Changes to Photobucket picture hosting

[whole diary]

[bobm]

Just come across this post on a blog which has interesting ramifications for anyone using Photobucket to host pictures on here - or another forum.

http://blog.norphil.co.uk/2017/06/photobucket-alert-new-sort-of-ransom.html

[ChrisB]

I notice that BNM's photo grab of Paddington (in the author's death thread) has already gone....

[bobm]

One of many I'm afraid.   Found quite a few threads which make a lot less sense now.

[grahame]

Just come across this post on a blog which has interesting ramifications for anyone using Photobucket to host pictures on here - or another forum.

http://blog.norphil.co.uk/2017/06/photobucket-alert-new-sort-of-ransom.html

Just over 900 posts on the Coffee Shop have embedded images from Photobucket.  Further analysis to follow.

[LiskeardRich]

All of mine here are hosted on photobucket.

Graham could it be considered to allow larger attachments with them hosted by the forum? At least then something like this won't see us lose a load of content in future?

[grahame]

From the post BobM quoted:

Photobucket, which is owned by Fox Interactive Media, is an image storage site.  It provides the facility to store photos and other images, allows users to create many albums and sub-albums, and provides links so that you can either direct friends to look at your photos, or embed those images into other websites, blogs and forums.  You can have a free account which displays many adverts, not only on site, but popping up, or you can have a paid account which gives you more storage (in various stages).

However, they recently changed their terms and conditions with no prior announcement.  With the lower levels of subscription (my basic paid level has been abandoned for more expensive models) they have eliminated the ability to embed images elsewhere - something which they erroneously refer to as Third Party Hosting).  With the lowest level of subscription they don't even allow linking, so it is just a place to store photos as a back-up from your own computer.  What they call Third Party Hosting, embedding images in another place, will now cost US$399.99 - per annum!

How does this affect me?
If you are only an occasional user of forums you may not notice any difference yet.  But if you are a Photobucket user, and if you have embedded images anywhere there is a strong possibility that this image will no longer display.   Here is a post from the Stampboards forum.  Stampboards is a forum using php software and has no image hosting capability for users (the logos etc are obviously hosted on the php host).   The forum is now slowly disintegrating:

[grahame]

All of mine here are hosted on photobucket.

Graham could it be considered to allow larger attachments with them hosted by the forum? At least then something like this won't see us lose a load of content in future?

Maximum attachment size here is 1 Mbyte ... reluctant to increase that as that should be plenty for images backing up regular posts and we've not got the resource / capacity for becoming a photo bucket replacement.   Suggest people grab pictures from the Fox site, resize and amend posts to show them resized.   May review decision / advise later; this is a first reaction

[grahame]

Three members have over 50 posts that use photobucket - between those three members accounting for almost 700 of the images that will / may appear broken.   One other member who's inactive has 45, no-one else more than 20.   I will message the three most effected.

[JayMac]

Money grabbing bar stewards!!! They want $399 a year for embedding MY photos in other websites.

With no notice or consultation either. Gits.

I suspect I'm the user with the most Photobucket embedded images on this forum. I'm in the process of downloading all my photos hosted on Photobucket and moving them to another site. Will take some time as I'm using an old laptop, having packed my PC away ready for a house move.

I've done a test post edit in the Michael Bond (Paddington Bear) thread where I've hotlinked the image I originally embedded with Photobucket, using my Google Drive cloud storage instead.

I will try to repair some other recent threads over the coming weeks, but sadly it'll be very difficult to repair them all as most hosted photos were in a general album with no reference to a particular topic or post.

Photobucket. Ash holes. 

[grahame]

Money grabbing bar stewards!!! They want $399 a year for embedding MY photos in other websites.

With no notice or consultation either. Gits.

I suspect I'm the user with the most Photobucket embedded images on this forum. I'm in the process of downloading all my photos hosted on Photobucket and moving them to another site. Will take some time as I'm using an old laptop, having packed my PC away ready for a house move.

I've done a test post edit in the Michael Bond (Paddington Bear) thread where I've hotlinked the image I originally embedded with Photobucket, using my Google Drive cloud storage instead.

I will try to repair some other recent threads over the coming weeks, but sadly it'll be very difficult to repair them all as most hosted photos were in a general album with no reference to a particular topic or post.

Photobucket. Ash holes. 

If you have all of the images from a general album downloaded with a name that can be linked to a URL, we may be able to find the right ones and put hosted copies on our space to correct the current situation.   In other words, if they're all together on a memory stick I may be able to automate the update.  Probably impractical to upload the whole lot to our site without filtering, or to email to me.

Note - such help is done as a "best endeavours" offer; under the forum agreement, members remain responsible for their content.

[JayMac]

I'm in the process of downloading all my content from Photobucket to a USB hard drive.

[paul7575]

Maximum attachment size here is 1 Mbyte ... reluctant to increase that as that should be plenty for images backing up regular posts and we've not got the resource / capacity for becoming a photo bucket replacement.   Suggest people grab pictures from the Fox site, resize and amend posts to show them resized.   May review decision / advise later; this is a first reaction

I've massaged a few photo attachments down in size to around about (or even less than) 100 Kb - and they have seemed to be quite adequate for the purpose of illustrating a point in a post, I don't think current size limits are much of a problem.   

Just means you cannot upload a typical image straight off a high definition camera or phone without a couple of minutes work really.

Paul

[bobm]

The only problem with using the forum attachment method is that some browsers don't show the image by default. Users have to click on them to open them. 

They also appear at the bottom of a post which isn't always the best place if you have accompanying text descriptions.

[JayMac]

I'm in the process of downloading all my content from Photobucket to a USB hard drive.

Nope. Ancient laptop hasn't got the oomph. Mobile devices haven't got the capacity. I'm going to have to wait until PC is unpacked at new home. Couple of weeks.

Edited to add:

It appears that downloading from Photobucket may be problematical at the moment. The website and app keeps crashing. No doubt caused by many thousands of pissed off users wanting to download their photos. They've done an excellent job of alienating many long term users (I've been with them since 2006) in one fell swoop. I'm cancelling my extra storage and ad free subscriptions once I can recover my photos.

[PhilWakely]

Not sure if I am missing something here. I guess I am one of the three as I have received a message from Graham. I have a free account with Photobucket, but my images are apparently still viewable here....

as an aside......... where was I when this picture was taken?