Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Cabin Kickoff It's Time Baby!!!

I am still waiting for Photobucket to catch up with me. They are still charging my $2.00 a month. I. Guessing they will eventually close my account and shut down the links to my pics. I still haven't figured had another pic storage website. Maybe they'll let me slide for a few years.
So sorry they did this to you. Can you even go in and retreive your pics? I am pretty sure I have all mine (or most of them anyway) stored in the Icloud. That's $.99 a month. I can't share from there though.

Think all the pictures Brettski has here on his build!

Guys, please help me understand what I'm missing. Why would someone store their valuable photos anywhere other than on their personal hard drive? I'm not real savvy about such stuff, and I'm bewildered by the raw emotion displayed over the photobucket thing. I'm surely missing something, somewhere.

sparky....I guess some of it might be if you store images only on your computer....every time you want to post it on a website you have to create a new URL or go to the first place you posted it and copy/paste the original URL...basically that's what I have started doing recently...using my computer only and just generating URL's as the need arises..

some of it also may be that the internet has slowly conditioned us into just expecting stuff for FREE. I'm as guilty as the next guy (except with music). Who doesn't like "FREE"? But look what's happened to the music industry. looks whats happened to magazine/newspaper subscriptions. content is now expected to be free. consumers expect "free" delivery on everything now too.

Hopefully everyone kept there photos on their own equipment or at least copies, but even if you didn't, can't they still be retrieved from PhotoB? My account did not get locked down just my links. And any "important to you" threads can be re-photo'd, right? OK, its a real pain, but it will tell you what's important to you and what threads are not.

I am sorry for anyone's loss of photos and the work it may entail to fix any project history threads.

EDIT: My apologies RC! if you want me to edit these comments out, I will gladly do so. I just realized your Cabin thread was for documentation and we are way off topic.

I'm just gonna add a pic page to my website and hotlink from there. I just hafta sit down with a cuppa and make it happen.

No problem Quarter thanks, for asking....

Tony, my issue was that all the posted pics were already sized, and cropped. I've got thousands of pics, but I didn't want to dig through them to find the actual posted pics. Whenever the new normal starts, whatever that may be, I'll be able to repost the pics without edits. For me, getting those pics back was mainly a big time saver.

I stored them on photobucket only to share them on forums. I have all the pictures here on the hard drive. But the time it will take to replace all those pictures in the different threads will be monumental.

Like Brettski, I am starting to store the pictures on my Hoosier Pond Pros website. But, my computer buddy said to leave them private, so it doesn't burn up all their data allotment for people that use their phones for everything and want to go there to just order something for their pond.

I am in the same situation as esshup. I have thousands of photos on threads here. Without the pics often the thread does not make sense. Photo BS advertised that they provided free image hosting. Now with the captives they are resorting to blackmail.

Ewest, it's unusual to see you this riled up. Yes, it used to be free.....for YEARS. Not hardly a bait and switch in my opinion. They were losing money because so many were heavy users of a free service that was based on the assumption that selling advertising would allow it to remain free. And it apparently worked for a time, but just like everything else, competition makes it harder to squeeze a profit out of the same dollar.

Changes had to be made. Not saying I approve of the rate increase, nor am I going to pay it. But I'm not angry about it. My photos aren't being held for ransom, I voluntarily handed them over to photobucket, let them foot the bill for my stuff for years, and they dont owe me anything. Like I've been saying, if it's that important to me, it needs to be under my direct control whenever possible.

I don't quite see it the same way as sprkplug, but that's ok and different opinions are what makes the world go round.

The amount of money they are requesting is way out of line. For them to cut it off without warning is in essence blackmail. Thousands upon thousands of websites are now scurrying about in dismay. Let's say you have a forum dedicated on how to build covered wagons. and you and all your members used photobucket for pictures. Let's say that during the past 10 years over 1 thousand wagons had been built of different designs. Now thanks to photobucket your forum is now worthless. Some members may be dead, some may have found different interests, etc. The how to's on some of those builds may never be able to be recovered unless you dig deeper in a site like way back machine. Now let's say I google covered wagons and find your site. I look around and all I see is that Dad blasted photobucket ad where they used to be pictures. Tell me, wouldn't that rile you up just a smidgen?

In my opinion, a better way they could have handled it was reduce the image quality unless you clicked on it and in turn was taken back to their website which is in essence all they want anyway. It would have left the websites operational and provided foot traffic for PB

Photobucket has had performance problems as time went on. The site is now "molasses in January' slow. They can blame the lack of advertising revenue due to the advertising-profit model for their problems, but IMGUR had overtaken them long before their recent decision based on speed of service. This is a symptom of poor management and technological innovation, not a result of the market trends. Many early innovators are buried under the bureaucracy that they create preventing employees from keeping ahead of the curve. This is not a unique story.