Photobucket Rules on 3rd Party Hosting

[StoryGirl83]

Apparently Photobucket has decided to disallow what they call 3rd party hosting (using them as an host for images linked to elsewhere) for all but those pay $399 per year for hosting. If you use Photobucket and either have a free account or an account at a lower tier, you are going to need to make a decision. If this is something you don't want to pay, whether you don't want to pay at all or you just don't want to pay that much, then you are going to need to find some other way to host your images or stop using images. If you think the price is reasonable and are willing to pay it, just be aware that it is coming if you don't already know that.

And if you don't use Photobucket, enjoy not being part of this. I wish I wasn't.

If your avatar is hosted there, you can fix that by hosting it here. There's a way to upload it directly from your computer onto this site. This won't work for an image in your signature, but at least it will get your avatar working.

[Ruth Marie]

I didn't know Photobucket was doing this. That's too bad. I haven't used mine in years.

I hope Tumblr and Google Photo are not going to eventually ask us to pay for stuff.

[StoryGirl83]

You might want to see if you can still access yours, see if there is anything posted there that you don't have elsewhere even if you forgot it was there. Unless of course you deleted your account, in which case it should be gone. I don't mind the idea of paying for it (although it's not a great time for something like that), but the amount is kind of large. The stuff I need, I might be able to host on my website for a little bit anyway, not sure if I will or not. I'm definitely not hosting all of it there, not because it's that much, but because I really don't want to deal with uploading it all, again . . . and some of those things I no longer need online. I can still access my account and my images at the moment, so I went through and saved every image except the one folder I know I have all or almost all of it.

[Esmeralda]

That's disappointing that we can't use them in our signatures - it means I wouldn't be able to use the one I love so much since it doesn't make a lot of sense without the rest of my signatures.

But I'm glad there's a way to at least use our avatars since they can be uploaded and never taken from us.

[StoryGirl83]

You just can't use them from ProBoards. I'm looking into other options which people can consider. If anyone who does not use ProBoards would like to share what they do for hosting images, please do so in this thread.

[Assassin Witch]

Alternative sites to use to upload graphics: tinypic.com/

[Esmeralda]

Thanks for that. Now if I can figure out how to get my graphics back from Photobucket. Unless you pay their "ransom" they won't let you access your own stuff!

[StoryGirl83]

I've been browsing the ProBoards support site looking for information about this situation and another. What I've learned so far is that tinypics does allow 3rd party linking right now, but it is owned by Photobucket, so be wary. I did read that Imgur, which has been mentioned, blocks "hotlinking." I have no experience with them, but it's worth double checking if you are considering them.

The following were recommended in the thread as potentially being alternatives:
village.photos,
nickpic.host - Owned by a ProBoards user who apparently welcomes hotlinking. Here's a quote from him: "Please feel free to use if you'd like. Typically I target RPGs, Graphic Designers, Story Tellers, and Resource Forums." If you use it for other reasons, not sure if signatures count (although I think it does), he wants to be contacted so he can make an exception to his ToS: support.proboards.com/user/167837
postimage.io/
imageshack.us/ - Apparently deletes old content, so probably not a good choice.

www.fotki.com/us/en/ - Specifically targets former Photobucket users (at least at the moment). They aren't free (after the first month), but at $92 for five years (yes, five) they are pretty decently priced. That price is for 100GB. To put that in perspective, I have 36MBs on Photobucket and that's over 2,000 images. Their site says they have been around for 20 years, so that good numbers wise. Might be worth looking into.


Here is a list from elsewhere on the site (the official list) of image hosting sites they recommend. Some are listed above and some of those above are not listed:
Fotki
Freeimagehosting
imgbb
imgpile
ImageShack
nickpic.host
Postimage
vgy.me
Village.photos

I do not currently use any of these and am just passing on recommendations I have found. I will look into some of these for my own usage.

[Chrisaholic]

I deleted my Photobucket account some time ago and now use OneDrive from Microsoft. Works fabulous as well as you can see. Just saved some pictures I made there and uploaded those to OneDrive. All good.

[StoryGirl83]

Thanks for the additional suggestions. The more options people have the better. Everyone has different needs and different plans for how they want to handle things and knowing our options helps.

[Melinda Halliwell]

My avatar and signature were both uploaded directly from my laptop so I don't have any problems there.

[StoryGirl83]

Don't know if this is a lasting thing, but for some reason my images still on Photobucket have started showing up again. I updated my signature so you can actually see my signature, again, without clicking on the link.

I don't trust this after what happened last year, but if you are someone who was not able to get into your account last year, I would try it, again. You will probably be able to get your images free from the site. I'm not sure if anyone is in that situation, but I figured I would mention it just in case.

As you can tell I never got around to getting a new host. For me, it wasn't a high priority. I hope for anyone it was a priority that you found a good place to host your images and you are happy with the new place. I will find some place eventually.

[pheebs]

Thanks for the heads up!

I remember Photobucket was like that last year. Maybe after enough complaints, they reverted the changes they wanted to do, but I'd still not get my hopes up.

[StoryGirl83]

I just looked at their site and the insane prices from last year have lowered considerable. Still not something I will probably ever consider after how they handled things last year, but for casual users like me, the low price is about $50 per year (you will note the options listed above have better prices than that, so there's that, too) and the high price is just over $120 per year, way down from the $399 last year.

My guess would be this is some sort of publicity stunt allowing images to show and it's going to be followed by an announcement with these new prices. Yeah, they probably heard the complaints last year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was always their plan to lower the plan like this to make people think they were getting a bargain.

[pheebs]

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case to trick people into thinking it's a bargain and joining or coming back.

[StoryGirl83]

That's exactly what I'm thinking. Most of us don't have that short of a memory. I suspect most of those who come back will do so because they have absolutely no idea where their images are linked to and they want those images to be visible, again.

[Esmeralda]

You're right - mine's back at other sites, too. I'm not sure if I want to go through the bit of putting my old signature back just to have it taken away again and although $50 is better than #399, it's still more than I can afford right now, so - at least for the time being - I'm going to keep the one I have.

But for those who are new and wonder, here's what mine looked like:

LIKE A CHARACTER LOBOTOMY, courtesy of Brad Kern!

I miss our snarky Piper who cared about innocents more than herself,
our smart Paige who had graduated from college and should've been a social worker
and our sweet Phoebs who loved magic more than sex!
Did they ever miss Prue!
Me, too!