Photobucket Goes Rogue

Thanks for the heads up. This looks like an ugly problem. I'm still moving photos to Flickr thanks to the demise of Picasa Web Albums. I think I have moved my travel related photos 5 times over the years & it's a big job, but it's the smallest album set of my 3 on line sets. .

graham121 wrote in post #18392312
Give it time Wilt as PB goes through all the user accounts... I used PB for close to 15 years on a number of non photographic forums, have used 23% of a 2gb account and now every single one of these links is dead......

Well, my linked image of the Photobucket membership options web page is still functioning normally in post 14 of this thread. I continue to watch with interest how this unfolds.

Wilt wrote in post #18392481
Well, my linked image of the Photobucket membership options web page is still functioning normally in post 14 of this thread. I continue to watch with interest how this unfolds.

Meanwhile, in face of this possible/probably change, I'd like to solicit input from POTN members about the best alternatives to Photobucket, with comments about whether or not the suggested alternative is/is not useful to someone with light commercial utilization.

Wilt wrote in post #18392483
Meanwhile, in face of this possible/probably change, I'd like to solicit input from POTN members about the best alternatives to Photobucket, with comments about whether or not the suggested alternative is/is not useful to someone with light commercial utilization.

At the moment Flickr is fine, the difference between the paid and free account is now much smaller. I still keep my paid account, since it's a pretty negligible fee for me, so I don't see any ads served when I visit the site. Others see a ad served about every fourth or fifth I think it is image, as you click through the photos. Posting to POTN is pretty simple, just click the share link and copy paste the BBCode, or you can just copy the image's URL and use Pekka's embed code directly in AMASS. You can make images private, so that they only show to people whom you give the URL to, which includes posting the URL as a link, or as BBCode, to a forum.

Alan

Closed my account yesterday,I haven't used it for years anyway.

Pekka wrote in post #18392299
Remember that if you want to restore the important images in your posts, you may edit the post and upload those here instead (2 per post).
They will always show here, no matter what.

This is a very generous offer Pekka.
And this to me is what makes this such a great community.

Ballen Photo wrote in post #18390881
Expect to see a real kerfuffle arise in the near future over Photobuckets new policy. People have stated they are now holding their photos for ransom, and are demanding $399. per year.
https://www.pcmag.com …links-across-the-internet

Exactly. I used Photobucket for 10 years, and "3rd party hosting" was always free. Now they want $400 a year for the same feature!! The worst part is, instead of just telling users they need to pay going forward, they've also broken all the existing links to embedded images. That means for folks like me who've been using Photobucket for years, all those images - in my case, 10 years' worth on multiple forums! - simply disappear, replaced by some silly little graphic telling viewers I need to upgrade my account in order to restore the links! Seems the folks at Photobucket have taken a page from the playbook of the crooks who write ransomware virus code... I've told them to pound sand, and have found another site that will let me link my images for free. It's called IMGBB.com, it's a snap to sign up, loading images is simple, and it's free.

Whether Photobucket will lose enough subscribers to make them reconsider this greedy, obnoxious new policy remains to be seen. They may well figure they have enough paying subscribers that losing a million or so won't be a problem. Hopefully, though, they lose enough to cause them real pain. Frankly I don't care if they go bankrupt... I didn't use them for photo back-up anyway, only for image hosting, and all the images I uploaded to their site are safely stored on two external hard drives, so if they go under and my photos go with them, it's no big deal. I'm just furious at this new policy and the way they've handled the whole thing.

I'm along time PB user. I downgraded my plan to Plus 50 a few years back and I'm still able to link. I only have 0.9 GB used. I downgraded realizing I'll likely never get to 52 GB. I'm trying to find what Plus 50 costs, if anything. PB only lists pricing Plus 100 and 500. I do remember is it seemed the PB put the brakes on with speed navigating the site, etc after downgrading.

I have to admit I have not being paying attention to any messages that PB is taking a payment off my Visa so I'm not sure what is going on with that.

The thing I don't like about PB is the sharing dialogue boxes are too short. When I post multiple images and I want a sequence them it can be a pain.

digital paradise wrote in post #18392544
I'm along time PB user. I downgraded my plan to Plus 50 a few years back and I'm still able to link. I only have 0.9 GB used. I downgraded realizing I'll likely never get to 52 GB. I'm trying to find what Plus 50 costs, if anything. PB only lists pricing Plus 100 and 500. I do remember is it seemed the PB put the brakes on with speed navigating the site, etc after downgrading.

See the image which I linked in post 14 of this thread...clearly shows $5.99 for Plus 50

digital paradise wrote in post #18392544
I'm along time PB user. I downgraded my plan to Plus 50 a few years back and I'm still able to link.

To me it looks like they still allow 3rd party embedding for customers who had a paid (plus) account (maybe there is something legal text in that old deal that prevents them killing your embeds, which would be great). Still, their new pricing table clearly says that only the $399/y plan allows embedding to other sites.

http://photobucket.com​/pricing

Plus 50 offers 50 of Storage and No Linking or 3rd Party Hosting

Plus 100 offers 100GB of Storage, Unlimited Linking, and No 3rd Party Hosting

Plus 500 offers 500GB of Storage, Unlimited Linking and Unlimited 3rd Party Hosting

Pekka wrote in post #18392550
To me it looks like they still allow 3rd party embedding for customers who had a paid (plus) account (maybe there is something legal text in that old deal that prevents them killing your embeds, which would be great). Still, their new pricing table clearly says that only the $399/y plan allows embedding to other sites.

http://photobucket.com​/pricing

Plus 50 offers 50 of Storage and No Linking or 3rd Party Hosting

Plus 100 offers 100GB of Storage, Unlimited Linking, and No 3rd Party Hosting

Plus 500 offers 500GB of Storage, Unlimited Linking and Unlimited 3rd Party Hosting

...and in spite of what their policy currently states, there are those of us whose free/near free accounts still have working links, resulting in us standing by curiously, waiting to see the shoe drop.

Very strange. I currently have the Plus 20 plan which was paid as a yearly. I can not see any of my photos on PB but the links are all good and showing here.

OK, I just relogged back in to PB and can see my photos.

It looks like the webmaster has screwed up in implementing a site change/upgrade. No notes on what is going on or any changes to how my account will work.

Considering how big PBucket is chances are that changes might take a while to roll out fully to their entire service. So some users might be delayed before the effect hits them. Furthermore it might be that some are simply seeing older caches from the site and thus not the updated version; so a refresh of your web browser cache might suddenly force the computer to reload the photos (and thus show the new version).

Wilt wrote in post #18392483
Meanwhile, in face of this possible/probably change, I'd like to solicit input from POTN members about the best alternatives to Photobucket, with comments about whether or not the suggested alternative is/is not useful to someone with light commercial utilization.

Zenfolio. You can sell lots of items from the site.

They don;t seem to be putting obstacles in the way.