Photobucket blocked 3rd party hosting

Neil

WezV said:

The other issue is all those old threads with PB links. 

Most of mine are going to be screwed, and I don't have time to re-do all the links  

Exactly.

Will all historic posts lose their pics? Complete drag if it does.

I think I'm going to have to migrate all my old PB stuff.

andyp

There was a thread about this on another forum I use (on motorbikes) yesterday and there's loads of project threads and general threads that will now be pretty useless, but it's the peril of using third party hosts for anything. Photobucket has been terrible for so long anyway, I stopped using it a couple of years ago after they insisted on all the adverts and having to watch videos when uploading etc... and the spam and all that shite was on another level. Just such a horrible site to use after it initially being simple and easy.

 I had the same issue with not being unsubscribed from their crap, despite trying numerous times and then as a last resort I deleted my account a few months ago and filed them in the "wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire" drawer alongside those types of sites that are covered in ads with the article split up around them. Fuck that. Imgur seems ok but only just, it puts everything I upload into a new album and I can't seem to avoid that happening. There's something really awkward about how to organise albums too. There must be something better out there, but I've tried Flickr too and didn't get on with that either. End result of all this is simply that I barely ever post photos on forums as it's such a faff.

gavin_axecaster

I use Google photos. The album structure isn't customisable - as far as I can tell all albums stay in the order they were uploaded and I have no idea if you can have albums within albums.
However it's fine for my purposes.

ChrisMusic

Neil said:

WezV said:

The other issue is all those old threads with PB links. 
Most of mine are going to be screwed, and I don't have time to re-do all the links  

Will all historic posts lose their pics? Complete drag if it does.

andyp said:
There was a thread about this on another forum I use (on motorbikes) yesterday and there's loads of project threads and general threads that will now be pretty useless, but it's the peril of using third party hosts for anything.

There must be something better out there... End result of all this is simply that I barely ever post photos on forums as it's such a faff.

This whole issue of historic threads loosing their pictures really devalues the whole forum IMO, or at least the usefulness of forum content as a reference, and hence the worth of posting in the first place.

(especially build threads which are of necessity going to be pic heavy, i.e. @WezV , @Rabs , and others)


@digitalscream ~ Lee, I doubt there is much you and the other "founding fathers" can do about this situation, and I know Tony is taking some needed respite ATM, but you guys may want to have a bit of a conflab, and formulate some sort of policy in regard to the effect PhotoBucket's reckless behaviour will have on the massive amount of hard work and time all of you have graciously invested in making this place the undoubted success it is.


I wish I had some sort of useful suggestion to offer, I have done my best with the "Posting Pics ~ a little help" thread to keep abreast of hosting foibles and encouraging people to keep visual content in their threads, but this problem is an order of magnitude beyond any of that.  Let me know if I can do anything to help.

tone1

I've just downloaded Google photos and deleted photbucket.. Google photos have my photos since 2008 which was a result. Just got to work out how to post them now

BluesyDave

Looks like photbucket is done.  The ads were starting to really grind anyway, so probably a blessing.  I've just registered at imgur.  Quick, simple and free......result.

StormshadowGuitars

WezV said:

The other issue is all those old threads with PB links. 

Most of mine are going to be screwed, and I don't have time to re-do all the links  

Just going to let my old build threads die and create a new one with new pics on a different host, i don't have time or inclination to change all the links over.

Nitefly

Here is a test post from postimage:

Well - it appears to have worked - hurrah!

I have enormous trouble with Imgur - for some reason, Chrome thinks it has an illegal certificate, and won't let me upload pictures.

*edit* This was uploaded to Postimage at 800 * 600 - other resolutions are available.

Nitefly

Thanks to @ChrisMusic and @bodhi for instructions.  More details in here:

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/14957/posting-pictures-a-little-help

WezV

StormshadowGuitars said:

WezV said:

The other issue is all those old threads with PB links. 

Most of mine are going to be screwed, and I don't have time to re-do all the links  

Just going to let my old build threads die and create a new one with new pics on a different host, i don't have time or inclination to change all the links over.

Yeah, I am not going to do them all.  Might do some of the how-to posts though

StormshadowGuitars

So far Imgur looks ok and seems easy to use, ad free and quick to load the images! Thanks

SteveRobinson

Imgur is blocked by the government in Turkey.

So it must be doing something right.

Rabs

Yeah, I wont be re-posting the whole lot. For now I have put links up for the photbucket album and my facebook page where I have them all too....  I guess I will have to try one of the other services for the future stuff.

WezV

I finally have chance to try and download the albums, and all i can get is corrupt zip files???

StormshadowGuitars

WezV said:

I finally have chance to try and download the albums, and all i can get is corrupt zip files???

I got mine OK but it took ages, i mean hours to download.

digitalscream

Well, Photobucket appear to have saved me the job of trying to figure out where the hell the forum code talks to it...which, by the way, appears to be impossible to find.

Anyway, having just exhaustively gone through the code, here's a list of all the media services the forum has direct, explicit integration with:

- Imgur
- YouTube
- Google Calendar
- Vimeo
- Pastebin
- Soundcloud
- Bandcamp
- Google Maps
- Twitter
- Github
- Vine (RIP)
- Instagram
- Pinterest
- Getty Images
- Hitbox
- Twitch

Aside from those, you can embed an image from pretty much anywhere using the "Attach image/file" button in the editor toolbar, as long as you can get a direct URL for the image itself. This will generally only work if the URL ends in .jpg/.png/.gif/etc.

ChrisMusic

I have made a strategic suggestion in regard to PB, historic threads, and moving hosts, in the "Posting Pictures" thread, and left it open to discussion.

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1538431/#Comment_1538431

stickyfiddle

ChrisMusic said:

I have made a strategic suggestion in regard to PB, historic threads, and moving hosts, in the "Posting Pictures" thread, and left it open to discussion.

http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1538431/#Comment_1538431

I gotta be honest, I have no intention of going back through thousands of old posts and editing photo links. It's not that big a deal except in a handful of really useful threads. 

Far better for us to "@-tag" the OP in any specific threads if the links are dead and it'd be useful to have them updated. 

WezV

StormshadowGuitars said:

WezV said:

I finally have chance to try and download the albums, and all i can get is corrupt zip files???

I got mine OK but it took ages, i mean hours to download.

I got a small album of 200 pics off.  The large one @4000+ pics seemed to download okay when left alone, but only contained 1200 files, all corrupt.

crunchman

WezV said:

StormshadowGuitars said:

WezV said:

I finally have chance to try and download the albums, and all i can get is corrupt zip files???

I got mine OK but it took ages, i mean hours to download.

I got a small album of 200 pics off.  The large one @4000+ pics seemed to download okay when left alone, but only contained 1200 files, all corrupt.

That's a lot of pics.  I've only ever used PB for copies of pictures I want to link to online.  I've never actually used it for storage.

Call me old school but my main storage of pictures is the hard drive of my computer.  Actually most of them are on the hard drives of two different computers plus 2 portable drives.  Some of the older ones are burned to DVD/CD as well.  At least I'm far less at the mercy of sites like PB.