Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Someone explain to me again...

It might not be terribly hard to move pictures from photobucket to some other host, but how do you go back and fix all your past posts and embedded links?

I think that once your paid contract with them runs out, then your linked photos will be gone too. I also have all my photos stored on my hard drive in addition to photobucket. I wouldn't mind paying a minimal fee for using them, but not $400/year.

Here's from their new "terms of service";

Here’s their new terms of service. I sent them an e-mail saying that there was no way in hell that I was paying $400/year for 3rd party hosting and that they could shove their terms of service agreement where the sun don’t shine.

Types of Accounts, Pricing and Limits

Visiting : There is no cost to visit the Site or to register as a Member.
Free account : Each individual Member gets one free account that provides 2 GB of free storage or space available for your original photo files, or videos under 10min. The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting. If a free account Member exceeds their Content Limit, their account will be immediately suspended and they will need to become a “Paying Member” (defined below) in order to continue accessing their account. You can upgrade to a Plus account at any time.
Ad-free Account : The Ad-free Account offers Members the ability to use the Site without seeing any third party banner advertisements when logged into your Ad-free Account (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements). This account level is available for $2.49 / month, payable by the Member on a monthly recurring basis.
Plus Account : The Plus Account offers several paid options that may give the Paying Member more storage, bandwidth, 3rd party image hosting, image linking and/or other services as outlined below. Once and during such period of time in which you subscribe to and pay for a Plus Account, we will consider you a "Paying Member." Please note that all Plus Account subscriptions are billed annually at the commencement of the service. Photobucket may also offer a monthly billing option for its Plus Accounts (see terms and restrictions, below).

Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:

o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.

o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.

o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.

Yes it is depressing what's happened to PhotoBucket, but hey such is life. And what's great about this country is you can just take your business elsewhere. Two weeks ago I showed up at my doctor's office with a sinus infection...they take walk-ins and I arrived 45 mins before closing time but they already had their doors locked. So I simply drove a few miles to a CareNow clinic and was seeing the doctor within 20 minutes and was out the door with a steroid shot and the RX within 45 mins.

The somewhat unique thing about PhotoBucket was they had BOTH hosting and a pretty robust edit function at the same site. Many of the other image hosting sites either have no edit function or pretty limited edit functions.

PostImage seems to have made some recent changes and made it harder to get "true direct link url's" for an image. PostImage has had some issues over the last year, in fact they almost shut down but a last minute donation campaign kept them afloat. I recently e-mailed them about some changes happening and they have not responded. In the past they always responded to my e-mails quickly. I am suspicious PostImage may go the way of PhotoBucket as well.

I came across this website to attach a URL to an image on your computer. This site can be used with or without signing up and seems pretty good...real easy to create a URL for images on your computer.....but I am still playing with it as far as edit functions:

http://www.ezimba.com/index-ln.html

I don't think many will end up paying. Those who would pay will have doubts as to whether the site will soon go under.

I think they will be no more by August first, unless they back off to what they had for old pics. IMHO.

This works well also but just FYI some of us don't have the "View Image Info option. So you need to right click on the picture and go to properties. Then copy the Http link as Sunil described above.

For example it would look like this. [img]https://rest of link[/img]

That will allow the image to be seen without clicking on it.

RC

I'm not worried about my photos and links here on the forum. They're gone, end of story, start over if I choose, but probably not. I don't see it as a huge issue?

It's easy to blame photobucket, but truth is we've had it easy, (free), for a long, long time. To be completely blunt, if we want our photos, links, how to's, heritage, whatever, to always be around, then we need to pay Bob for the privilege of posting that stuff here. You can pay a third party site to host photos, or you can pay the site directly, but somebody deserves to get paid, somewhere. And to me, why relinquish control to a third party?

What if they all decide to go the way of photobucket?

I agree sprkplug, we really need to host from within this webpage. If that requires software update or hosting fees, so be it.

RC I have a slightly different problem with this Android os Tab that I use when traveling. I can do everything Sunil says except when it comes to the paste function, for some reason it will not paste an image link copy saved to the clip board to a text box. So I can not get it to work. I'm sure it would work from my home computer ooerating with Windows os.

Tony, I agree with you about paying but Bob has to balance a fee site and how much interest that would generate vs a free site.

I have no idea what it would cost nor how much storage he'd need for storing pictures here. maybe this is a sign of the times going away from free forums to "pay to post" forums?

I'm upset because of all the pictures that are lost, and the context that went along with them. How do you explain different types of cover for fish without pictures??

I honestly don't know the answer. I'm thinking of all the information that is in the archives that is or will be lost.....

Hey speaking of all this image talk I just found a seemingly very easy to use site to add text to images. You can edit text size, choose font, drag the text around to exactly where ya want it, and choose the text color.

http://addtext.com/


And here is my first try with AddText.com

could this forum and other large forums negotiate with photobucket to allow hosting to their site for a flat fee so that not all the users pay $500, but the site owner could have one fee for all hosting for the pondboss site as a whole?

I hear you Scott, and I understand where you're coming from. On the other hand however, I have been saying for quite some time now that if increasing revenue is the goal, (via mag subscriptions), then this forum is the magazine's worst enemy. All this info archived here, that has apparently been rendered virtually useless by recent photo developments, was available free of charge.

Why provide such info for free? Sure, we can say that the mag goes into greater detail than what's available here, but maybe what's available here for free, is good enough for 95% of people?

Maybe instead of worrying about what's lost, we should take what's happened and see it for what it is....a push to move in a different direction altogether. Sometimes it takes just such a catalyst to set things in motion and take control of our destiny.

I think a big draw to forums is not just the information provided but the interaction among participants.

It makes the world seem like a much smaller place by allowing interaction with like minded people that a person would have never had the opportunity to interact with before the age of the internet.

No magazine can ever do that.

After saying that no magazine could ever do that, I re-thought.

Maybe no paper print magazine could. But perhaps an on line digital magazine could.

I'm sure someone has thouht of it before me, but what about a paid subscription on line magazine that had full interactivity with its authors and other readers in a live time forum atmosphere?

Perhaps a two tier situation with a free side (like currently) and a subscription side with the interactive articles.

Being digital, maybe making the paid side cheap enough (compared to paper print) few would have any reason to only access the more restricted free portion, yet the free portion would bring in interest to the paid side. Get the price low enough that there would be four or five times the number of paper subscribers (because it is so cheap) so the gross revenue would still be acceptable.

An astronomy forum and selling site that I was on became a "pay to post" site a few years ago, and it dwindled from hundreds to just a handful of users after the announcement, and it was only $12 a year. Formerly it was run on donations, which I did a few. My participation in that forum was already declining, so I chose not to continue. There was another free site that started up a few years before that, and most users went there.

Making a forum a pay site just to post is a certain path to kill a forum.

You are probably right.

There would have to be more to offer than just posting to make it attractive.

The problem is, a free forum isn't free at all. Somebody, somewhere, is footing the bill. And having the space to store photos costs money.

Consider this: when I was younger I was heavily involved in hot rodding. I subscribed to Car Craft, Super Chevy, and Popular Hot Rodding magazines. To the tune of approx $100 a year if I recall. Now, a subscription to Car Craft is twelve bucks a year. And, that's for a dozen issues, not six!

And is it really "pay just to post"? Someone else mentioned the comraderie and interaction as being draws also, which I happen to agree with. I don't recall the last time I asked a pond or fish question here. But I've sure tried to answer a few, so exactly what benefit have I reaped by hanging around? I have friends here, that's why. I feel like my days of NEEDING the forum are probably behind me, these days I'm here just as a social event. Now the uncomfortable question: shouldn't those who are utilizing the forum as a source of info that they would otherwise have to pay for, incur some debt in this regard? Should I pay for the privilege of answering questions, rather than receiving answers, myself?

I realize it's blunt, but there are times when bluntness is needed.

The current successful web model is to attract potential customers so advertisers will pay to advertise to an interested crowd. Charge and the forum will be replaced by someone using this model.

I wonder how successful it was for Photobucket?

I also can't help but think that ponds, while appealing to us, otherwise appeal to a very specific, probably very small demographic. And the advertising base might reflect that?

Photobucket has had issues with excessive advertising for several years, there are so many pop ups and advertising that the site has been almost unusable at times without the use of an adblocker. This morning I downloaded all of the pictures from both of my Photobucket accounts, it took more than twenty minutes to access just the Library on one of them and begin the download. As far as I can tell they haven't shut down the 3rd party hosting on either account yet but once they do I will close both accounts. Advertising revenue alone must not be keeping up with costs at Photobucket so they are trying something new, I wish them luck as I suspect they will need it going forward.

On a side note, Pond Boss is one of the few sites where I leave my adblocker turned off, the advertising is not excessive or malicious, and it helps keep the lights on for the forum.

I suspect the same, Shorty. If photobucket's business model had been a raging success, would we now be in the same predicament? They apparently sold out, why? It's easy to claim greed on their part, but we really don't know. Maybe the old owners saw the writing on the wall and abandoned ship.

Perhaps utilizing advertising revenue as the sole source of funding isn't the way to go, either.

I have been on here nearly a year and done extensive researching of the archived threads. As far as benefit, I have probably obtained over 90% of what I needed. So, now it's mainly a social site, and I can even answer some questions based on my own successes and failures. It's good to share experiences with people who have common interests.

I have been on the other (Astronomy) forum I mentioned for 13 years, and it is still free to post. Many have come and gone in that time, and there are a handful of old timers still active. Mostly I answer questions there, and socialize due to common interests. That forum does not allow third party photo linking, as it has its own hosting, but the photos are size restricted to 500k each.

Photobucket's slowness is why I started switching to Imgur. Both of my kid's are computer science professionals and advised me to do this a year ago. I just kept suffering through Photobucket because it was familiar. They now gave me a real good reason to move exclusively to Imgur. I have no financial interest in this company in case you are wondering. I try to share what I have learned here as well. As a research scientist, I try to be evidence based and hope that I have helped others out. I did get one of our pictures of marginal plants in an extension publication because I posted it here. I still have my photos and will post them again as appropriate for answering questions. When I buy an aeration system, it will be from a Pondboss sponsor. I frequent this forum much more than other forums because I find folks that not only have similar interests, but also similar philosophies regarding individual accountability and outlooks on the level of government power that is appropriate. I understand that others feel differently and respect their right to their own opinion, but it is nice to see other folks that feel as I do.

I have a solution. Instead of posting pictures, start every thread with the words "picture this" then describe your situation. It may be more typing, but hey, typing is free. LMAO!