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Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Geoff Halstead
It's got greedy!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/30/photobucket_charging_400yr_3rdparty_pgs/

About to start charging a Usery $399.00/year for 3rd Party Hosting.
Time to look elsewhere as I'm stuffed if I will pay their ransom!
It does of course mean that all the links to posts will now become blank.

Is there another site that provides and easy to use link?
Don't mind paying, but not the Usery amount they want.

Geoff - Solution needed


Geoff, I downloaded all my pictures on Photobucket to the PC last week and then uploaded them to https://postimages.org/login it supports 3rd party hosting, is fairly simple to use, and it is FREE!!

Here is an example.



Ian Mc.

Location: Shropshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

I can't help thinking that we're missing a trick if we continue to use third party hosting.

It may be easier (or not) to use third party hosting, but continued reliance on external hosting, continues the avoidable risk of loosing all forum images in the future.

Just saying.

Bill

Location: Saumur, France

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

I'm sure that you are right, Bill but that is a longer term solution. For the moment an interim easy remedy is required.

Ian Mc.

Location: Shropshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

I'm not in the know Ian, as to how far a robust solution may be from reality, but I do know that a side effect of short term solutions, puts long term ones further away.

Bill

Location: Saumur, France

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Location: Shropshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

The sad part about all of this is it completely ruins a heck of a lot of threads on this forum, no longer will members be able to use the search facility and find helpful and informative pictures. There was some wonderfull stuff on here that has now been lost for ever because of Photobucket greed, completely unfair of them to make this retrospective.

Location: NZ

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Or as I mentioned on July 7th try Flickr for free hosting -

http://pub25.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=2099944454&frmid=5&msgid=1025111&cmd=show

Cheers, Tony.

Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Example of message with my avatar using the aforementioned 'postimage site.
Ta-dah!
Regards,
Steve V.

Location: Polegate, East Sussex, United Kingdom

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Ian Mc,

Experimenting with postimage and it is definitely easier to use compared to PB.

Geoff - Play postponed due to Carport being 30°+

Location: South Nordolk - Next to Suffolk

Wordpress

Ian Williams
The sad part about all of this is it completely ruins a heck of a lot of threads on this forum, no longer will members be able to use the search facility and find helpful and informative pictures. There was some wonderfull stuff on here that has now been lost for ever because of Photobucket greed, completely unfair of them to make this retrospective.


I note that some photobucket collections are still ok, but I say again that wordpress has stated it will never bring in charges for its free domains.

Both the Gordon England archive and Nippy archive are both absolutely free to set up (with the occasional ad visible to users), on Wordpress.com, but you can equally easily set up mylovelypics.wordpress.com and store all your pics in folders that also have a set address for each image. It is incredibly easy to start filing things that can be seen by others if you wish. Or not.

I must admit any web based archive is a dangerous thing - we never know what will happen to the net in years to come - but its worth doing now just to spread the word.

Re: Wordpress

It took a little while to sort my Photobucket account,deleting albums and making sure the pictures are now on Postimage. Account now deleted with appropriate comment.

Location: Piddle Valley

Re: Wordpress

As the saying goes, "There is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer"

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

PhotoBucket still works fine for me. I've used it maybe a dozen times over the last year.
No popups. No demands for money. Just works fine.
Maybe they are trying to nail the people who use it commercially?
Well, until it goes t*** up, I'll stick with it.


Location: Bonnie Galloway

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Dave,

That is what I thought until I suffered the loss of my avatar, quickly followed by an email demanding money

Cheers, tony.

Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Tony. Some years ago I scrapped the email account that PB have for me.

I wonder if that has something to do with it still working fine for me.

Location: Bonnie Galloway

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Dave,

I thought the same as I successfully uploaded via Photobucket 3 rear axle bearing drawing photos for Dennis Nicholas in his '1938/1939 rear axle dilemma' post on June 30th after everyone else had seen their images removed. The 3 photos stayed up for seven days or so, but checking yesterday I see Photobucket have removed them and replaced with their "PLEASE UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT TO ENABLE 3RD PARTY HOSTING" banner. So whilst your above photo may well remain there for seven days or so, it will be removed - keep checking to see how long it lasts.

I've never used my Photobucket commercially, in fact the only photos I've ever uploaded / stored there are those I've posted to this forum over the years - my storage capacity is only 3% full and has never been any greater.

I've never had an email account with Photobucket, so haven't received the demanding email that Tony and possibly others have received, they've simply removed the links to all my photos on the forum which I've posted over many years.

Jeff.

Location: Almost but not quite, the far North East of England

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Jeff, thanks for the heads up there.

I'm neither trying to defend or castigate PB - only that at the moment it still works fine.

I'll monitor the pics that I have recently uploaded here and elsewhere, but meanwhile I have taken the precaution of downloading all my PB stored pics.
PB storage 1% full!

Location: Bonnie Galloway

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

I have never used Photobucket other than for putting pictures up here - and if I remember my picture storage doesn't even register !

I thought from the forum advice some years ago that you had to join the Photobucket (at no charge) in order to put photographs into their storage and then post the photographs here.

I assume the email address was part of the joining- I don't know how they got it otherwise.

I have asked to be unsubscribed !

Tony.

Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

A couple of points that I feel are important.

Although the images embedded in the post are no longer visible 'on' the Forum, the images are still there in the Photobucket account and can be accessed by clicking on them. This is obviously very clunky and will require patience but will be of use to those who have some and want to view the photos. If you delete the photos and close the account the photos linked to the posts can never be seen. Knee- jerk reactions resulting in closing accounts/deleting etc. will only affect users if the Forum, please consider this before 'making your point' to the faceless Photobucket.

Several people have managed to make near complete copies of the Forum using HTTRack and the like. The copies of these, that I have seen, also contain many of the images as well. In short, many of the now 'unobtainable' images have been scraped in these stand-alone copies of the Forum and will still view in the archive copy when it is uploaded - this archive is searchable but, like the Bruce White pages, cannot be added to.

I am taking my time to choose which image hosting site to use next as I have learnt (of late) that 'easy a free' does not mean it will be so forever.

Making copies of the photos held on PB would appear prudent, wish me luck with that one!

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Wishing you bon courage Ruairidh with copying what must me many clunky photographs!

Good to hear that forum archiving is in a good state. Well done to those clairvoyant sages.

Bill

Location: Saumur, France

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Cheers Bill, enjoy racing Grimmond 😜👍🥐🍷

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Ruairidh,

I haven't deleted my Photobucket pictures or unsubscribed from Photobucket.

I can still view all my pictures, but as explained all of them are apparently only available to me and I believe any that were previously put up on the forum over the years will have been replaced by the Photobucket black circle so a forum search won't reveal them.

Presumably if I provide my photobucket name and password others can view the pictures.

I don't know how else the library can be used.

I have only unsubscribed from Photobucket emails.

Cheers, Tony.

Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Tony Press
Ruairidh,

I haven't deleted my Photobucket pictures or unsubscribed from Photobucket.

I can still view all my pictures, but as explained all of them are apparently only available to me and I believe any that were previously put up on the forum over the years will have been replaced by the Photobucket black circle so a forum search won't reveal them.

Presumably if I provide my photobucket name and password others can view the pictures.

I don't know how else the library can be used.

I have only unsubscribed from Photobucket emails.

Cheers, Tony.



DITTO

Ian Mc.

Location: Shropshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

My points were general consideration for all, once deleted you cannot re-link the files and some may not have considered this.

A general rule of thumb is that sharing usernames on public forums is a bad idea - I don't recommend it.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

My points were general consideration for all, once deleted you cannot re-link the files and some may not have considered this.

A general rule of thumb is that sharing usernames and passwords on public forums is a bad idea - I don't recommend it.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Sadly Ruairidh, it appears that Photobucket, after replacing your pictures with their "ransom note", effectively block access to the originally linked image as you describe. The image can be accessed by the owner of the PB account via the PB login process only. Pictures and complete albums can still be downloaded to the account holders PC as before.

Ian Mc.

Location: Shropshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Thanks Ian - I am still able to view other's PB photos but I suspect, going by the shared experiences on here, this too will stop for me in the very near future.

Can you please let me know if you can view this?

http://s123.photobucket.com/user/Ruairidhdunford/media/FC7054F9-B8FB-4E8E-8EFF-7B1A64F9D1EC_zpssf4bibwh.jpg.html

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

NO Ruairidh, It looks like it is beginning to open up to the photo but then defaults to the "ransom note".

Ian Mc.

Location: Shropshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Thanks Ian.

A great shame.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Hi Ruairidh,
Your link comes up with this:-

Warning: include(/mnt/den2-pri1-mnt/code/code/pb-htdocs/public/galleryd/desktop.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /code/pb-htdocs/public/galleryd/index.php on line 122

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/mnt/den2-pri1-mnt/code/code/pb-htdocs/public/galleryd/desktop.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:..:../..:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/share/php/Smarty') in /code/pb-htdocs/public/galleryd/index.php on line 122

Don't know if this is PB generated or Firefox.

Edit: On a second attempt, it comes up with the ransom note!

Location: Bonnie Galloway

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Thanks Dave.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Ruairidh Dunford
Thanks Ian - I am still able to view other's PB photos but I suspect, going by the shared experiences on here, this too will stop for me in the very near future.

Can you please let me know if you can view this?

http://s123.photobucket.com/user/Ruairidhdunford/media/FC7054F9-B8FB-4E8E-8EFF-7B1A64F9D1EC_zpssf4bibwh.jpg.html


Hi Ruairdh, in short NO just the square banner asking me to update.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Same for me R, just get the same grey square 'please update your account' banner - Apple Mac running Safari 10.1.1

Jeff.

Location: Almost but not quite, the far North East of England

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Same here, although I can see all your thumbnails just not allowed to view the pictures full size. Photobucket now seem to be asking for feed back so I gave them some

Location: NZ

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

R,

All I get is-

"Please update your account to enable third party hosting"

Cheers, Tony.

Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Thanks for trying guys.

Such a shame as the photos shared were hugely helpful in so many ways.

Don't delete your PB account or photos, please. A way may be found.

Looking through my albums I can see almost all were uploaded from files on my own computers so there is no need for me to download them - just such a shame that all the links are lost, a real shame.

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Ruairidh,
Greed knows no bounds.
I read somewhere that PB has been taken over, so if true, then the new accountants just see $$$ winging their way from the ransom they have imposed on their users.
Puts them on a par with Ransomware now!
I would think they are now on the receiving end of the Internet's wrath.

Geoff - I've switched to Postimage.

Location: South Nordolk - Next to Suffolk

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Ruairidh Dunford
Thanks for trying guys.

Such a shame as the photos shared were hugely helpful in so many ways.

Don't delete your PB account or photos, please. A way may be found.

Looking through my albums I can see almost all were uploaded from files on my own computers so there is no need for me to download them - just such a shame that all the links are lost, a real shame.


I've never used PB, always staying with Flickr, so my photos are still visible on this and other sites. Of course, there's nothing to say Flickr won't go down the same route as PB at some time in the future so that could, potentially, change. Like Ruairidh, all my photos of Flickr have been uploaded from my PC so if that was to happen then I'd still have them but I have had a complete, terminal, computer crash in the distant past that did result in the loss of some photos and so now I regularly back up my important documents and my photos to an external hard drive just in case. Of course, the hard drive might not survive a fire but a hard copy photograph album would be similarly at risk. You can only do so much!!

Steve

Location: North Yorkshire

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

We're not the only ones..........

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15919224/photobucket-broken-images-amazon-ebay-etsy-paid-update

Jeff.

Location: Almost but not quite, the far North East of England

Re: Photobucket warning! $399/year charge!

Just found this on the Historic Military Vehicle Forum:-

My recommendation to anybody who has photos stored with them is download all your photos and save them to your computer. Will bet anyone (one stale donut) that within one year Photobucket will be gone.

Location: Oxfordshire