Photobucket... WTF!!

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by PG2

Quite an ironic comment to come from a non-donating AFF member.

I have absolutely no problem if photobucket wants to change their mind about their charges. It was the way they went about it.

But I wont be revolting against changes at AFF and cursing and jumping up and down as Im not a financial supporter of this site, I acknowledge I have no rights.
Agreed their PR is poor but the global response is typical.
Get something for free and entitlement sets in, 'I have aright to free stuff!'.
One old trick is to get the people hooked then charge them money!

JP

[Lunch]

Switch to imageshack

[Fed]

Switching leaves you open to it all happening again.

[Sox]

Originally Posted by Lunch

Switch to imageshack

Originally Posted by Fed

Switching leaves you open to it all happening again.

And it will, you can count on it.

[Professor Farnsworth]

With the horrendously laggy interface and 15 ads about poker and how hot and willing my neighbours are every time I logged in, I was considering charging THEM. life is funny sometimes.

[EB#]

Well... After many attempts, stops and starts, typical PB freeze ups, log outs and re log ins, I have now successfully downloaded all my images from PB, in their respective albums as zip files. This is around 1900 images, 250Mb in total. This is a major step in possibly re-building my main threads (x2) here at AFF and it feels good to have all folders copied out of PB and on my own computer. I have found that a number of images have been corrupted in the download, but it may not be that many and they could be replaced.

Note that I had all of the images on my HD anyway, but they are scattered in various folders and at various sizes. The prospect of finding each one, relevant to my threads would take forever and drive me mad, no doubt. Thus, the copy of the actual PB folders makes things much easier.... I now have the exact image files, same size (mostly at 640px wide for my threads), with the same respective jpg file name as linked in the threads.

I would certainly encourage others with PB stored images to download their albums. Things are getting pretty bent out of shape at Photobucket.... this could very well be the downward spiral for them!

The prospect of fixing my threads, with some much needed assistance from AFF, seems distinctly possible now. The free AFF website is such a great resource and a credit to the team that keep the site running. There are hundreds of fascinating and informative build and project car threads here that deserve to stay online, with all the great pics, for all of the future car enthusiasts to come.

[Fed]

Looks like Phildo's pictures are still working that's a relief.

[Cav]

It seems such a suicidal financial decision by PB I am beginning to wonder if they are the victim of the ransomware virus.

BTW my PB is working OK

[Linz]

Originally Posted by Lunch

Switch to imageshack

I left imageshack for that very reason a few years ago
Maybe things have changed??

[Rallye Sport]

Lots of generic photobucket 'log in' images on ebay today aswell.
Commiserations to the people that have effectively lost photo essays and project threads but Kudo's to the AFF management for their work so far on a solution

[Ford17]

This is turning out more widespread than I first thought.

Imgur looks okay, and might be a possible substitute service.

[98TLS]

Originally Posted by Ford17

This is turning out more widespread than I first thought.

Imgur looks okay, and might be a possible substitute service.

Having a crack with Imgur but cant work out there sizing/how to resize

[98TLS]

Works on huge thumbnail but has a resizing option but blowed if i can work it.How long before it shuts up shop with everyone heading over from photobucket.

[toughxc]

Originally Posted by russellw

There are a couple of options open to those with build threads or tech docs that contained images hosted by photobucket.

Simplest. We can remove the current daily image restrictions on the AFF gallery as this allows bulk uploads of images to a users gallery space (which will still have to be restricted to some sort of size per user) and then I can run database queries to redirect the image URL's to that gallery space. It's a bit finite for space as we only have ~650 Gb of space currently available but it's workable as a solution and we can possibly add more disk (albeit probably only another 1TB) without much difficulty and at not much cost.

There are a couple of riders for that one (or indeed most of these). The images are going to have to have the same image name as they had on photobucket and they need to be in the users personal gallery space.

A bit harder. We can set up a public SFTP space on our server. Same space limitations as above and again it would need to be space limited to 'something' per user but it's easily accessible with a client like WinSCP which provides a Windows Explorer style interface and supports bulk upload to that FTP space. Images can then be linked directly from that space and the URL's of existing images fixed the same way as above with the only proviso that image names need to be unchanged.

Fiddly but workable. Users can migrate their existing images to a new image hosting service and we can again (probably) amend the URL's as long as they don't do something stupid with the naming and they support HTTPS. All the same riders apply as above with the added proviso that they must support 3rd party linking which not everyone will do.

Harder but probably best long term: We can just set up a dedicated image hosting server with our ISP that is in the same domain space as AFF so that it acts like a subdomain and images won't be seen as 3rd party links. It's got a cost attached to it so it would have to be chargeable based on storage size. As a guide, adding 4Tb of scalable backed up NAS or SAN storage is going to cost about 75 cents / Gb so allowing for some overhead and 60% utilisation we'd need to be looking at something around $1.50 per Gb per annum in (say) blocks of 5 Gb. We could put an image management app on the front of our current server backed onto that storage to make uploading and managing images simple. It's a bit of work to get it set up but it is feasible.

Cheers
Russ

Thanks for the possible options Russ.

So I think if you can confirm a way forward I'd prefer to give ford forums some $$ rather then photo bucket I've just downloaded my album from Photobucket waiting to find out where to upload it to.

As others have too, i have a 10 yr old thread which i use regularly for a build diary and without the pics I'm stuffed. ( i cant remember what i did last week and revert to the thread to remind myself all the time).

[EB#]

Originally Posted by 98TLS

Having a crack with Imgur but cant work out there sizing/how to resize....

I find it's best to edit copies of your pics to the desired size before an upload. A pretty good size for info and build threads here on AFF is say 640x480px or 800x600px, for example.

A freely available image editing program, by the name of FastStone Image Viewer is pretty good I reckon. This program has a feature where one may batch edit a stack of photos to a desired size, in a single command. The new, smaller size versions are copies of your originals and sent to a folder that you designate. Very handy and easy to use!

See here for more info:
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

[98TLS]

Originally Posted by EB#

I find it's best to edit copies of your pics to the desired size before an upload. A pretty good size for info and build threads here on AFF is say 640x480px or 800x600px, for example.

A freely available image editing program, by the name of FastStone Image Viewer is pretty good I reckon. This program has a feature where one may batch edit a stack of photos to a desired size, in a single command. The new, smaller size versions are copies of your originals and sent to a folder that you designate. Very handy and easy to use!

See here for more info:
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm

Cheers mate,awesome.

[Mont5.0]

Originally Posted by 98TLS

Having a crack with Imgur but cant work out there sizing/how to resize image image

Its a B series Brother- Max pics away i say!!

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Mont5.0

Its a B series Brother- Max pics away i say!!

I concur

[nstg8a]

Can someone edit that post? That pic is rediculously large lol.

[PridenJoy]

Giving flickr a go but can't work out where to get the pic link to show the pic (like the IMG link in PB used to do)

[GTENVY]

Originally Posted by russellw

I doubt that anyone realistically objects to them charging something for the service they provide, particularly as their outbound bandwidth utilisation must be horrifying and the cost of storage equally so.

It's the method they have used and the actual cost they are applying that has people (justifiably) up in arms.

Regards
Russ

Totally agree Russ and the $400 per year is absolutely ridiculous.

Rich

[Pepscobra]

So why do some threads still have their photos and some don't?

Is it a progressive thing that will affect all photobucket photos eventually? Or is their some way around it?

[jstanovic]

Originally Posted by jpblue1000

offers free service for 14 years, changes mind as they are entitled too and whamo, freeloaders revolt!
funny stuff.

JP

It's not just free account holders. People who have paid accounts are having the same issue, only paying the $400/year will allow you to 3rd party host. Everyone on all the other <$100/year accounts have been shafted too.

[EB#]

Originally Posted by Pepscobra

So why do some threads still have their photos and some don't?
Is it a progressive thing that will affect all photobucket photos eventually? Or is their some way around it?

It seems like a progressive change to me; I believe the official change of terms came into play on 20/6/17 & PB must have millions of accounts on various servers to edit. I have not read of any way around it....

[Fed]

Some people still seeing pictures may be seeing them from their computer's cache or even the forum's cache if there is such a thing.
Wondering if the forum could retrieve the pictures by changing the links to go through a proxy server as a temporary fix, maybe write a program to change the links automatically?
Obviously computers aren't my strong point. Fire away.

[Ford17]

Originally Posted by 98TLS

Having a crack with Imgur but cant work out there sizing/how to resize

Originally Posted by 98TLS

Works on huge thumbnail but has a resizing option but blowed if i can work it.How long before it shuts up shop with everyone heading over from photobucket.

Figured it out.

1. Create an Imgur account first, with username and password.
2. Go to your username, top RHS, drop down to view 'images'.
3. Click your image
4. Choose 'view and edit post' (blue bar on RHS)
5. Hover over image, and on the top RHS and next to 'copy' is a drop down arrow - choose 'edit'
6. Enter in new size in dimension box on RHS (keep 'lock proportions' ticked on)
7. There's an 'advanced' button above the image for other options (orientation, brightness, etc).

[Uncle_Ken]

I've been looking at other sites.
http://tinypic.com/about.php is free but is owned by photobucket (see bottom of page)
http://postimage.io/about.php is a maybe and allows 3rd party links.
I would rather pay a small amount to Ford Forums and have my car pics here
UK

[GO FURTHER]

For those of you who have photos on Photobucket linked to your threads here... And are thinking that you don't need to download them all because you have them stored on your computer..... Think again!

The photo you upload to Photobucket that you then link to a thread here has its file name changed by Photobucket in the direct link with an extension added to the filename.

For example a photo I upload with the filename "diff-3.jpg" then gets changed by Photobucket to "diff-3_zpsrtbtdeie.jpg". This happens to all photos you have uploaded and have linked to.

What this means, is that if you were to then upload all the original files from your computer you had on Photobucket linked to threads here, to a space that RussellW and his team may provide on the AFF servers, and a program then links the file names to the Photobucket file names in the threads ... They won't match.... So won't work!

Try this for yourself... Look at the direct link name of your file you add to a post from Photobucket.

[wodahs]

been reading this thread
been going thru the same sh** as every one else , got the email bout a week ago
down loaded my pics the other nite so (just to be sure) I definitely have all of them

and today get another email from them ! (just a moment ago) selling snake oil water repellent spray for shoes WTF why you now sending me spam sales of sh** emails that has nothing to do with well photos or why I was using your site

[GO FURTHER]

Originally Posted by wodahs

been reading this thread
been going thru the same sh** as every one else , got the email bout a week ago
down loaded my pics the other nite so (just to be sure) I definitely have all of them
and today get another email from them ! (just a moment ago) selling snake oil water repellent spray for shoes WTF why you now sending me spam sales of sh** emails that has nothing to do with well photos or why I was using your site

You are lucky... I did not even get an email from them stating their change in terms and conditions!

I have no problem paying a reasonable monthly fee to have 3rd party hosting... But US$400 per year and NOT billed monthly but in one yearly hit!!

Also remember that at today's current USD exchange rate... That's AUD$520 plus the surcharge your credit card company will charge you for the conversion!