Aw C'mon PBase

This latest blow up is feeling like a Pro Rate situation...

How do you lose a complete site like this?

Quite frankly, I've never liked them and always thought they were woefully underpowered and slow.

It seems like every time I follow a link to a pbase site, 90% of the time it will be slow and at least 30%+ the link will not load at all.

I know they've been around for a long time and were one of the first to gear towards photographers, but they just suck... there's better options now.

I waited to use them for hosting for a long long time. Then they seemed to get things together. But I've also noticed several slow downs lately...

This afternoon I was checking my site counters and noticed zero hits for the day on my PBase account. I've never had zero hits! So I went to log on and nothing. Apparently they have been offline for over 24 hours now. But some of the shots I've got linked back to them are still being served up. Not very fast but most I've checked are still there. Regardless, I had planned to upload new shots today that people were waiting to proof. Now I have some pissed people to deal with.

Jon.

Todd Lambert wrote in post #8705292
...It seems like every time I follow a link to a pbase site, 90% of the time it will be slow and at least 30%+ the link will not load at all...

I had never paid much attention to it until a few days ago, but I've noticed that pbase seems to consistently be the slowest loading site for images attached to posts. The post will load, other images will be filled in, and the status bar will show 'waiting for pbase.com' as the images slloooooowwwwly load up.

I have always used pbase and quite honestly I have always liked it. One certainly can't complain about the pricing but Slug seems to act like this a something he is running out of his garage part time. The lack of response to customer concerns has always rubbed me the wrong way but as far as loading and displaying images I have not had issues. I never load any full size images there and perhaps those that do have loading issues is connected to larger sized shots than those that I load. They were one of the early entrants into this area and just didn't pay attention to their customers, never added much in the way of new functionality and I do think that they are continually losing its customer base.

I like the way you can customize you part of this to whatever you want. Compare that functionality to Flickr and it should be booming but it is not. This latest debacle is just another one in a long list of failures. It always seems to be server failures. Go figure.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #8705273
This latest blow up is feeling like a Pro Rate situation...

Not quite sure what this means, but assume it means pbase, once again, is suffering their chronic, ongoing, never-ending, always-present, it's-been-fixed-oops-there-it-goes-again problems. Get the picture?

I used them for a couple of years. You'll see my old pecker tracks all over their forum. I'm not proud to say some of the posts were rather undiplomatic, but their ongoing, never-ending cycle of problems just wore thin.

I've been getting email renewal notices lately for my account. This year they're being put into the deleted folder as fast as I can drop them there.

Good bye and good riddance.

I have been a PBase user for years. The one thing that I simply loved about PBase was search engine visiblity. In my experience other hosting sites just don't get the visibility that PBase does. That said, the slow downs, and outages now have me thinking of jumping ship. I agree with others on here - the site has never been ran competently, and more often than not it feels like it is a machine sitting on the garage floor at someones house.

This latest incident is a prime example. The site indicates that they had a power outage at the data center. I work in I.T. - and I can tell you this... true data centers don't have power outages. They have battery backup, and generators. They have redundant data lines, and fire supression. They have 24 hour monitoring. All I can think is that by data center, Slug is referring to his garage (again).

Oh well... it was a nice ride while it lasted. Now I have to rebuild my site from the ground up... JOY.

-Jim

Oh bugger......

Any suggestions for something similar??

Al

Well, it's going on 36 hours of down time right now. I'm still upset and getting more upset as time continues to pass. Will I jump ship on them? Maybe. But not today. Hopefully they'll get everything sorted out. Sooner than later would be nice. Then I can take my time to find another service to make the switch. I think I have another two or three months before I owe the dues again.

Examples like this are also the foundation for my reasons to have my own websites. The blogging sites and free web hosting pages are nice because they are free but what happens to all your data and hard work if the service becomes a pay site, changes policies, gets sold, shuts down or the traffic drops off due to a new site becoming more popular?

Jon.

OneMac wrote in post #8706583
Oh bugger......

Any suggestions for something similar??

Al

I am moving to SmugMug.

jwkramer wrote in post #8707321
I am moving to SmugMug.

Just trading one for the other - tit for tat.

This is the best advice in this thread... take your site and run. Be in complete control of your destiny. It's like email, why would anyone use something that is tied to an ISP. Get your own domain-based email, as long as you pay for the domain, you own it... forever. Same thing with your website.

So Pbase had a little hiccup. They hope to be online by 3:30 Eastern....I've used them for 7 years now...and this is really the only big problem that has occurred. Perhaps Slug doesn't run this as effectively as he should. For 23 bucks a year, I'm not going to complain. It beats Flickr and giving your images away. It is consistently the fastest loading photo site on the web...if you don't believe it, just take a tour of PhotoFriday and see what images load and what images you have to synchronize with your hourglass. Pbase also allows you the ability to customize your pages and offer a variety of different image sizes. No way you can customize Flickr to do that. I have a Zenfolio account for business....pbase is just for fun and family. I think I'll let them get back online before I get too irrational in my assessment of them.

Todd Lambert wrote in post #8707512
This is the best advice in this thread... take your site and run. Be in complete control of your destiny. It's like email, why would anyone use something that is tied to an ISP. Get your own domain-based email, as long as you pay for the domain, you own it... forever. Same thing with your website.

Exactly. Agree with and have written here many times about the advantages of self-hosting, self-fulfillment, etc. However, email is yet another thought. I own about 25 domains. However, one was purchased solely for the purpose of personal email. No website, just email. I haven't sent a single email thru the ISP mailserver. And I never will.

How many sales do you think have been lost over the last 36 hours by photographers who sent prospective customers to pbase for reviews, but found that they were down? From a customer's perspective, it's not the (third party) pbase that's down, it't the photographer's gallery that is down. It makes you look very unprofessional, folks.

Take control of your own destiny, your own business, your own professionalism.

I've had a Pbase account for 5 years and I like Pbase.. In my opinion it's one of the best image hosting sites around..

I don't have any other accounts so all my best stuff goes on Pbase.. The last few weeks, a few times things have been slow..Other than that I've never had any problems with Pbase..

I find Flickr, Smugmug and others too pedestrian looking and sooooo slow..

Their design templates are a bit limiting unless you understand web design,, which I don't.. What I love about Pbase is they don't have image size limitations although they recommend to don't upload at zero compression and my edits in CS2 look identical when uploaded to Pbase..

Todd Lambert wrote in post #8707512
Just trading one for the other - tit for tat.

Not true. While SmugMug may have the occasional hiccup, their support is top notch, and they're very engaged with their customers. Once upon a time, I was a PBase user, and it was the same way then as it is now. Moving to SmugMug was a huge step up.