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Photobucket image hosting

Craig

Craig

TS Administrator
Hi all,

Just a word of warning to people who host their images on Photobucket such signatures, photos from trips, screenshots of RCT etc. Photobucket have recently stopped allowing third party hosting of images, meaning if you have a signature or images hosted on there, they won't show when you link them in a post.

This appears to be being rolled out on a per account basis at the moment, as not everyone is affected...yet. I'd recommend hosting your images elsewhere such as TinyPic, Imgur etc. Photobucket will let you upgrade your account to allow third party image hosting, all for the bargain price of $39.99 a month/$399 a year (nope.jpg!).

Signatures/Avatars
If anyone would like us to host your signature and/or Avatar, then please get in touch with me via PM. I'll be happy to upload them and update your profile accordingly.

Image hosting for RCT images etc
I'd recommend uploading to a third party site such as imgur etc. We've recently installed a plugin meaning Imgur images should show without any BB code whatsoever. If you have any difficulty doing this, take a look at this here post. The instructions provided are for imgur, however should be broadly the same for most popular image hosting sites. If you have any difficulty, feel free to shout up in this topic.
 
Thanks Craig.

Here's a [profanity removed] version of what I've just posted on Diaspora:

I’ve been using photobucket for about 15 years. I have thousands of images hosted on it, from screenshots of RCT, through forum sigs, to build photos of my Ghostbusters proton pack. All linked to on various forums.
It’s an image hosting site. This it it’s sole reason to exist.

Now, all of a sudden, they are quite literally holding their users to ransom, demanding FOUR HUNDRED US DOLLARS A YEAR just to be able to use their service!

Over a decade of documentation of various hobbies cut off with no warning. To re-host all the images somewhere else, and go through every post I’ve ever made and edit them is not possible. Actually, on GBfans, it definitely isn’t possible, as once a post has been read, it cannot be edited!
Click to expand...

Livid is not the word. There's no point in trying to re-host it all, no one has that much time. Hope you all enjoyed Blithering lodge while you could, guys.
 
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In the words on a friend of mine which really sums it all up “They have caused irreparable damage to the vast majority of forums on the web. They make the Goldeneye virus look good !!”

Photobuket has certainly pulled the rug out from everyone and brought forums that rely on photos down on their knees.

Following taken from PhotoBucket account

http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us ... otos-safe-

"My Account Has Been Restricted Due To 3rd Party Hosting. Are My Photos Safe?
Don't worry, your photos are safe! Even though 3rd party hosting features have been disabled, you can always access your photos by logging into your account."

http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us ... y-hosting-

"What Is 3rd Party Hosting?
Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website.

For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting."

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photo ... ed-images/

"For users who are affected by this, it is important to note that the images are not gone. They are still hosted on Photobucket, and you can actually load them right then and there by right-clicking on them and selecting "open image in new tab" or "open link in new tab" depending on the web browser that you are using. This opens the Photobucket website where the original image is displayed."

I found this interesting information

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photob ... edded-web/

It explains why 3rd party hosting is highly expensive for the photo hosting site, how advertising revenues are declining and they go on to say that it's very likely that other photo hosting site will follow suite. Even though it puts things into balance, it's not great news for the future of forums.

Good luck @DiogoJ42 here are two replies which I got from PB

eSUrSxs.png


"Hi Roy

As it all stands now, we will not be adding a grandfather clause to older accounts. I have forward your suggestion to our executive team, but as of now, it is not in the plan going forward. Again I am sorry" Photo bucket
 
*puts on hat of surprise*

Who thought that a photo hosting site that you pay nothing for might end up unable to continue offering its services for free?

Filing imgur in the same category, but at least they've figured out how to get their ad tracking code onto 3rd party sites so they can live off that data for a while longer...
 
$400 a YEAR?! That's nuts. There's making money and then there's just plain greed.
 
When I first got the email a few days ago, I assumed it was just spam that had slipped through the net. But then I looked into it and it turns out they really are mad enough to attempt to charge $400 a year for third party image hosting.

It's not even like it's a good website. For most of the time I've been using Photobucket, it's been a broken, ad-ridden mess, but I've put up with it because all of my images are there and it's free. I wouldn't consider paying any amount of money to use the site in its current state, yet alone $400 a year! I mean, who are they expecting to pay that? Particularly when there are plenty of other image hosts out there that still offer third party hosting for free. It's just such a wildly astronomical figure.

This is a pain for me personally because I have uploaded quite a bit of graphical work to various forums over the years. It's saddening to know a lot of it will become virtually lost to the Web. I've started migrating my Photobucket images across to Imgur and I'll probably re-link some of my more recent threads but I'll never get round to everything I've ever linked. It's over ten years worth of images!

The real damage though is what this will do to old forum threads across the wider Web. What were previously valuable archived resources will become pointless, unreadable threads full of broken images. Photobucket have just wrecked large portions of the Internet in what seems to be a madcap scheme to extort its users with a desperate cash grab. I can't see it playing out well for anyone involved.

I feel like there are lessons to be had here about the fragility of digital media. For image hosting in future, I'll certainly be taking precautions not to have all my eggs in the same basket.
 
If anyone needs their images hosted i have a web server which I use for my sites - I will happily upload them and send you a link
 
I'm curious if they offered it at a more reasonable price, say £2 a month, or £20 a year (2 months free!) people would take them up on it just to save old content.
the price they are asking for is extortionate. Totally shooting themselves in the foot.
 
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the cost were a lot lower, such as what Tim's suggested, but $400/year?! Sod that! It's nothing more than extortion!
 
There is an online petition to reverse the third party hosting rules, I've signed it, but I can't see how the government can legally intervene

https://www.change.org/p/photobucket-reverse-the-photobucket-third-party-rule

However, I really think that Photobucket has really shot themselves in the foot as the image that they have used to replace all our photos with is probably the most posted image ever on the web and the image is really advertising why you should never use photobucket
 
I've just found out that there are plugins for Chrome and Firefox to circumvent the Photobucket restriction.

If you install it in your browser, you should be able to see again the pictures that were blocked when Photobucket made its 'changes'.

The links to the plugins are -

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/photobucket-embedded-fix/?src=search

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/...ed-fix/naolkcpnnlofnnghnmfegnfnflicjjgj?hl=en


I use Chrome and have installed the add-on.

Don't know if this will last. But at least is good to read old threads again.

This fix doesn't mess with your account, it doesn't require any login or password.

Only those people that install this fix in their browsers will be able to see the blocked images.
 
At the moment adding ~original to the end of the URL circumvents it too, but that means the original poster has to go back and edit all their posts.
 
I'm editing all my diary builds on another forum for all to see, however there are other forums that I'm on that don't allow you to edit your post after a few hours from posting. The above plug-ins don't allow others to view my pics, unless they also download the plugins. I've down loaded it, and now I can view all Photobucket blocked pics without having to right click each individual pics :)
 
In all honesty, rather than editing the URLs to the Photobucket workaround, you'd be much better spending time re-uploading the pictures to another provider. The more such a workaround is published, the more likely it is that said workaround will stop. I really can't see it sticking around for all that long!
 
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