RIP Photobucket...

[RDMcG]

Odd, mine is still working.....

[mjb1]

I'm a member on another forum that claims to have found a workaround to fool PB into continuing to serve up images on their site. They don't want to say how, but it sounds fairly easy for someone with the right tech knowledge. Guess it may only be a matter of time until traffic gives it away though, unless the forum loads the image once and then caches it locally forever perhaps?

[MJ85]

I'm not sure why you'd want to ever use them again. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[perdu]

I have deleted my account

Now we have to wonder which other hosting sites will be committing financial suicide next

[Podie]

So is there a general consensus on where to go?

[NoIP]

Podie said:

So is there a general consensus on where to go?

How lucky are you feeling, punk?

As I've said earlier in the thread, personally Imgur has been fine for me with embedding pics and I have a large (4 figures) amount of pics hosted that way with them dating back 8 years that all appear to be still working, however others have pointed out that officially you're not permitted to do this: "Don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network." That could be interpreted in several ways and if they don't want you embedding your images in forums and other social media then why do they kindly provide not one, but two different ways of automatically embedding your images in forums and social media platforms?

Flickr seems to be the only one of the well known photo hosting sites that allows embedding and they provide the embed code for you to do that, but Flickr isn't really an easy drag 'n' drop site where you can quickly dump your pics, unlike Imgur. The mobile apps for both are reportedly glitchy with some features missing that the desktop version has.

There are many other image hosting sites offering the world to attract people but all of them are largely unknown and usually shortlived.

Flickr is probably the safest option as they're owned by Yahoo but Yahoo doesn't have a great reputation for keeping the status quo either (Egroups anyone?) and could pull the plug at any time without giving a damn about the fall-out.

[King Herald]

Gad-Westy said:

It's interesting to hear that they have had reasonable uptake on the $399/annum subs. Sadly I can only assume that this is people that feel they have been held to ransom. 1000's of images spread wide around the internet, so potentially hundreds of hours to move to another host. Not likely to be a long lasting winning formula but I guess it depends what the competition do next.

Will this start a trend, will Facebook, Yahoo, Gmail etc all suddenly decide, overnight, to hold all your stuff to ransom?

How will people go if they wake up one day to find their principal email provider demanding several hundred quid a year just to access their existing accounts? Almost all my sign in web pages, banks, forums, groups, have an email address as their only backup access system, for forgotten passwords or other communications.

A week again I got a message telling me my Yahoo account was "locked for security reasons, try again in 30 minutes". I think it was actually something to do with the pic I was on, as I could access it from my iPad. But it was scary.

This might be the time to start collating address books and any important messages currently residing in all our internet programs.

[motco]

King Herald said:

Gad-Westy said:

It's interesting to hear that they have had reasonable uptake on the $399/annum subs. Sadly I can only assume that this is people that feel they have been held to ransom. 1000's of images spread wide around the internet, so potentially hundreds of hours to move to another host. Not likely to be a long lasting winning formula but I guess it depends what the competition do next.

Will this start a trend, will Facebook, Yahoo, Gmail etc all suddenly decide, overnight, to hold all your stuff to ransom?

How will people go if they wake up one day to find their principal email provider demanding several hundred quid a year just to access their existing accounts? Almost all my sign in web pages, banks, forums, groups, have an email address as their only backup access system, for forgotten passwords or other communications.

A week again I got a message telling me my Yahoo account was "locked for security reasons, try again in 30 minutes". I think it was actually something to do with the pic I was on, as I could access it from my iPad. But it was scary.

This might be the time to start collating address books and any important messages currently residing in all our internet programs.

I've always used an email client such as Outlook Express or Windows Mail for important stuff so that it's stored on my hard drive as well as on the server of the email provider.

[djdest]

I think the best option is to go self hosting with your own domain name and space.
I did it 17 years ago, and it worked perfectly.
I'm going to go back to that

[Frimley111R]

King Herald said:

Gad-Westy said:

It's interesting to hear that they have had reasonable uptake on the $399/annum subs. Sadly I can only assume that this is people that feel they have been held to ransom. 1000's of images spread wide around the internet, so potentially hundreds of hours to move to another host. Not likely to be a long lasting winning formula but I guess it depends what the competition do next.

Will this start a trend, will Facebook, Yahoo, Gmail etc all suddenly decide, overnight, to hold all your stuff to ransom?

How will people go if they wake up one day to find their principal email provider demanding several hundred quid a year just to access their existing accounts? Almost all my sign in web pages, banks, forums, groups, have an email address as their only backup access system, for forgotten passwords or other communications.

A week again I got a message telling me my Yahoo account was "locked for security reasons, try again in 30 minutes". I think it was actually something to do with the pic I was on, as I could access it from my iPad. But it was scary.

This might be the time to start collating address books and any important messages currently residing in all our internet programs.

TBH it's a bit like when banks threatened to charge for domestic accounts. None would actually do it because everyone would leave. Its risky for any current photo provider and they have seen what happened to PB now. I suspect PB will become a niche site in time.

[alock]

djdest said:

I think the best option is to go self hosting with your own domain name and space.
I did it 17 years ago, and it worked perfectly.
I'm going to go back to that

Definitely this. Any of the large Web space providers should give you a domain and some storage space for a few pounds per month.

Personally I then setup a subdomain which points to a structured folder of pictures. The photos subdomain then encapsulates all linked photos so the main domain can be used for other stuff. It also makes it easy to point the subdomain to a different host in the future.

All your photos then become something like:
http://photos.mydomain.com/cars/mycar.jpg

[NoIP]

alock said:

djdest said:

I think the best option is to go self hosting with your own domain name and space.
I did it 17 years ago, and it worked perfectly.
I'm going to go back to that

Definitely this. Any of the large Web space providers should give you a domain and some storage space for a few pounds per month.

Personally I then setup a subdomain which points to a structured folder of pictures. The photos subdomain then encapsulates all linked photos so the main domain can be used for other stuff. It also makes it easy to point the subdomain to a different host in the future.

All your photos then become something like:
http://photos.mydomain.com/cars/mycar.jpg

But not without the downsides when someone else decides to hotlink your photos on a high traffic site and you're faced with a hosting bill not dissimilar to what PB are charging, or a bunch of dead pics PB-esque when you exceed your monthly bandwidth allowance.

[alock]

NoIP said:

But not without the downsides when someone else decides to hotlink your photos on a high traffic site and you're faced with a hosting bill not dissimilar to what PB are charging, or a bunch of dead pics PB-esque when you exceed your monthly bandwidth allowance.

The key is that the URL is under your control. If you ever have problems you can selectively disable hotlinking from some domains.

[NoIP]

alock said:

NoIP said:

But not without the downsides when someone else decides to hotlink your photos on a high traffic site and you're faced with a hosting bill not dissimilar to what PB are charging, or a bunch of dead pics PB-esque when you exceed your monthly bandwidth allowance.

The key is that the URL is under your control. If you ever have problems you can selectively disable hotlinking from some domains.

Unless you spend all your life monitoring your traffic, the first you would know about your content being hotlinked elsewhere is after the damage has been done and all or most of your bandwidth has already been used up. Sure, you have control of the URL and can swap the image for something suitably abusive as a message to the person that has hotlinked it but other than making you feel a bit better for 10 minutes, it doesn't actually achieve anything.

People don't want to be dealing with that kind of hassle when all they want to do is display a few snaps they've taken on a forum.

[djdest]

Just set up a .htaccess file and add which sites you want to allow to use it. 5 minutes or less to set up

[NoIP]

djdest said:

Just set up a .htaccess file and add which sites you want to allow to use it. 5 minutes or less to set up

Oh yeah! Just that simple! I can imagine how everyone will be happy to do that every time they want to share some pics somewhere.

[eliot]

djdest said:

I think the best option is to go self hosting with your own domain name and space.
I did it 17 years ago, and it worked perfectly.
I'm going to go back to that

Indeed - I 'own' all the critical aspects of my internet presence since 1988.
Initially I did it so I could swap between ISP's and not have the hassle of moving my website and changing email address - did seem an old fashioned way of doing things (given i'm a cloud specialist) - but that all seems to be coming good in light of what's happened to PB.
As my website was created in the days of dial-up, all my images are 320x240 thumbnailed to keep bandwidth down. I did have some issues with people hot linking my large photos and accompanying moan from my provider about the bandwidth - but never took much action. But then again my 'big' photos are still relatively small too.
I guess hot linking massive 10mb+ images must kill a providers bandwidth.

[djdest]

[quote=NoIP]

Oh yeah! Just that simple! I can imagine how everyone will be happy to do that every time they want to share some pics somewhere.

Most people only really post photos on a few forums I'd be willing to bet, so hardly much work to add those when setting it up. Then if you start using another forum or site in the future add that too.
It's not exactly hours of work to type the URL into a text file and update it is it.
Some people just seem to want to make simple things hard I guess

[NoIP]

djdest said:

Some people just seem to want to make simple things hard I guess

I certainly agree with you on that one!

[GetCarter]

NoIP said:

alock said:

djdest said:

I think the best option is to go self hosting with your own domain name and space.
I did it 17 years ago, and it worked perfectly.
I'm going to go back to that

Definitely this. Any of the large Web space providers should give you a domain and some storage space for a few pounds per month.

Personally I then setup a subdomain which points to a structured folder of pictures. The photos subdomain then encapsulates all linked photos so the main domain can be used for other stuff. It also makes it easy to point the subdomain to a different host in the future.

All your photos then become something like:
http://photos.mydomain.com/cars/mycar.jpg

But not without the downsides when someone else decides to hotlink your photos on a high traffic site and you're faced with a hosting bill not dissimilar to what PB are charging, or a bunch of dead pics PB-esque when you exceed your monthly bandwidth allowance.

I have had my own website domain and hosting for nearly 20 years, and have never had a problem. If someone hotlinks any photos on my site I e mail them and they either pay me money or take the photo down.

If you have your own domain, you control it.