Warhammer-Empire.com
Between the Battles & the Art ... => The Count's Tavern => Topic started by: ZeroTwentythree on July 06, 2017, 11:00:09 PM
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Photobucket has killed off free hosted images. So anyone with a free accout will now find their images on blogs, foryms, etc. replaced with an image urging users to upgrade.
http://blog.photobucket.com/please-review-latest-changes-photobucket/
http://blog.photobucket.com/photobucket-launches-unlimited-3rd-party-hosting-plan/
I would have no problem paying a modrst fee for a hosting service, and had considered it before. But Photobucket's service, mobile app, etc. just aren't worth spending money on.
So... time to finally decide on an alternative, and see what kind of damage control I can manage with my plogs & other forum posts.
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As I mentioned to Padre, you can get a basic hosting package inexpensively and these often have no bandwidth limits. I am quite happy to help people who are unfamiliar with FTP and so forth use theirs.
Padre has set up Wordpress account, and that works very nicely indeed.
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As long as I post pics on my blog, I can use Blogger to host.
But I had also been considering a cheap web hosting package even before this happened, since Photobucket had been getting progressively worse.
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Just set up Wordpress and that has been easy, quick and can be a blog too for free. For a Luddite like me to get it together, it may show some promise.
Destroyed and deleted Photobucket and imagur today.
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We talked about this in "unhappy" back table thread.
Crazy business decision
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Did they charge at all for it before? Or was it completely free?
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Free. But you had to put up with pop up adverts sliding from all sides, over and over, and taking over the whole page, so that every time you used it was a time consuming struggle and quite excruciating.
That experience, and the $400 per year demand, combine to make people walk away. If they had offered a moderate fee (approx. $100) I would have considered it, even with the ads (I was growing used to the ugly experience), because the third party linking held 3600 pictures of mine on the web.
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Free. But you had to put up with pop up adverts sliding from all sides, over and over, and taking over the whole page, so that every time you used it was a time consuming struggle and quite excruciating.
That is what I thought (but without the level of editorial :) ) So, they offered it for free but the only people who saw the adverts were the people using it to upload pictures, not the people who were viewing the pictures embedded elsewhere (for example, on a forum)?
See, at that point, I don't know if I would call their decision to charge $400 per annum a bad business decision or the inevitable consequence of a God-awful business model from the get go. "Hey, guys! I've got an idea! We'll offer a free service whereby people can host pictures. We will generate revenue with adverts - but they will only appear when people are administering the albums. The people who are viewing the pictures (i.e. the vast majority of people using our bandwidth) will never see an advert!"
That is just a TERRIBLE model. If you have a hosting service (YouTube, Photobucket, DeviantArt, whatever) the majority of bandwidth and eyes on the site are ALWAYS going to be viewers, not creators. You need a model where the VIEWERS get adverts (because there are more of them to view them) and the creators have a smooth experience (to encourage them to upload more content).
Photobuckets fundamental model - of allowing people to embed pictures WITHOUT viewers having to see adverts - was always flawed. Them having to go crazy now is just the natural result of that.
It might work for them; if a certain percentage (a fraction of a percent . . . ) of users pay $400 per annum, they might generate the same revenue as they were before. It would be people like Padre but without his common sense who pay; people with LOTS of images invested in there and who consider $400 to be small potatoes.
This is, however, essentially a business model of extortion or a protection racket . . . merely a legal one.
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you're right it's a consequence of the initial set up DK (and of any free photo hosting service) but the cost is extortionate compared to other suppliers, and will lead to nowhere but the destruction of photobucket, I reckon.
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Oh, I fully agree. But I think they already WERE destroyed. If Padre's assessment is correct and the interface is unusable (I have only used photobucket once or twice, but I remember it being clunky) then they were hosed from the get-go.
$400 a year is absolutely, completely ridiculous. Name.com has their flagship plan ("Unbelievable Hosting" https://www.name.com/purchase/hosting) for $156 a year. You can run business websites on it (I know; I do). Unlimited bandwidth and storage. That is overkill for photo hosting, but it is still less than half of Photobucket! You would need to learn basic file management and organizational skills, but - seriously? $250 a year buys a lot of Lynda courses teaching you that . . .
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Their model had/has several aspects.
They host the photos. You can also share albums, creat slideshows, etc. You can also use what they are calling '3rd party hosting" which I thought used to be called hot linking as well. Whatever you call it, ads were displayed on all of thise uses - hist interface, viewing shared albums, slideshiws, etc. except for the "third party hosting."
So that's what they've cut off for the free accounts. Free accounts can still share albums, etc.
But the problem is that they've made a trainwreck of the ads to the point that the site is largely unusable without an ad blocker. Photobucket is the only reason I installed one, in fact. The site wouldn't work without it.
Between that, the fact that they crippled their mobile app's functionality so that its only use is to use it to buy physical prints, and the fact that they've had some reliability issues means that the only price worth paying is the free one they were offering. (And even then, as I said, I've been planning onoving images to a reliable paid host at some point anyway.)
Honestly, I'm surprised Photobucket has made it this long. And although I understand they need to make money, the problem is that their service isn't competitive with other options. The only thing they had going for them was the free hosting.
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The only thing they had going for them was the free hosting.
Which you can get from blogger, just off the top of my head . . .
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You can get free hosting in umpteen places. This is just Photobucket trying to exploit their massive user base by getting them to pay up or accept the sunk cost of an unusable image catalogue.
And yes, Photobucket's UI is cancer and has been for years.
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Haven't used Photobucket in years, using Shutterfly at the moment.
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Strangely enough my "part" of photobucket seems all snafu on the moment.
I can see pictures I have posted, I can still access the site as normal (with add blocker)
The share function seems to be intact as well
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b242/henerius/bash%2012.jpg~original)
Or is somebody not seeing the photograph just here above?
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I'm seeing Finlay and Fr1day, so it seems ok :-)
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I just checked the site and indeed for the bigger photo bloggers it could be a menace to maintain their photo gallery hosted by PB.
I have two PB accounts and both have less then 5GB off photo's on them. My guess is I am to small a fish for them :icon_rolleyes:
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Well, I am a small fish too. [Edit: I checked and I have actually used 0,16 GB.] Basically, the only pictures I have are for my History of the Empire. But just a minute ago, I was given my notice.
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It's not the size, it's how you use it. :engel:
Seriously, reading about how it's screwed up eBay & Amazon, they must be dealing with far, far heavier use that hobby forum people like us.
And for what it's worth, I'm also small fish, but my shared photos are all dead. Not sure why some are still showing up. My understanding is this is a sitewide policy. Maybe cached images?
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They are probably gradually moving through the user list, giving people the
finger bad news as they go.
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Small fish here as well so my sketches and few model posts are safe for now.
Just using Deviantart now to store my pics.When I'm hit I guess I'll have to update my forum galleries again. :-P
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Most of my pics are on my blog/site, so I'm going to post some additional links in my plog thread here, and just mive forward.
Just hoping I can download some of the older photos (hobby or otherwise) that I may have stored on PB but nowhere else.
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If you go to PB itself, you can access the images - you just can't embed them.
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Henners your photo is not showing to me now
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Well, my pictures are gone now. And come to thin of it: there are some really awesome threads in the B&P from people that have not been active for some time, years even. Some of that may be irrevocably lost to warhammer-empire.
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There was a hacker programme "photofuket" some years ago to hack photobucket. Apparently, they have now taken over completely - certainly, the name change is in order. The only thing missing is the fee in bitcoins.
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Henners your photo is not showing to me now
They reacted to movement on my account apparently. :-P
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I just got an e-mail from photobucket: "Get Your Account Summer Ready Now!"
Yeah, that'll be the day...
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I'm afraid to ask what they mean by that. :icon_lol:
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It's a family friendly ransom demand.
"Give us money and you'll get your uploads back."
Well all my galleries got hit so looks like I need update everything. Tedium ho! :-P
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Heh, I just found some of those emails as well. Gmail filtered them (appropriately) as spam.
I tried the "download folder" thing without any luck. My most recent "multi-plog" folder alone has almost 400 pics. No way I can download those individually.
Fortunately, I have most of the photos saved elsewhere. But this foils some of my plans for quickly setting up a new, accessible library of old photos.
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I guess there are a lot of people trying to download their pics back.
I found it worked for my modest requirements at this time of the day in the UK - probably whilst North America is asleep so less demand?
Two hours later and I watched the circle timer thing go round and round and round until the captcha result expired :icon_twisted:
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I started to shift things to imgur. Is there any particular reason why some pictures end up smaller when posted than they should be?
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odd. The picture is 716x976, also when uploaded to imgur. When I insert it in the post, it becomes only half the size: [img width=352 height=500]
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Henners your photo is not showing to me now
Here's a trick I've learned ...
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b242/henerius/bash%2012.jpg~original)
... but a good magician never reveals his methods.
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BTW, it's still not a feasible trick to try on 3600 images, and will very likely be noticed and stopped by Photobucket soon, anyway.
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Can't we just use google photo?
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When I checked it looked like they didn't do third party hosting (or whatever it's called).
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You can do it for some forums. Some forums don't support it however.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_I-g9Ud6ONFngOr2BjfT-xROlRxJ6r61WjC8ONHwxIC7_a9pCW34jtGECP98g0jDxktPuj2fUoSvN5a1xG5sC67kvEIlTDYfzNQ7poAo0i9zl-x1ukp6F55O9xSYQrY6_lidrERLpTDtnyjAVjXAwO2knI1w-JxdLsnqgCFCk7WgpL2e4k7uSMlMMc5Zmm0qdx-6Am68QhAyyKddeDIEU1cf_ve4flp_YG_LWHUEjoVwwJ3D1foYPu-wQbAOY8j_Bo24PWORk86EbsQeczvn0XwehqGbSplMHhVPeLIUt6xXuOzX7LbUEfUgVDnh9_ba08TgYNkC6vbeCYtZ34Gjou0tMzji7AChPHumS5nFt18QaGl9jYkaHIa5Lk4r50abfk76ohAGvFOnTpzrLpRzKWBALabOCp6DfI4AcNS6Wj09k4KWCGfjuzYNK87WtFUxbvzBqCZsCulgrVSePeyNOk9PCBquT-VZHtK7ooZr55acNZ_ACuSad3nv6hOaj9L89F3FGZWqikPHK_24ivNnIEbl3dWl4PJVcR4XSceeUpfpWwRM6obGHq2PuoyJyHpg6k_LmrYWG3s5g-UdFPso7ov_aT65qNVKjTYwsUSrMbNUTqGJSnsIUhuC=w876-h657-no)
Can you see the above image?
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I can see it, although why you would want to post an image of barbary apes stealing an icecream cone from a startled child, I know not.
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Ha, the child didn't deserve it!
That was shared from my google photo account.
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I cannot see it. I am still using Vista, so it could be that.
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I am still using Vista, so it could be that.
Wait, what year is this?
Can't see the picture either.
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Wait, what year is this?
MMXVII
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Trick question. It's the current year.
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my stuff is still there
(http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r247/Wissenlander/AdaminLeonhosen.jpg) (http://s146.photobucket.com/user/Wissenlander/media/AdaminLeonhosen.jpg.html)
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That joke went into a tailspin.
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I cannot see it. I am still using Vista, so it could be that.
I cannot see it. I am viewing on an iphone 6 plus using safari.
Also fidelis, why are you still on Vista? I cannot think of any good reasons other than laziness or lack of knowledge. You didnt strike me as falling into either of those categories, so i am curious.
Note - laziness is a good reason.
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Is laziness the reason you mentioned laziness would be a good reason, Warlord, being an attempt to validate laziness in general? I ask not because I too am lazy but due to the beer sloshing about in my belly right now.
I may have lost track of that sentence half way through. But not this one. No, not this one.
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The longer the sentence, the easier to lose track. I do it too.
Laziness is an excellent reason. Feel free to extrapolate that out to whatever you will. 8-)
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In my present condition any extrapolation I attempted would be exasperating, so if you were expecting said situation for your own satisfaction then circumstances, being essentially a surfeit, or at the very least a saturation of, not dissimilar terminology have sadly circumscribed said pursuit.
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I so look forward to working out if that actually means something tomorrow. Slightly drunk me may be a genius.
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Drunk posting is dangerous business.
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Criticizing an archaic & dysfunctional OS in a thread about everyone's reliance on an archaic & dysfunctional image hosting service...? :wink:
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I was getting really worried that he was about to self-harm as a result of PBs machinations .........
................ then I realised he had typed circumscribe :engel:
That really would have been the end ................
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Also fidelis, why are you still on Vista? I cannot think of any good reasons other than laziness or lack of knowledge. You didnt strike me as falling into either of those categories, so i am curious.
My present PC is from 2008; so, I need to buy a new computer anyway soon. Given the prices, it is not worth the money or the hassle to install a new OS.
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I was getting really worried that he was about to self-harm as a result of PBs machinations .........
................ then I realised he had typed circumscribe :engel:
That really would have been the end ................
I had to re-read that too.
Also fidelis, why are you still on Vista? I cannot think of any good reasons other than laziness or lack of knowledge. You didnt strike me as falling into either of those categories, so i am curious.
My present PC is from 2008; so, I need to buy a new computer anyway soon. Given the prices, it is not worth the money or the hassle to install a new OS.
Hmmmm, so laziness with a slight bit of tight-arsed-ness. I can definitely appreciate that. I think at one point they were offering free upgrade to win 7 and win 10. I bought win 7 for about $30 and the performance improvement was a welcome improvement. Still, nice job sweating your asset!
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Sign. Photobucket has finally caught up with me. I only had a dozen pictures or so on the account, but now they're all blocked. Time to move on.
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I got an email too - I haven't checked, but I suspect they no longer work. Well, the hell with you, Photobucket. You are the vomit bucket, nothing more.
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It is strange, but sometimes photobucket pictures re-appear, at least temporarily.
Just to check: are all the pictures in this post visible? Only the first one is embedded from imgur, the rest still photobucket.
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Now you see them, now you don't. So, I'll have to replace them all.
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Hi Padre,
Your tilean campaign is awesome, but i savour that readinv until i need some inspiration. Currently I am up to December 2016 http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php/topic,46787.msg998730.html#msg998730 (http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php/topic,46787.msg998730.html#msg998730)
Not to be a slave driver, but what is your planned schedule for updating your pics. That way I will delay any reading until you go back. No rush, just wanting to plan :)
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Thanks for saying, Warlord.
All the pics are repaired by some technical wizardry done by the admin at OldHammer, so you can see the full campaign thread there and pick up where you left off. It starts at http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2889, but the post you are up to is at http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=81536#p81536. So you can continue reading at any time you like!
I am re-constructing the whole campaign as a website (www.bigsmallworlds.com) but am still way behind where you have reached in your reading. What is slowing me down is the desire to edit, sometimes a lot, for grammar etc. My method is to open the next Oldhammer forum campaign post. Read, correct and edit it, then reload it, then lift the text and convert it to a format for the website, then upload all the relevant pictures and post them in all the right places. A big battle report basically takes more than an hour, thus the slow progress. Then I am adding little painting and modelling blog posts to showcase stuff in each post, which I am also slowly linking in to the posts!!
The website will get there in the end! In the meantime, the Oldhammer thread is not only better because it has pictures, but it is slowly improving in grammar and spelling and such like too!
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I´m not sure I understand this whole thing.
I have always used photobucket...
I can still see my pictures on my blogs.... no one else can?
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It seems to be something to do with the number of photographs. I had 3600. How many do you think you have?
Or, do you pay Photobucket anything at all?
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Whatever their criteria of the sequence in which they shut the system down, you will eventually be shut down, unless you pay.
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Back when all this Photobucket hoohaa started, I tried downloading all of my images. PB was supposed to email me a link to the download when it was ready. Never happened, and I forgot about it. Today I was going to try doing it album by album and... the option to download albums is apparently gone from the site. You can only download individual images. As if they couldn't have made shit worse. Assholes.
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Hey Guys.
I put Warhammer-Empire on a hosting plan with the ability to host your images. I need to get Bugman in on this and see if he can help us with that. My personal time is non existent so I just cant do the research and retool the site.
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Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm set on hosting. I'm just pissed that after PB makes public statements that they're not holding anyone's images hostage, they change the functionality of their site to make it as difficult as possible to download your own images.
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Hey Guys.
I put Warhammer-Empire on a hosting plan with the ability to host your images. I need to get Bugman in on this and see if he can help us with that. My personal time is non existent so I just cant do the research and retool the site.
Excellent! Thanks Grutch.
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Photobucket just sent me an email asking me to be "one of the 3 million" ....
Yeah, no.
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Just got my email, too. I expect this means pictures will start to disappear soon, I'm not actually sure.
Honestly don't know if I can be bothered to repair old posts / plogs, it might be time to start a new thing - blog? website? not sure, but don't panic, I'll still be here :)
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As someone smarter than I pointed out elsewhere, if you add ~original after .jpeg in the link, the picture will re-appear.
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Unfortunately it appears that the way to get the photos back is not working anymore. :icon_sad:
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Hmmm ... perhaps it still is.
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There was indeed yesterday a short period where it did not work. Temprorary glitch or a sign of things to come?
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Some of mine have come back .... and some haven't. :icon_twisted:
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Some of mine have come back .... and some haven't. :icon_twisted:
Looks the same here. At one point, it looked like the older were back but newer lost.
-Z
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Well looking at my 'machinations' thread - the very first post has one pic showing and one not - so weird. :biggriin:
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In my "History of the Empire", all pictures are back.
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Save em while you can folks. The Dark Lords of Photobucket will be onto your tricks soon enough.
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On another forum I frequent someone has just posted that all their Photobucket pictures have just reappeared in past threads.
No one there seems to know anything about what is happening with Photobucket so has anyone on here heard from them.
Have they relented having seen the error of their ways – or is it just a lucky glitch that will be closed when they find it.
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You can use the '~original' insert after the .jpg and it restores the pic, which I have done in some threads on here.
Also I think a couple of hosts have created a fix, but it mines data. There is a thread / post about it on LAF
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Mine seem to never have gone...
:blush:
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You can use the '~original' insert after the .jpg and it restores the pic, which I have done in some threads on here.
Thanks Midaski - I’ve used the ~original fix on all my photos here when your first mentioned it.
What has happened on the other Forum is that users who have not paid Photobucket (PB) or used the fix are finding the ‘warning notice’ from PB has now gone and their pictures have reappeared in their old threads. The Forum owners have not done anything to over-ride PB’s actions so it seems that either PB has had a change of heart or they have a software malfunction.
One user says an email from PB offered them the $400 service for $19.95 - so is a change on the way – will anyone trust them enough to go back?
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They're idiots. I would have paid $19.99, but not what they were asking. Instead I paid for my own website (which cost more than $19.99) and then spent weeks of effort (spread out over months) editing all the posts to have 2000 new pictures in. I also re-wrote the text on the Oldhammer website where they automated the procedure of lifting all the photos off photobucket and onto their own server.
If they had been reasonable at the start it would have saved me VAST amounts of effort. How can I trust them now?
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Seems that Photobucket is under new management but they still charge for 3rd party hosting – at a more reasonable level.
https://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004314254?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=051618_imagesarefreed (https://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004314254?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=051618_imagesarefreed)
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So the images have been 'liberated' for a set time. But there is a limit (undefined) to that time, and then the reasonable $19.99 rates kicks in. Except it would have been reasonable back last summer, but is now offered by a company it is hard to place trust in.
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Nope, won't trust them, even at $20 -- which they say is just an introductory offer -- will increase. Presumably their previous plan fell flat and they need a quick cash grab.
I understand that they need new ways to generate revenue, and I'm willing to pay for image hosting. But they need to prove they've got something to offer that's better than the other options -- and they just don't have it. Over the years their service got progressively worse, even before they ended 3rd party hosting. Then they shat on all their users.
Besides, with other options like most paid web hosting, you can easily retrieve or move your photos & other files, maintain links, etc. Something like Photobucket, you're always at their mercy. Also...
Q: What if I don’t want to purchase a subscription? Can I have my images back?
A: Yes, you are free to download your images. They belong to you! We believe our new subscription plan is priced fairly and is very competitive to other services. Our new management team is committed to serving our customers in the best possible way, and we hope you will consider this offer and keeping your images with Photobucket.
Sure, you can have your photos back. But we've removed the option to download multiple images or a full album at a time, so enjoy downloading those 2000 photos one at a time!
Dicks.
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I'm thinking about paying the 1.99 to liberate a bunch of old photos...