Photobucket is now charging $400/yr for sharing photos with forums

[Ky-Flinter]

What are other options available for picture posting. I will obviously be setting up some type of new account with whoever offer a free option.

I just store my photos on my home PC.  To post pictures on ALR now I use the new "Add image to post" button that was added recently and pull the photos into my ALR post straight from my PC.  Details on how to do it are here....  http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=43575.0

-Ron

[Dennis Glazener]

Rolf,
I have no control of the photos that are hosted on PB or other photos sites. The BBC (Bulletin Board Code) that surrounds the a photo URL asks the distant photo site to display the photo and you view it via our post.

I feel like PB has probably finally discovered that forums, not just ours but many others are hot linking to photos and decided they did not want to do this anymore without being paid for it.

Personally I would move my photos to a site like imgbb.com (the site we use with our image upload program) and create a free account. This site actively offers free upload software to Forums to upload photos for the forum. Too be honest I am not sure how they make their money but you can use it here for free and its free to set up your own account.

Sorry I have no better solution. I have no way to obtain the photos members put in their tutorials, only the members have access to them via their PB account.
Dennis

[Dennis Glazener]

Hi,
I signed up with imgur.com.  It is a far better host than Photobucket.  No ads and very simple procedures to upload photos and then share them. Uploads are fast and to include an image in your posts, just place your pointer on the uploaded image you want, then click on the little down arrow and select "get share options", which brings up a menu, and click copy by the "forum" option.  Then go to your post and paste.  You don't need to use the ALR menu button for embedding photos. It is very simple. Dennis thanks for mentioning the other option.  I chose Imgur because I post photos on other sites that may not be linked to imgbb.

dave

Dave,
I use my imgbb.com account to post on other forums. Once you have a photo on any (doesn't have to be a photo site) website you can display it here or any other forum using the BBC code for photo display.
Dennis

[Rolf]

Rolf,
I have no control of the photos that are hosted on PB or other photos sites. The BBC (Bulletin Board Code) that surrounds the a photo URL asks the distant photo site to display the photo and you view it via our post.

I feel like PB has probably finally discovered that forums, not just ours but many others are hot linking to photos and decided they did not want to do this anymore without being paid for it.

Personally I would move my photos to a site like imgbb.com (the site we use with our image upload program) and create a free account. This site actively offers free upload software to Forums to upload photos for the forum. Too be honest I am not sure how they make their money but you can use it here for free and its free to set up your own account.

Sorry I have no better solution. I have no way to obtain the photos members put in their tutorials, only the members have access to them via their PB account.
Dennis

At the moment pb has not done anything to the photos I've posted. I'm hoping they will resind their thirdparty policy, when they lose enough customers . If not, I'll switch to one of the sites recomended here and repost the Pictures in the tutorials I've written.

Three questions:
1.By using another hosting site like imgur or imgbb, are we not risking another potenial "blackmail" threat?

2.Would it be possible to store the Pictures on the ALR server? Aleast for the tutorials and the Library? It would be a shame to lose this Reference material. It's one of the Things that makes ALR Unic.

3. Is there a simple way to load Down and store posts With Pictures from the ALR, to Our own computers? I'd really hate to lose the tutorials.

Best regards
Rolf

[fstreed]

About a year ago I joined up with Flickr (another photo storage service) but do not see a way to directly attach photos to my posts.

This is just a test to see if this is something I can use: https://www.flickr.com/photos/140063658@N08/shares/a6M0sQ

Click on the pic you want to attach, then the "share photo" arrow under the photo. That will open a window with share options, click on the "BBCode" option, then copy and paste it to your post. It might be set by default to "Embed" or something else. Change it to "BBCode" and it should work.

I have to pay a yearly fee for Flickr, don't remember how much, but not $400.

[Mauser06]

Oddly enough I looked on another forum and my pictures still show...not the error pictures we see on here now.  Wonder what the difference is....I link them the exact same way.

[sz]

I deleted all my photos from P.B. and went to Flickr.
Seems to work and it's not being run by those that try to stab us in the back. (so far)
100_1349 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr
100_1198 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr

I think photobucket should be left to die a natural death economically,  from trying to sell what others have for free

[Dennis Glazener]

Oddly enough I looked on another forum and my pictures still show...not the error pictures we see on here now.  Wonder what the difference is....I link them the exact same way.

I suspect, don't know, that Photobucket identified some of the high use hot links from ALR and blocked those links. Probably the links on the other forum had not been as active recently and they didn't block them but that might just be a matter of time.

I doubt that your actual photos on PB will be bothered with. Its the hot links between ALR and Photobucket that is bothering them. They don't want that activity tieing up their servers without some revenue!

Its strange, imgbb.com is actively soliciting forums (hence our photo upload software) to use their free site and PB is blocking them!
Dennis
Dennis

[Dennis Glazener]

Rolf,
I have no control of the photos that are hosted on PB or other photos sites. The BBC (Bulletin Board Code) that surrounds the a photo URL asks the distant photo site to display the photo and you view it via our post.

I feel like PB has probably finally discovered that forums, not just ours but many others are hot linking to photos and decided they did not want to do this anymore without being paid for it.

Personally I would move my photos to a site like imgbb.com (the site we use with our image upload program) and create a free account. This site actively offers free upload software to Forums to upload photos for the forum. Too be honest I am not sure how they make their money but you can use it here for free and its free to set up your own account.

Sorry I have no better solution. I have no way to obtain the photos members put in their tutorials, only the members have access to them via their PB account.
Dennis

At the moment pb has not done anything to the photos I've posted. I'm hoping they will resind their thirdparty policy, when they lose enough customers . If not, I'll switch to one of the sites recomended here and repost the Pictures in the tutorials I've written.

Three questions:
1.By using another hosting site like imgur or imgbb, are we not risking another potenial "blackmail" threat? **Yes its always a gamble with free sites, probably not as much as with paid sites**

2.Would it be possible to store the Pictures on the ALR server? A least for the tutorials and the Library? It would be a shame to lose this Reference material. It's one of the Things that makes ALR Unic. **Yes its possible but one of the problems is disk space. I do not have anywhere near enough disk space to host all the photos that are posted here on ALR. I can lease more space but the problem I have there is I don't need it unless I allowed photos to be stored here. If I added disk space my current annual contract, which has been grandfathered price wise, will be subject to the new prices if I make any change in my existing contract. Then there is the concern that I have for hackers planting trojan's, malware etc in photo files. I just prefer not to host photos.**

3. Is there a simple way to load Down and store posts With Pictures from the ALR, to Our own computers? I'd really hate to lose the tutorials. **What needs to occur is for the owners of the photos to download copies of their tutorial photos to a new site then replace the photo links from ALR to the new site. Or, if the photo can be viewed by bypassing the PB block, anyone should be able to save that photo to their hard drive then it can be put on another site. BUT this should be done with the permission of the owner of the photo since the copyright of that photo belongs to them**

Best regards
Rolf (with answers to his questions by Dennis Glazener ALR Admin)

[Joe S]

3. Is there a simple way to load Down and store posts With Pictures from the ALR, to Our own computers? I'd really hate to lose the tutorials.

Just copy them and paste them into a Word document.  I have saved a lot of files that way.

[Mike Brooks]

I deleted all my photos from P.B. and went to Flickr.
Seems to work and it's not being run by those that try to stab us in the back. (so far)

Funny, I have never felt stabbed in the back by photobucket, nothing but smooth sailing for me. Of course I have been paying them $25 a year for probably at least 15 years. Just a cost of doing business, never expected them to carry all those pics for free.

[hanshi]

Thanks for all the advice on how to download (or is it "upload", what's the difference?) from PB; I'll be doing that very soon.  I'll maybe start trying imgbb.com.  Yesterday I went over all my pb pics and (saved?) them on, I think, my computer.  It took a while because I had to do each photo individually.  Trouble is that when I click to try browse and pic a photo to post, what comes up is a list of, not photos, but codes with nothing to let me know what photo each code represents.  I am NOT anywhere near being computer literate.  I have to be led around by the hand to accomplish anything.
 

[smart dog]

I deleted all my photos from P.B. and went to Flickr.
Seems to work and it's not being run by those that try to stab us in the back. (so far)

Funny, I have never felt stabbed in the back by photobucket, nothing but smooth sailing for me. Of course I have been paying them $25 a year for probably at least 15 years. Just a cost of doing business, never expected them to carry all those pics for free.

Hi Mike,
So why are they hitting folks with $400?  Back payment for a policy they allowed for 15 years, without warning anyone?  What I think is happening they are targeting folks with a lot of posted pictures, perhaps approaching or exceeding their monthly bandwidth limit.  It may just be a matter of time before their algorithm finds more folks.

dave

[Timothy88]

I don't know if this is correct or not, but on muzzleloadingforum.com there is a post that says that you can still share a limited amount of photos with 3rd party sites (like americanlongrifles.org) when using a free photo bucket account.

Below is a link to the post, but you will only be able to view it if you are a member.

http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/304339/

[smart dog]

Hi Tim,
The difference is that in your example, PB is just locking you out temporarily until the next month.  What I am talking about is they are now charging $400 to share any photos with third parties.

dave

[davec2]

Well......this is really too bad.  There is not a snow ball's chance in $#*! I will ever have the time to try to re-construct / re-post all my photos.  I bet the same is true for many of us.  Quite the loss for the whole community......

 

[Dennis Glazener]

3. Is there a simple way to load Down and store posts With Pictures from the ALR, to Our own computers? I'd really hate to lose the tutorials.

Just copy them and paste them into a Word document.  I have saved a lot of files that way.

Then you have a MS Word file, fine for looking at yourself but its best to do a right click on the photo and do a "save image as" which allows you to download that image to the folder of your choice. Plus it remains as a .jpg image that you can post, email to others.
Dennis

[Dennis Glazener]

Well......this is really too bad.  There is not a snow ball's chance in $#*! I will ever have the time to try to re-construct / re-post all my photos.  I bet the same is true for many of us.  Quite the loss for the whole community......

I understand, I am now trying to figure out a tenable way of saving the virtual library! I really hate to think of losing the photos/data stored there over the years. Nord and Hurricane took several years to build that library.
Dennis

[Ezra]

I moved from PB to ImageShack.  PB had become torture to use.  I gave them a Hawaiian good luck sign as I removed all my photos from their site.

Ez

[Mark Elliott]

I would like to point out the obvious; that nothing is free.   You pay one way or another.   However,  you can pay pay Amazon (lots of web sites and cloud storage services use Amazon Web Services as their back end) for your actual use and not worry about being told how to use it or how much you use it.   You pay for storage and bandwidth used.   For me, it is pennies a month and the cost has only gone down over the years as storage and bandwidth has gotten cheaper.   It does require a little technical knowledge, but the web interface is pretty easy to use, and I don't think most computer users would have too much trouble with it.   If you could post photos the old way on ALR,  you should be able to use Amazon Web Services S3 storage.   This is but one of dozens of web services they offer; and only one of several storage services.   It is designed to deliver web content.

Here is a link to the Amazon Web Services home page if you want to investigate it;  https://aws.amazon.com/?nc2=h_lg

[Ky-Flinter]

3. Is there a simple way to load Down and store posts With Pictures from the ALR, to Our own computers? I'd really hate to lose the tutorials.

Just copy them and paste them into a Word document.  I have saved a lot of files that way.

Jose,

That will work to capture the text, but at some point the links to pictures on Photobucket will be terminated.  Try reading a tutorial with no pictures.

-Ron

[Mark Elliott]

Well......this is really too bad.  There is not a snow ball's chance in $#*! I will ever have the time to try to re-construct / re-post all my photos.  I bet the same is true for many of us.  Quite the loss for the whole community......

I understand, I am now trying to figure out a tenable way of saving the virtual library! I really hate to think of losing the photos/data stored there over the years. Nord and Hurricane took several years to build that library.
Dennis

Dennis,

I think the only thing you can do to make sure the library stays with the site is to move the photos to the site's server.    Of course the problem is that all the photos will have to be transferred to the ALR server and then relinked.   It will be a tremendous amount of work.   I will volunteer some of my time to do that once you have a process.  If you divide up the library among volunteers,  we can start saving the photos off to our local drives.   We can upload them and relink them at a later time.   Just an idea, and I am willing to give you a couple hours (or more) a week of my time.

Mark

[SingleMalt]

Just signed up for a imgbb.com account.  S'long, Photobucket!




I'm shocked!  I got it to work!   

[Dennis Glazener]

I will let you and others know more when I know more about the PB account that hosts the library. Right now the photos are displaying as they should. Its a paid account so that might make a difference.
Dennis

[smart dog]

Hi Dennis,
I suspect it should be OK because it is a paid account with PB.  I think they are nailing anyone with a free account that has posted a lot of pictures on forums and BBs.  Paying is not a problem but they seem to be applying a punitive measure to folks who used PB with free or lower tier subscriptions even though their policies until last week, allowed it.  I also suspect PB believes they can extort the high subscription rate from many of those folks because many have distributed photos over years and are trapped.  I think that is why PB sprung this trap without any fanfare or much announcement.  Anyway, ol' smart dog ain't trapped and has moved on. It will take me a while to replace photos in many of my previous posts but I am going to focus immediately on my tutorials.  The five-part one I did on making an 18th century pistol case has many photos to replace.  Regardless, it was time to exit PB anyway because their service was deteriorating.  Fortunately, I have few digital connections and do not participate in social media but I have an ominous feeling that we are all about to pay heavily for our reliance on digital connections very soon.

dave