I know this problem is nothing to do with the forum but I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on what to do. Photobucket has decided to charge for third party hosting. Over several years I have been using photobucket to host photos that I show on this forum, and now every photo has been blocked and photobucket is holding them to ransom. I can download my photos and then upload to a free hosting site which will do the same job, but I can't go through my 12,000 posts and edit them with the new image links. Does anyone know a way around this? I'm certainly not paying the £40 per month that photobucket is now demanding
WOW! That's kind of a big deal because I think a lot of people use it here. We'll see if @Lizard King has any suggestions.
Greetz to u Goldie..! why not post them here..? we/you do have an album and GC is a lot more secure than those 'ripoffs' then again I've been known to use MediaFire(free) and the new Dotcome ...mega upload I think its called cheers
No chit? I've been using PB for at least 10 years. The last couple of years they've gotten so spammed up that it is hardly worth bothering with anymore. But I still have a lot of text links to my images that I use, so I don't have to go there and fight the spam every time I want to post something. Lately I've been using Postimage.org — free image hosting / image upload — Postimage.org a lot. It's clean and fast, just like PB, Imageshack, etc. etc. etc. used to be. These sites seem to have a lifespan because they eventually all become junk.
Correct me if I am wrong, @GoldGrower , but the main issue for your posts is that all of your pics in your threads and others you have posted in are pretty much dead links in the water unless you pay Photobucket? Am I correct? ***If I am correct, that will be an issue for many, many threads here at the City because a lot of people use Photobucket. So, a lot of threads will have no pics and dead links...if I am reading this correctly.
Yeah, not sure I quite get his point either. Maybe it's just in Britain . . . ? FWIW: I just went to my PB page, looks normal, and this image is from my account there:
Just found this: PhotoBucket now charges $399 for third-party hosted images - gHacks Tech News There are other articles on it, as well.
Of course, he can use the Media area for his pics. His issue is that every pic he has already posted in his threads will now be dead links. To go back and edit each and every post is not even a feasible option. Everyone is more than welcome to use the Media area. We just ask that you rename your pics to make things a bit cleaner. If you go look now, you mainly see a lot of image numbers. Some people rename their photos but not many.
Yes that is exactly what I believe is happening. But after doing a bit of googling, I'm not sure if they are pinning this new charge on everyone. Here is a photo to show you what I mean I have to admit I'm not 100% sure what is happening, finding the information direct from photobucket hasn't been straightforward
Changing the way I upload photos is an option that I'm not against, but it's all the photos that I have previously embedded in to my posts that is the problem, I have almost 15,000 posts on this forum and most of those will have photos on them. Editing all those links is just not a practical option What image? I don't see one
Copied and pasted from pcmag.... Want embedded Photobucket images to continue loading in forums or on your website? Be prepared to pay $399 per year. Matthew Humphries June 30, 2017 09:45am EST Embedding images on a website or in a forum post is a very common practice, with those images usually living on one of the many well-known image hosting websites. One such host is Photobucket, but a recent change to its subscription tiers means many millions of images across the Internet are no longer going to load outside of Photobucket's own site. The key feature of a Photobucket account we're talking about here is called "3rd Party Hosting." It allows you to embed images from Photobucket in another location on the Internet, e.g. in a forum post or on a website. As Norvic Philatelics discovered, Photobucket changed its terms and conditions and removed the 3rd Party Hosting feature from the lower subscription tiers. If you want to continue using that feature then a Photobucket Plus 500 subscription is required. It costs $39.99 per month or $399 per year. Not only is that very expensive, it means existing Photobucket accounts on lower subscriptions tiers will have any embedded images they've created in the past cease to work. Considering Photobucket has been around since 2003 and hosts over 10 billion images, that's potentially millions of embedded images across the Internet being broken thanks to a policy change. Here's just one example of how this change impacts a forum thread. The worst part of this debacle, according to Ghacks.net, is the fact Photobucket users were apparently given no warning of the change. The subscription features simply changed, and images stopped loading without explanation. There's hope this is a mistake, or that Photobucket's management will realize the scale of the problem they have created with this change. But if that doesn't happen, expect to see that Photobucket broken link image above many times in the coming months.
wow this is awful news. what the hell Photobucket. i could accept a policy of new photos being blocked but to remove all the old ones like that. tutorials wont recover for years after this.
Yeah, the powers-that-be of some websites make some bad choices and decisions and this one is definitely a bad one. If it was just new pics, I could understand that too. But this is a bit much.
I would imagine not many people will pay the $400 a year that they're asking for. Once they realise they have lost half their users, they might change it back. The more users, the more advertising revenue they get, so to me this move just doesn't make any sense
I've had computers since 1992, been online since 1994. From what I've seen during that time, I would say that (nearly) anyone who earns a living in the computer-related field doesn't live in the real world. Nerds live in another universe. The creed of The Nerds: "We change things because we can." The "change" may seem absolutely ridiculous (as does this thing with PB) and usually is. But it is job security for the nerds, so it never ends. We are continually bombarded with "upgrades," some mandatory at some point. Nine out of ten times (and I may be generous) the "upgrades" will be: - More confusing than the old program, which you had gotten used to and liked; - Less user-friendly and less logical (because the nerds don't live in your world); - And will often scramble personal settings you had within the program, so you have to re-do all of that. And this is even true in the expensive CAM software that I have. The people writing the software have NEVER earned their living as a toolmaker, learning all the tricks of the trade on the fly, doing everything for real at ground-zero, absorbing tips passed down from old-timers (which I am now) -- and it shows in the programs they create and phrases they use within the programs. Sometimes they will come out with a neat, useful feature, then in the upgrade it doesn't work as well as it used to -- or at all. This is exactly what recently happened with my CAM software. I hate them all!
In a way i would like to oppose this as a tech dude You may need to realise that the tech dude you claim have extremely limited options. The tech dude is ruled by managers many of which have very limited tech background which mostly cause the chaotic things We are still checking our options on resolving this issue
Note that I said " . . . (nearly) all . . . " I always leave the door open a crack, so you're off the hook. I've long suspected that the overseers don't necessarily know the reality on the ground.