside links. Reverse this policy! Allow outside linking with a modest charge. Or you'll be the Martin Shkreli of photo-based social media.
 
Just posted on the PhotoBucket Facebook page:

It won't matter to me if they change or not. I am not only done with them, there is no way I'll trust any of their genre any more. In my opinion, what Photobucket just did has tarred all of the photo hosting sites with the same brush.

And just to head off the comments about expecting free services to last forever, I personally was paying, and so were many of their subscribers. But it didn't matter whether you paid or not. If you didn't subscribe to their premium, top of the line, super expensive package you were all tossed together in one pile and treated with the same lack of respect.
 
My approach, might serve as a quick tutorial:
- Register a domain name at https://www.networksolutions.com
- Obtain a hosting provider at DreamHost.com or Netfirms.com or whatever
- Set up DNS to point your domain name to the hosting provider
- Take their default template for the home page. Don't mess with WordPress or anything else.
- Figure out how to upload files and create directories. I do so through an FTP client. I use Fetch on Mac, but there are many. Provider may have a web interface for uploads.
- Create a directory named images
- Move image files, usually .jpg with sRGB profile, into the images directory
- On RFF in a posting, hit the picture icon, then paste http://yourdomainname.com/images/filename.jpg

Hope this is helpful to someone.

This is exactly what I do and what I tried to explain less clearly a few posts above. Except I use BlueHost for my provider and Transmit for my FTP client.

Glad you got something to work, Pioneer.
 
This is exactly what I do and what I tried to explain less clearly a few posts above. Except I use BlueHost for my provider and Transmit for my FTP client.

Glad you got something to work, Pioneer.

Thanks gnuyork. Still working on the ftp transfer process. I don't think it hurts to have more then one solution.
 
Photobucket recently changed their policies regarding linking my photographs stored on their site to 3rd Party sites like this forum without submitting to an extortionist fee of $40 per month. They have also made it clear in their policies that they do not consider the photos stored on their site to be my property but intend to do whatever they wish with them, up to and including resale without my express approval.

As a result of these onerous and unreasonable policies I will no longer be using Photobucket to digitally store my photographs on line. I have also taken the precaution of deleting all current photographs stored on their site. This means that most, if not all, picture links that I have inserted into posts on this forum are now broken and will not work.

I do sincerely apologize to the membership of this forum as this action unavoidably reduces much of the value that may have existed in my contributions here

I am presently exploring alternative options to using a hosting site like photobucket, flikr or any of the rest. Once I have developed an alternative then I will try to recreate links to some of my more recent posts.

Thank you for your patience while this process works itself out.

Likewise. :mad:
 
May i add, before deleting your Photobucket account you can download your whole Photobucket images into one folder. May make life easier.
 
Photobucket Hosting Changes

I've noticed that a few user's photos on this forum have all disappeared. They're users who're hosting their photos with Photobucket. If you host your photos on photobucket, you might want to read this and check on them.

In this day and age Photobucket isn't exactly a hot commodity anymore, but I know some people have been using it since way back when, as many did years ago, and a few still use it today.

The problem is Photobucket decided a few days ago that they will no longer allow users to embed their images on 3rd party sites (such as this forum) - unless users pay them $400 a year. For that price one does get unlimited uploads, etc (edit: unlimited was stated in some articles, photobucket's own site states 502GB of storage). If you don't pay them, all your embedded images show up as dead images on any site you posted them on (yes this is retroactive, so even all your images you uploaded years ago will no longer show up where you posted them on forums, your blogs, etc.). For all practical intents and purposes, Photobucket as an image hosting site has essentially shut down. Theoretically though, you could pay them the $400 to get your low res jpegs to show up again.

With sites like Flickr offering 1TB of hosting for free - you might see how photobucket has just tightened the noose around their own neck and jumped off the platform with this business plan. I'd really hate to be anybody on their PR team right now.

For the news story: http://nypost.com/2017/07/05/how-photobucket-is-now-shaking-down-its-users/

So if you're hosting images on Photobucket, you might want to start looking for a new host.
 
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