PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

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PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Fredjohn » Fri 14.07.2017, 09:28

Please be aware Photobucket are now charging $400 a year to do 3rd party hosting, ie letting you store your photos with them and using a link to upload to forums. Hence the ugly notice in my signature and also in any post of mine (and yours if applicable) where I have used Photobucket to upload photos.

You can still store about 2gig of photos for free, but if you want to use them for linking to a forum, you will need their Plus 500 plan at the $400 a year.

Any free alternatives out there please? Don't know what we can do with all the posts we've made with photos which are now big ugly blocks. Any thoughts?
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby rip » Fri 14.07.2017, 10:05

I don't really see why this is a rip-off because you have a choice: don't use them any more.
They are their servers & services so they decide how much to charge for them.
$400 per year just to share photos on forums is expensive so I expect most users will choose not to use them any more.

As for alternatives:
Imageshack & Flickr spring to mind. I have not used either recently so I don't know what their functionality & terms are.
Hosting your own images is another possibility but not a very appealing one. You will need your own server & domain. You may also want to pay your ISP for a static IP address. You would then have to spend some time setting it up. You would then need to protect it against hackers.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Rob P » Fri 14.07.2017, 10:24

Hi John,
Matthew uses Flickr which seems to suit his purpose, he was also a Photobucket user previously but not anymore I believe for the reason previously mentioned.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Steve A » Fri 14.07.2017, 10:33

I only use Photo bucket to store the photo's I want to share on here so 2 gig is quite enough for me.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Fredjohn » Fri 14.07.2017, 11:31

Steve A wrote:I only use Photo bucket to store the photo's I want to share on here so 2 gig is quite enough for me.


Steve, 2 gig may be enough to store your photos, but you will NOT be able to share them on here or any other forum. Hence my posting..

Rob thanks may well switch to Flickr. Annoying thing is all our old posts will just be missing the photos.

Ian, didn't mean to take your name in vain! See the business reason, but I think it is a rip-off moving from zero to 400 bucks. Be interesting to see what following they lose after this decision.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Steve A » Fri 14.07.2017, 11:46

Fredjohn wrote:
Steve A wrote:I only use Photo bucket to store the photo's I want to share on here so 2 gig is quite enough for me.


Steve, 2 gig may be enough to store your photos, but you will NOT be able to share them on here or any other forum. Hence my posting..

Rob thanks may well switch to Flickr. Annoying thing is all our old posts will just be missing the photos.

Ian, didn't mean to take your name in vain! See the business reason, but I think it is a rip-off moving from zero to 400 bucks. Be interesting to see what following they lose after this decision.


2 gig isn't enough for mine either I use iCloud and Photo bucket ONLY for my forum sharing.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Dave Eds » Fri 14.07.2017, 12:11

Fredjohn wrote:
Ian, didn't mean to take your name in vain!


Or Iain's :lol:
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby rip » Fri 14.07.2017, 12:14

Steve A wrote: I use iCloud and Photo bucket ONLY for my forum sharing.

I think you are missing the point here, Steve.
The 2GB limit applies only for personal storage of photos, not for sharing them on forums.
If you want to share them on a forum, you will have to pay $400.

I agree that this is extreme but do not agree with the view that it is a rip-off because we all have a choice to go elsewhere.
I do think it is a backward step though. Users will simply go elsewhere.
Services like whatsapp used to cost a small fee (79p per year IIRC) after the trial period but have now become free.
You tube is free because it is paid for by the adverts which sometimes precede your videos.
I really do not see who would pay $400 to share their photos on forums. Anyone prepared to do this will either prefer to have their own web server which they have full control over or they will use an alternative service.
ImageShack & Flickr spring to mind. Steve has also mentioned iCloud.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby rip » Fri 14.07.2017, 12:33

Dave Eds wrote:
Fredjohn wrote:
Ian, didn't mean to take your name in vain!


Or Iain's :lol:


I doubt John would have known that.

Lain annoys me though. I never got called that until a couple of years ago. I don't let it bother me though...I just don't answer to it. :-D
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby MPx » Wed 19.07.2017, 09:11

Sorry didn't see this before....

But what I posted in the "alternative" thread may still be relevant for some since there is clearly some factual inconsistency above. I posted a current Photobucket photo on the forum and have checked that my old ones still show, which they do....and I don't pay them $400 per year. After the recent changes, I do now pay them $2:49 per month to be "ad-free" which improves the experience from unusable to clunky. I also only use the site for forum posting photos and a few I want to share.....and have used just over half of my 2Gb limit in the 12 years or so that I've had it. However I'm no fan of Photobucket and will gladly move on to a better free site when I read other experiences are better there....
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby GeoffSmith » Wed 19.07.2017, 09:15

I wonder if mine do…
Image
And I'm as tight as a duck's arse so they don't get a penny out of me.
[EDIT]They also appear in my signature unlike John
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Rambo » Wed 19.07.2017, 09:38

Call me old fashioned, but I just store all my images on the hard drive of my laptop and only upload images to specific websites, e mails etc. Sizing the images us very easy and there are no hosting charges. This works for me and is completely free, so ducks arse from Tytherington, please take note :twisted:

Dave Eds wrote:
Fredjohn wrote:
Ian, didn't mean to take your name in vain!


Or Iain's :lol:


rip wrote:Lain annoys me though. I never got called that until a couple of years ago. I don't let it bother me though...I just don't answer to it. :-D


PS slightly off topic, but Ian, Iain or Lain... who knows what's right ? That's why I prefer Rip or The Ripster :twisted:
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby rip » Wed 19.07.2017, 11:44

Rambo wrote:That's why I prefer Rip or The Ripster :twisted:

Both are fine with me.

As for forums hosting photos, not all do.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Fredjohn » Wed 19.07.2017, 12:22

I only decided to use a 3rd party hosting site as attaching pictures to the LEC site, which is quite easy to do once correctly sized, takes up storage space on our server.

The site says somewhere that this space is limited and recommends using a hosting site. I will use an alternative, but annoyingly all our older posts have effectively lost the photos linked in, as someone else commented, and will take forever for us to correct, provided we can work out which photos they were!

I've removed the photo from my signature for the time being.

Yours disgruntled

:( :( :( :(
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby GeoffSmith » Wed 19.07.2017, 15:08

The Piper exhaust thread is well and truly fubard as well. The ludicrous thing is that if you right mouse and "Open image in new tab" or equivalent, you can see the pictures. :evil:

Oh, and you know where you can stick your wedding pictures John... :twisted:
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Giniw » Wed 19.07.2017, 21:45

Well that means we could do a little script that would download all the pictures and upload them elsewhere, and then patch the image URL in each post.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Brit-Car-Nut » Wed 19.07.2017, 22:38

GeoffSmith wrote:The ludicrous thing is that if you right mouse and "Open image in new tab" or equivalent, you can see the pictures.

I tried that and all I got was the photobucket notice replicated on the new page.

Maybe it is a FireFox thing... It would take a moderator to do the repairs. It would be a huge undertaking as I searched for "photobucket.com/albums" as it is in the links and search returned 2056 hits and listed them on 103 pages.

If everyone attached their pictures to the forum, then the web site space would grow significantly.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby lotusflasherman » Wed 19.07.2017, 22:39

Giniw wrote:Well that means we could do a little script that would download all the pictures and upload them elsewhere, and then patch the image URL in each post.


Great idea ... have you started yet ... :lol:
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Giniw » Thu 20.07.2017, 00:06

:-D
No but seriously, on the server side that would be not too hard I think.
Code: Select all
make a SQL request to get the posts that contain at least a picture link to photobucket (something roughly similar to SELECT postContent FROM postsTable WHERE postContent LIKE "%photobucket.com/albums%")
for each one of those posts,
   extract all the pictures links,
   for each one of those pictures links
      download the picture locally
      upload it somewhere else with no referrer limitation
      replace the link in the post by the new link
   endfor
endfor

Something like that.
I think the main problem would be to find a suitable server to put the photos, and also that the users would lose control of their uploaded image. That could be a "legal" problem I think? (maybe that could be an option in the profile section? Or if it's just limited to a few users, the migration could be done with their explicit agreement?)
Last edited by Giniw on Thu 20.07.2017, 02:53, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: PHOTOBUCKET RIP-OFF

Postby Giniw » Thu 20.07.2017, 00:09

Brit-Car-Nut wrote:
GeoffSmith wrote:The ludicrous thing is that if you right mouse and "Open image in new tab" or equivalent, you can see the pictures.

I tried that and all I got was the photobucket notice replicated on the new page.
You should try to refresh the page (including the cache, ie refreshing by pressing CTRL+F5, not just F5)

It would be a huge undertaking as I searched for "photobucket.com/albums" as it is in the links and search returned 2056 hits and listed them on 103 pages.
Interesting, that means it would be not that huge for a machine ^^
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