Hi all, Has anyone encountered this situation? I was looking through my Elmira Horsa Glider thread today and find that a large number of images that I posted from Photobucket have been replaced by a notice from Photobucket advising me to "...update your account to enable 3rd party hosting." I went to the website www.photobucket.com/p500 as suggested and find that there is a $399 annual fee for the update. Can anyone tell me what is going on? As an example, go to the Elmira Horsa Glider thread, page 9, and then just scroll down a bit to see what I am seeing. Thanks, Charles
Sudden policy change of PB. Linking photos to other websites is no longer allowed, unless you pay $399 a year, which is ridiculous. Unless they change it back, there's nothing that can be done about it. Your images are still save on their servers, but you cannot link to them any more. You might want to switch to Imgur or Flickr instead. I've now download my 6000+ photos from PB and will be uploading them to another host in the future. Updating all the links will take too much time though, so I'll take it one active topic at the time.
Hi Charles, I noticed it on some other topics with images posted by others too ... Wow, just when I had figured out how to post photos into my posts without always bothering Pat. Although other than all the darn pop ups that appear on the Photobucket page, I haven't had too many problems even as of 3 days ago. Do you think they are trying to capitalize on those with larger photo files, because I generally store my photos and documents in an external hard drive and I only use photobucket to reduce the size and insert them into a post. I have deleted some photos after use and only have 11 saved in my bucket. I don't really understand the tech end of much of this stuff and that's why I ask. John
I installed an ad-block to deal with those ads and pop-up. Did not really bother me. BTW, I did have a paid account until they wanted to charge me more for less... (about 6 years ago) Photo size is not the issue, it's supposedly about their costs vs. revenu. Supposedly too many non-paying customers... But that's not really true because they already had all the necessary tools to limit bandwith. And paying customers now have to pay 900% more as well. BTW, there is plenty of easy software to resize photos. I'm still using Google's Picasa (no longer supported) for many different reasons, including easy editing, tagging, resizing, etc.
I thank the both of you for your comments. I have looked into this a bit further with respect to my postings, and find that the damage is much more than I originally thought. While I have not looked at every single post that contained a photobucket image that I posted on the Elmira Horsa Glider thread, from what I have seen, it appears that all the images I posted on that thread from Photobucket have been removed. I also looked at postings I made to threads started by others, and find that all Photobucket images I posted on those threads have also been removed. I have also noticed that Photobucket images posted by others have in some cases been removed.
I thank the both of you for your comments. I have looked into this a bit further with respect to my postings, and find that the damage is much more than I originally thought. While I have not looked at every single post that contained a Photobucket image that I posted on the Elmira Horsa Glider thread, from what I have seen, it appears that all the images I posted on that thread from Photobucket have been removed. I also looked at postings I made to threads started by others, and find that all Photobucket images I posted on those threads have also been removed. I have also noticed that Photobucket images posted by others have in some cases been removed. Additionally, I cannot post anything from Photobucket at this time. John, you said that you store images and documents on an external hard drive and use Photobucket for editing purposes, and to insert them into a post. Do you then delete the image from Photobucket? I have inadvertently deleted a Photobucket image a few times and found that the image then disappears from the post. Have you experienced that? Jpz4, was it a time consuming process to download 6000+ photos from PB? Was the download done one image at a time, or in some bulk process? I don't have nearly that amount of photos, but doing it one at a time could still take a while. Thanks again for the help. I will be contacting PB to see if they would be willing to at least "grandfather" in the photos I have to posted to date. Probably not, but I can at least let them know my disappointment with their decision on the posts. Charles
Charles, You are correct... I went back to look at the LCT 544 Photos topic, because I recall deleting specific photos, and they no longer appear in the thread. I guess I didn't know they needed to remain in photobucket. Lesson learned... I do have a different display with a Cat, and that the image cannot be found. This is different from the speedometer seen in other posted images in other threads. I wish there was an easier process, like just posting a thumbnail, but that it would be instantly appear larger for viewing. John
Charles, you can select one album at a time for downloading. They will email you a download link. While you are waiting for them to process it you can already add more albums. Took me about an evening to download 40 (sub)albums. Note that .gif files and film formats will be skipped.
Pat, John, As with the other members, all of my PhotoBucket-hosted photos in my postings are gone. Only the photos that Pat added remain. I assume that the other third-party hosting options mentioned above (Imgur and Flickr) are no-cost? It will take some time, but I am willing to make the effort to convert to a new photo host. However, what if one day all of the the other third-party hosting services eventually decide to charge exorbitant fees. That means there could be more lengthy conversions in the future. When the Battlebus Forum crashed almost five years ago, Pat made the wise decision to go "independent" from a forum hosting service (I believe it was Yuku) and stand-up this Forum. Not sure about the technical issues, but maybe the Forum could become "independent" with regards to photo-hosting. I'd rather help annually fund this option than eventually have to pay a third-party host when they all start charging fees. Again, I'm not sure about the technical considerations or the cost, but is this something the Forum should consider? R/ Kevin
Hi Kevin, I completely agree with you. It is a shame that we can be held hostage by Photobucket and potentially others on our forum that documents photographic evidence. It hurts all the work we have done so far, plus makes it uninteresting to those who are not members browsing, and future members. I wonder what Pat might suggest, or come up with... John
Hi Kevin, All my images are hosted on my server which is also home to the Forum itself. When I say 'my server', I mean a certain amount of space on my internet service provider's (ISP) servers. I use an Irish company called LetsHost, which IIRC, charge me somewhere in the region of €120/yr, including the domain name whitebeamimages.ie. I think I have about 4 or 5 Gbs of space used from an allowance of, again IIRC, 16GBs. I think there is a process called FTP which allows people upload and/or download files in a controlled manner to somebody else's server space. I'll check all this out tonight and send a message to LetsHost to see if they have a possible solution which would allow Forum members to upload their images to my server space and at the same time prevent unauthorised access to my other files. Regards, Pat
It is not only Photobucket that causes these sort of problems. I used Smugmug and Picasa in the past. Picasa has become Google Photo and guess what? Google does NOT allow linking into third party software, i.e. you can not imbed your photos in a forum or on a website (well, you can, but with a 15-action workaround). Ultimately I expect this to happen with any of the current free services. Remember, nothing is free in our world today. The best soultion is Pat's.... just pay for your private storage and hope they don't go bust or change their policies. The ULTIMATE solution is to own your very own server.... I also use services like Hightail, Amazon, and others.... paid storage.... and each has its specific issues... and risks. I am a photographer with currently over 750.000 digital images to store and manage, so I DO invest some money into backups like the above. But that's not doable for the average user who just wants to store and share some pictures now and then....
Hi Everyone, interesting to read all the comments about Photo Bucket. Same case here. All the links are gone. I will move to a new provider as well. Not sure how long this takes.
Hi Hans, Yes, PB sure complicated things for those of us who used their service. I'm wondering, if you were to go to a new service provider, would it then be possible to re-insert an image at the same location in a thread, where we now have only the PB speedometer looking thing. I don't think I would be able to do that, but perhaps administrators could. For the most part, I have photos on thumb drives, which is where I would go to upload them to a new service provider. Charles
Charles, you can edit your messages, which should also mean you can replace the photo links. So the answer is: YES
Hi John, Yes, a possible solution, but images uploaded in this manner are being stored on my server space. I am in the process of ascertaining from LetsHost as to the cost of increasing my space on their shared server. Regards, Pat
John and Pat, Another problem, perhaps, at least on my computer... When I signed in as a member, the photo posted by John above appeared to be "full size" and was easily viewable. When I reviewed the post when I was not signed in, as a guest would, the photo was a small thumbnail size and difficult to view. When I clicked on the thumbnail photo to expand the size, as with the old website, I was directed to log in. Regardless, I think we have to have a photo-posting process that will accommodate the non-member guests that visit the website. Otherwise, non-members will be restricted to viewing just thumbnail photos and that will take away much of the usefulness and enjoyment of the site. Do you see the same issue when you are not signed in as a member? R/ Kevin
Hi Kevin, Thanks for the feedback. I have now changed the Guest permission 'View Attachments to Posts' from 'Never' to 'Allow' which should resolve the issue you refer to above. Can you check this again Kevin and let me know please? In relation to the 'File Upload' option, I have at present used 5.05GBs of my server space allowance of 14.65GBs. The question is how rapidly will this used space grow over time? Lets run a trial and find out. I have just set an individual file size limit for this option to 1Mb, with an allowance of 10 file uploads per post. Can everyone who wants to edit their existing posts please now do so and we'll see how this affects the used space on the server over the next week or so. Thanks, Pat
Pat, Changing the Guest permission 'View Attachments to Posts' from 'Never' to 'Allow' seems to have worked. I can view John’s photo in the post above at “full size” without signing in a member. That appears to be a relatively easy fix. With regards to moving the photos for my posts over to your host server, I might need some help with regards the 10 uploads per post limit. My first post to the Lecaudy thread (Dec 13, 2012) serves as the keystone for the entire thread with an overview of my research and site visit to Hiesville and it contains 19 photos. Can we develop a work-around? I’m not sure how to split the post in half and I would prefer not to do it. Can you adjust the upload limit for one specific post? (I don’t think any of my other posts come close to the 10-upload limit.) If you can’t adjust the limit, perhaps I can upload the photos to your A-Drive and you can insert the photos into my post. Let me know what you think. We can coordinate this effort via PM or email. Thanks, Kevin