if you use photobucket for image hosting you MUST READ THIS

[joedoh]

Photobucket is not a free 3rd party host any longer. http://photobucket.com/pricing

Only the top tier, $40/mo or $400/yr will allow 3rd party hosting.
what is 3rd party hosting?: hotlinking, or embedding your image on a forum by using IMG tags from an image hosting site. photobucket was orginally a company designed around doing just that. now they are making people pay for bandwidth, and worse than that, they are also placing ads on YOUR images, monetizing both sides.

why is this bad?: It is bad because if you have a project thread or a how-to article, your images will be blocked from linking to photobucket, a generic "upgrade this account to unlock it" image will be shown instead. click my project thread to see what this will look like.

my images arent affected.: YET. yet. there is only one plan that allows the 3rd party hosting and it is the top plan. they will allow direct linking with the second tier, which would be a text link directing you to photobucket ad pages.

what can I do?: do NOT pay for the upgrade. a free account is only good for online storage, not sharing. save all your images you dont have anywhere else and DELETE YOUR PHOTOBUCKET ACCOUNT.

dont let them pressure you, how many years will you pay $40/mo just to save your forum posts? find another online host like flickr or imgur or even use the space your ISP gives you and host them yourself. better to rip it like a band-aid and change now.

older guys will remember how bad it was when angelfire/tripod/geocities tried to monetize their free hosting and people did not pay, search results were full of dead links. this will happen with all your how-tos, projects, and even the ones you rely on for fixing the wifes car, or blogs with pumpkin carving ideas. photobucket was FOUNDED on being a free image host and now they have changed their mind. the impacts will be far reaching. DO NOT BUY AN UPGRADE unless you plan to keep paying forever.

[Nut Case]

JD

I'd appreciate your input on how to handle and download photo's to this forums. Before the end of the year I'll be needing direction on the starting of my build thread. Any input from you or any others in the forum getting started. I have benefited from so much great information, example so far I have a full 3"binder full of wonderful was to solve may questions. Once I get rolling I hope to provide info/procedures to pay it forward to someone else.

JD strong work you builds are so creative and easy to follow, keep on keepin on

NC

[GR8-68]

The nice thing about this forum compared to some others I have used is you can down load images straight from your PC or your phone, you really do not need a photo hosting site.

I will not pay 40.00 a month to host photos, I think photobucket just shot their own foot on that one. Greedy america at it's greatest again. That is why there are advertisements to pay the costs.

[abig84]

you think they would start really cheap, if it was $1 a month then i would and a lot of people would probably do it. but 40 bucks is insane when there are other free sites out there. even if you have a build thread, worse case scenario is you re-download the pics and just have to edit your thread by posting in the new links, will probably take hours but isnt the end of the world

i actually just used photobucket like a few minutes ago posting in another thread, that site is loaded down with so many ads now its almost unusable, had to click off 5 pop up ads which you have to wait for a while just to get them to come up just to upload a picture.

at work i cant even use it due to it detected ad-block and says i have to disable it.

so i was actually going to make a thread on this site or another asking whats another good easy photo sharing site to use for forums?

[CG]

I only post pics on two forums. Here and the HAMB. Both have free hosting built in. Ive never had any kind of bucket account. Too many times over the years I have seen dead links on builds and stuff. That's why I have never used those.

[joedoh]

Originally Posted by abig84

you think they would start really cheap, if it was $1 a month then i would and a lot of people would probably do it. but 40 bucks is insane when there are other free sites out there. even if you have a build thread, worse case scenario is you re-download the pics and just have to edit your thread by posting in the new links, will probably take hours but isnt the end of the world

i actually just used photobucket like a few minutes ago posting in another thread, that site is loaded down with so many ads now its almost unusable, had to click off 5 pop up ads which you have to wait for a while just to get them to come up just to upload a picture.

at work i cant even use it due to it detected ad-block and says i have to disable it.

so i was actually going to make a thread on this site or another asking whats another good easy photo sharing site to use for forums?

they advertised "ad-free" for 2.99/mo (then 5.99/mo) as recently as january, sounds like nobody signed up then either.

this is a SHORT TERM CASH GRAB. they know that their bandwidth will be minuscule after this change while ad revenue is higher than ever, leading to a large cash position to leverage a sale or outright closure. the $40/mo suckers will be just that, suckers, my money says they will attempt to be a picasa (dead) replacement or alternative to google photos with storage and print ordering ONLY.

CG: only recently has forum hosting been upgraded to work well on mobile devices, which is where most users work from now. photobucket had a an app that uploaded right from your camera roll. if you think about it, you have seen a lot of people complain about the clumsiness of the forum image interface both here and the hamb. its better now, but it wasnt always. not to mention that photobucket offered free hosting from around 2003, lots of entrenched users.

[In The Ten Ring]

I have noticed photobucket becoming more and more problematic. I'll save my images from there and delete the account.

Thank you.

[61_FL_Apache]

Photobucket sucks these days and looks to be getting worse. Im not about to move all my pics to another hosting site and change links here. I have too many pics here for that.

Whatever happens will happen.

[100%Chevy]

Photo Bucket has been offering me a 2.49 a month deal.
I've been using it for free,but like everyone says,the adds are getting rediculose.
Last night, a full page add popped up and wouldn't go away.Also,I can't load pics that i took before I joined this host.
Looking for something better.
Mike.

[hewittca]

Crap, I have a few of my concept photo threads that I used Photobucket for, before I got fed up with them and moved over to flickr. I like to host my photos because the forum attachment method will only let you do 5 photos at a time.

[special-K]

P-bucket has been getting more and more convoluted every year. Popping ads up in your face anywhere they'll fit. I'll be in my library in the process of sharing a picture and the whole page gets covered by this ad BS with a place in the top corner to click "Continue to site?". Continue to site??? I was already there doing what I came there to do until I was so rudely interrupted!! It is so painfully slow it hurts.

I have a lot of pictures there. I like it because I have lost pictures twice in broken computers but every picture from back to '04 when I opened an account are still there. They keep "warning" me I am about to exceed my bandwidth and will lose all my pictures if that happens. Hmmm... funny. When I look at their graph it shows I'm about 33% in 13 years. I think I'm safe with 67% left.

I pretty much only use it for backup storage now and download pics from there back to my computer again to share. Won't that still be free. I don't do any of that sharing, other than IMG copy/paste. I mostly do videos with that because it doesn't work with the "Manage Attachments" feature of this site.

[abig84]

i always find pop up ads interesting, has anyone ever been uploading a picture on that site and stop, read the ad then click on it and buy something. i wonder how little that actually happens. i just immediately look for the X the second they come up.

[abig84]

well, just tried to upload a picture on photobucket 10 minutes ago after leaving this site for another site, shut off adblock.... 30 second later i get a little window that pops up and a voice says "MICROSOFT WANTS TO INFORM YOU YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH A VIRUS PLEASE CALL THE NUMBER LISTED"

little window gives you the ransomware crap of dont shut off the computer of your computer will be locked and gives you a number to call. so naturally i shut off the computer as it locked my google chrome window. all is ok. so i guess im not using photobucket anymore period

[Tx Firefighter]

I stand to lose about 10k pictures in all of this. It will really affect a ton of threads I have done on this site in the last 14 years.

That said, I switched over to Smugmug a couple of years ago. You don't know what truly ad free, Cadillac smooth photo hosting is until you try them. It's 50 bucks per year and soooo worth it. I used to pay 50 per year for Photobucket Pro before I found Smugmug. No comparison.

[Dieselwrencher]

I used to use pb for all my photos. I quit using them about 2 years ago and have just been uploading the pics to my computer then putting them on the forums. I guess I better figure out how to get all my pics of pb and just cancel my account before they do it for me.

[joedoh]

Originally Posted by Nut Case

JD

I'd appreciate your input on how to handle and download photo's to this forums.
NC

sorry NC I missed your question! :doh:

for downloading, there are two ways, one way (on a windows box) is to alt+prt scrn, it will save a picture of what is shown on your screen. you may have to ctrl+v into a folder to "save" the picture, been a while since I used a windows machine. for mac the same thing can be done with command+shift+4 and then drag a window of what you want to save, it will automatically save to your desktop.

if you know what you are looking at without the text, you can just right click and "save image" to a folder of your choosing.

if the person has a public photobucket, or if you are saving your own albums, you can go to your photobucket library page and on the right is a "download album" link that sets up a zip file for you. you will have to do this with every sub album too.

keep in mind that all that is going away is the 3rd party linking right now. your albums will still be on photobucket site, until like I said I suspect the sale goes through or they boot every one.

for hosting of your pictures on this website, use the "manage attachments" link on the posting page. you are limited to 5 at a time though. if you want to use 3rd party, I signed up for flickr but you have to realize there will be a glut of people doing the same and flickr may change their terms too as a response .

thanks for the kind words as always NC, cant wait to see your project.

[Nut Case]

Joeduh

I keep my photos of an exterior hard drive. Can I up load to the this site directly from my external hard drive. Similar to attaching a photo to an e-mail.

Thanks for your help.

Nut Case

PS :Getting close to pouring the floor.

[spacedebris]

yeah, I just downloaded all my photos from photobucket, deleted all my albums and deleted my account. no way in hell am I paying $400 a year for something that is free everywhere else. Photobucket is obviously dying.

[Beetle]

Now I gotta go back and redo all my threads. Great. Thanks for the info JD

[Grumpy old man]

Well this looks like it's going to make a mess of the board ? Anyone know of another free site or how to load directly from my pc ?

[Bomp]

Pbucket sent me an email last night......

thread with 303,067 hits being held hostage for $40 a month is what it tells me....

Gone all gone..........

[Gotenntitans]

Originally Posted by Grumpy old man

Well this looks like it's going to make a mess of the board ? Anyone know of another free site or how to load directly from my pc ?

I searched yesterday and found tinypic.com will allow free photo storage that you can post from. Set up a free account and tried it yesterday and works just as p-bucket did. GTT

[abig84]

Originally Posted by Bomp

Pbucket sent me an email last night......

thread with 303,067 hits being held hostage for $40 a month is what it tells me....

Gone all gone..........

they actually sent you a email saying youre going to lose a thread unless you give them money?

i have a few build threads on other sites, i dont think it would take me more then like 3-4 hours to just re-upload all them pictures and edit all my posts

[61_FL_Apache]

My pics are now being held hostage by photosuckit! Im not paying them squat!!

[Grumpy old man]

Originally Posted by abig84

they actually sent you a email saying youre going to lose a thread unless you give them money?

i have a few build threads on other sites, i dont think it would take me more then like 3-4 hours to just re-upload all them pictures and edit all my posts

you have 3-4 hours to replace pics to old threads ? I wouldn't waste 2-3 minutes doing it .