So long Photobucket

[Got Lumens?]

Wow.
I'm being used by them also.
I got hooked way back in the beginning when they used to display signs
that they were a file/photo "Hosting" company. Emphasis on were.
What got me originally hooked was their "Original" thumbnail option.
You click it and your full size photo got served in a browser window.
Oh by the way, some of the original postings still function though,
grandfathered per say. You are paying for hosting, not just storage.
Then they completely shutdown that function. Then they took away monthly
payments and demanded you pay for the whole year up front. Then they forced
me to buy storage I did not need to rid ads while working online.
NOw this charade. The whole time barraging me with fancy photo products and
services I do not need. Did I mention ad's :naughty:.

I'm currently looking into migrating everything.

Or is that Migraining everthing :thinking:

 

[bykfixer]

It seems like imgur is popular these days. Well if you have an account there and you want to post images here it's not hard.
Now I use a mobile app like I did with photobucket before so what I'm going to say next is android based but any other form of obtaining the direct link will work.

Many times you see this:
http://i.imgur.com/dYafSa9.jpg
A simple click on that link takes you to the photo.

Now me? I'm a tin hat wearer and don't dig on blindly clicking links.
First I downloaded a photo to imgur. While viewing said uploaded photo I long press and see a choice of "share direct link" which is what I posted above.
But after learning how to turn my mp3 ringtones to my iphone by changing a few letters I thought "hmmmm" can we do that on forums?"

When I pasted the link to this post I added (IMG tags) at each end of the address.
Note if you hit save using the link before adding IMG or decide to turn a previously saved link from a "viewer has to click to view" into a "view in the post" you just remove the (url) at each end and replace with the IMG thing.

There ya go!!

Now I have it on good authority that a member here is working on an app the migrate posts with photo bucket links to posts with imgur links using a copy/paste split screen type of deal. You must move your pix to imgur first. Then, when you copy your old photobucket riddled post on the left screen to the right screen it somehow populates that entire post and changes the links to the ones you have moved to imgur.

I've seen screen shots of it but don't know the details yet. It's certainly got promise to swap stuff in an entire post instead of one photo at a time.

 

[archimedes]

Your photo doesn't display properly in the CPF app, byk ....

 

[Ozythemandias]

Works for me

 

[KITROBASKIN]

Another valuable thread from bykfixer!

So sad to see a company do this to people sharing knowledge.

 

[archimedes]

Just fixed your post, byk, by removing the "empty" IMG tags ....

 

[ven]

Its beyond infuriating Mike, boils my p..... tbh. I dont know if there are any kind of laws or action that will end up down the line. Other forums have issues and also created similar threads from what i have come across(maybe 2 as i dont frequent many). Now touch wood my pics are still OK so far, i do pay monthly for 20gb and have done for a few years. However that is where it stops, no more and would have to be inconvenienced by using an unfamiliar host. I have tried imgur but cant get on with it so far, this could be me though and not looking more into it.

In the past 12m i have sent several to the point emails to bucket, venting my frustration with adverts, unable to upload from phone to certain sites(here). Its gone very glitchy and who ever has taken over with this stupid idea needs removing asap. This will be the downfall, as pretty much most will simply move to other pic hosts. Only trouble is.............well they try something similar down the line!
Its nothing short of disgraceful ..............The amount of forums that will be ruined is crazy and it should not be allowed. There should be some kind of protection for web sites/forums and users.

 

[bykfixer]

Your photo doesn't display properly in the CPF app, byk ....

There's a CPF app?
Eh, just kidding. Thanks for cleaning up that little pile of img tags I left.

Another valuable thread from bykfixer!

So sad to see a company do this to people sharing knowledge.

Thanks. Just trying to give back.

Hey Ven,
For months people had been saying imgur this and imgur that... all I could see was a cutesie photo page where people post their cutesie stuff hoping others would like it. Kinda like a cross between facebook and instagram. Where's the value in that, I pondered. But then the folks at the bucket did their, eh-hem... "policy change" and suddenly imgur use curiosity moved near the front of my list of things to do before going to sleep on Friday.
Now between being lead guy on my current work assigment, the milepost thing, and a few other tasks in life that ended up late Saturday night as I was geeking out on combonations of caffinated beverages and gatorade flavors. After doing the post that Archi cleaned up I finally crashed out.

Now if you use a smart phone install the imgur app like the photobucket app. When you want to share a photo you do it just like you did to pb only use the imgur app. Load the pic, then view it. Long press to get your share link and add the img tags to the link before hitting save at your post. Takes a little getting used to, but after doing a few it becomes a natural process.

Now apparently imgur does not want to become the next photobucket where their servers are largely storing pix sent to 3rd party hosts. So if this idea catches on we may see this happen again.

Many photobucket subscribers have been unaffected. And I wouldn't mind pony-ing up a bit of coin to share in their cost. But in my case I was only 8% into the capacity of the so-called free service but nearly 100% of my libraries were linked to a forum post somewhere. It was why I joined them to begin with. Not being alone in that it seems as though those of us who largely linked our little libraries to forums must've gained attention to somebody in accounting or something. But to tell me I have to use their half-a-terabyte feature to share with 3rd parties was uncool in my view.

My little how to above was not meant to cause a mass exodus over to imgur. Not by any means. Matter of fact massive influx of 3rd party links may lead to them pulling a gestapo move later. It was just meant to give an idea of how we can keep posting informative photos until the mess created by the photobucket change gets sorted out so we can continue to enjoy each others posts and articles.

Tiny pic is another alternative where you manually load a few pix at a time and copy/paste a link they provide. That one or similar may be a long term type of solution, where the intent is to provide storage of items used on 3rd party hosts.

 

[ven]

Thanks for the info, yes have the app already but not really spent any time with it. iirc, the reason i decided on imgur was down the the bucket app/forums and adverts . Will be waiting and see what happens.............i must have well over 12gb of pics stored. Too many to go through and rescue anyway.

 

[bykfixer]

Thanks for the info, yes have the app already but not really spent any time with it. iirc, the reason i decided on imgur was down the the bucket app/forums and adverts . Will be waiting and see what happens.............i must have well over 12gb of pics stored. Too many to go through and rescue anyway.

I was only at about 800 mb as everything I sent was reduced to 640 or 800 res first.

Glad to hear you (and others) have not been affected.

 

[bykfixer]

Re: Heads-Up if you use Photobucket

Geeker nightmare come true.

The pix are still intact. Just blocked from our view. A click and "open in new tab" reveals them at the pb site.

 

[Got Lumens?]

I'm already testing this in a work environment and really like it.
Personal accounts are $99/yr or $15/Mo. and ya get 1TB of space.

Dropbox

This is more than just photo hosting however, it works. No aggravation
or ads, just file hosting, sharing, and linking. You have full control
of how files are served. Albums/Folder sharing is available in multi-user
version, but only to designated users. This also allows You to use it across
all platforms with internet access.

This is for the serious poster, less expensive services are out there for the
casual poster. I'm tired of having end user agreements changed, services
discontinued, new rate structures, and the like crop up and leave You there
with years of work and hours of posts You can not maintain because of
someone else's greed or thought they know what better for you than you do.

 

[gunga]

So you can use drop box to host photos? I have a free account. Might need to upgrade or get imgur. My reviews are hosed now due to photo bucket.

 

[Str8stroke]

Yea, I can't stand pb either. I can't really complain, as it is and or has been "free" so far. I only use to post in forums. At one point, it claimed I had more Free space, but wouldn't let me use it. So I just opened another one. Then they started the Ad assault. After reading here about Ad Blocker several times, I installed it. Man, wish I had done that a LONG time ago. That Ad Blocker is a life saver if you ever click on PB or the like. It blocks something like 40 ads not to mention speeds things up tremendously. If you have Ad Blocker on, and click Daily Mail, it will block something like 34 ads! Pretty impressive.
So bottom line, install Ad Blocker no matter what you use.

 

[bykfixer]

To those of us who aren't familiar with "link tags" here is a photo of a written example.
Actually writing examples into a post don't play nice with the format of this board.
So as an attempt to help a few....

If you post the top link directly it will provide a link to the photo at imgur.

Later if you go to edit your post you will see 'url tags' at each end. No biggy if you liked it as a link and not a photo that shows in the post. But...

If you want it to show up in the post as a photo and not a link you add ''img tags' at each end. If you want to change from a clickable link to a photo that shows during your edit of a saved post you remove the 'url tags' and insert 'img tags' at each end.

And here's a picture as an example...

http://i.imgur.com/yZt864v.jpg

Or...

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

One of the options I really like using on imgur is that I have a separate place for my images, the ones I want to save and be able to access over and over, or I can post and share pictures in the general pool.

~ Chance

 

[bykfixer]

I like that too CG. For kix n giggles I posted a cover shot from an ancient bmx magazine of a guy in full racing attire of the day doing a handstand on his Skyway mag wheeled bike.
In minutes it had 66 views and a upvote.
But after that I thought "holy cow, how many folks are now trying to hack into my stuff now?"... me being the tin hat wearer type and all. lol (and Coast to Coast listener)...

 

[Woods Walker]

So far I have not been effected. I use the IMG thing. To be honest the only reason I use and pay for Photobucket is to share photos with you'll. It is slow and worthless otherwise for my needs. In fact it really sucks and tends to not work. I hate the stupid cat photo they put up when once again it's off line or how slow it is. Also advertisements asking me to pay extra to not see their advertisement to pay extra. I think they're doomed and gotta find another option. If my photos do become broken linked because of them lots of threads on multiple boards will have holes the size of Texas.

 

[rookiedaddy]

My account is affected too. Created a small utility to help migrate the pb links embedded in my forum posts to either imgur.com or ImageShack.

now slowly migrating away from PB... as of v1.0.3, it now supports migrating my posts in BLF, CPF and TFF. Now, just hope I can still find all my photos from my local drive to be uploaded to imgur or ImageShack.:mecry:
this utility is to address the tedious process of identifying those hashed filename from imgur or ImageShack. Unlike photobucket, imgur (and imageshack, etc.) do not use our original filename when linking to the file. For example, when I upload the file named "S1RvsH1RvsH102.jpg" to PB, I get a link like "http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss200/rookiedaddy/Flashlights/Olight/H1R/Photos/S1RvsH1RvsH102.jpg" from PB where the original filename is intact. But when I upload to imgur, imgur gives me a link like "http://i.imgur.com/ydb5bRs.jpg" where the filename is hashed and original filename is preserved (luckily) as one of the file properties.

this makes updating our posts in forum very tedious. So the utility's purpose is to look at photobucket's filename and do a lookup to user's imgur image from a local repository and try to find a match from the file property and replace it with imgur's link.

following is a flowchart of how the utility work...

 

[bykfixer]

^^ Bravo!!!
Thank you. Big help to those wantin and willing to migrate.