oldwarrenpointforum

It seems that after over 10 years Photobucket (the service nearly all of us use to host photos here) have decided to start charging people to host "3rd party" images.

*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, a blog, etc.

The charges are:

Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:
o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.

o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.

o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.


This obviously is a major problem, as to ensure photos are displayed on site EVERYONE would need to upgrade to the "Plus 500" plan at $399.99 a year

I don't know about you but that is unacceptable and totally outrageous that they would suddenly do that and basically hold everyone's photos to ransom, I am looking into alternatives but by doing this they (Photobucket) have effectively rendered this forum (and indeed many others) useless.

At this stage I don't know what will happen and I have sent an email to Photobucket explaining what the consequences of this action are, in the hope that somebody will see sense and reverse the decision.

Meanwhile we will have to consider options on how to restore the photos (they are not gone as such just hidden) there are a few options but none so far that are going to be easy or cheap.

As they say, watch this space.

Edit - Still no response from Photobucket on this, I am also a paying customer so this was not a case of getting "free" hosting, in fact I just paid my yearly subscription a few days ago!

Also, I would advise members to NOT pay the amount they are looking for, I am already seeking alternatives not least of all the ability to host all the images myself on here.

So at least that's something. It will give me a bit of room to decide what to do in the meantime.

Hello Brian,
Saw that news a few days ago, this forum was the first place I thought of.
If you need help to write a script that will do a batch download of ALL of the Site's images hosted by these people, send me a mail. Though I imagine you have those sort of skills closer to home.

I think we are ok there - Although I will keep you in mind if things don't pan out. My options are fairly limited as it is the users that had free accounts on photobucket that are effected, and as I know only to well a lot of them never bothered to log in since posting (to keep the links alive) and there were already quite a few dead links before this problem. There is no point in me changing over to another provider just yet and I don't see PHPBB going anywhere anytime soon so I think its maybe a case of using Amazon S3 or similar and simply sending out emails to users showing them how to relink and/or rehost. Provided that is they want to (or can)!

Brian .... I notice that Photobucket have blanked
all the photos that I, and other Members, have
posted(using their service ) on here.

Is this legal....have they taken possession of the
photos....how did they get access to the Forum???

Are they applying the new rules retrospectively,
considering the photos were posted before the
decision to charge fees was made.

I have had an email from them telling me I can
no longer use the service unless I upgrade,
however my 753 photos are still available to me.!

Where do I go from here?

Its basically explained above and on line - Photobucket have decided that they are no longer running a free service, so anyone who uses it while they can access their photos from their own account, all 3rd party use is not permitted. This is nothing to do with the forum, but photobucket themselves.

Now there are a few exceptions, anyone that had a paid account (myself and a few others) can still use the service (and our photos will show up) however only until December 2018. This poses a number of problems.

1 - I am unable to access the photographs posted here unless I posted them and/or they were posted from a paid account.
2 - Members (such as yourself and many others) who used the free service (and I also fall into that category as my own personal account was a free one!) can access their own photos but use another service to re-host them
3 - As for any member who has passed on, no longer logs in or who has left the forum we can kiss those photos goodbye.

It's a major problem one that I have been working on ways to solve and as yet have not come up with anything that is not going to be easy or free. I am trying various ideas but for now we will just have to sit and wait, any member who can access their photobucket account should do asap and get their photos from it (instructions are on their webpage)

Any Member who still has/have the photo/s they posted,
or can download them from Photobucket,can post them
again.

Click on Edit and delete the link to Photobucket, and post
as normal.

Incidentally, every time I try to download from P/ bucket
a banner comes up saying there is a problem and try again.!

Any other platform we can use for photos on Forum ....

They can be "attached" but that will put a strain on the servers (and cost more) however with a bit of careful handling and resizing it may be the best option. (I will post on that again)

If you have a paid account then everything works as before you dont have to do anything, but if it was a free one they are trying to stop all 3rd party hosting.

I can (if notified) access the photos on any post that somebody wants to see the photos that are blocked directly and rehost them, however the last info I had from photobucket was that this will only work until the end of 2018 so I'll probably end up attaching them all

Update on this - Photobucket seem to have caught on to me nipping in and grabbing photos (either by screenshot or direct links) anyone with a password (non public) protected album needs to go in and get their own photos out.

Oh, and use the "attach" feature when reloading I'll just have to pay for more hosting to cover it but that way we should be able to hold onto the pictures as the server is paid and in my name (so no 3rd party hosting)

Instructions here:

http://www.oldwarrenpointforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11698