Present Photobucket Hosting debacle

[Andy]

By now, a lot of members would have seen their photos that are hosted on Photobucket have been replaced by a default image from Photobucket. This image tells you to "PLEASE UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT TO ENABLE 3RD PARTY HOSTING". Below this image they tell you to go to a page on their website for important information.

When you do go to that page it informs you that you have to PAY Photobucket $399 to upgrade! THIS IS A VERY RECENT CHANGE IN THEIR TERMS OF SERVICE.

That's outrageous!

This change has not affected everyone at this time, but it will eventually affect you all if you use Photobucket for hosting your photos. They have 3 levels of upgrades but ONLY the most expensive one allows hosting to 3rd parties such as forums.

You now have 2 choices. Either pay the outrageous $399 per year so your photos will be hosted, OR you will have to find another way to host them in forums etc.

If you Google the website in this default Photobucket image to read the information on the upgrade, the first link on Googles' page takes you to the site. But the links under that top one go to forums etc where people are discussing this problem. Read some of those & you will get some very good options on how to continue hosting your photos without using Photobucket.

[shivan]

Yes i heard this was coming, but had hoped they would find another approach. I understand they need to find a way to get people paying for their storage rather than getting it free, but $400 dollars is just over the top.

What makes it worse is a few moths ago they sent out a survey asking what you use your photobucket account for and one of the answers was linking photos to other websites. Looks like they found the most popular answer and slugged it with a hefty fee. Just goes to show it often does not pay to do surveys i guess.

[nuggethill]

Ouch that's a sting

I have photo's posted from photobucket on different sites that I'll loose if I don't pay the price

this is extortion and I wonder if you can form a class action against it 

[Rowdy]

I just went into some of my old posts that I posted pictures in and at the moment my images are still there. Lets hope they change their mind and leave any existing photos up. I'll have to find another FREE hosting website now as there is no way I'm paying to host photos.
Rowdy

[Andy]

Yes. It would be nice if they left existing photos up Rowdy, but no such luck for me. ALL my photos, on this and 2 other forums I'm a member of, have been replaced by the Photobucket default image. Like you,
I don't want to have to pay for hosting either.

[Rowdy]

I do have an imageshack account floating around somewhere that I might have to fire up again but from memory it was quite difficult to navigate, or at least I found it so. Might have to see if I can understand the way it works this time round.
Rowdy

PS just had a look at ImageShack and it appears that it's free for 30 days trial. I'll have to keep looking

[chris t]

Money ,money ,going to loose members lost me sorry bye all 

[chris t]

It's all about money ,all the time ,a great forum to get help ,with info and photos and getting help to build things ,but when you have to pay that kind of money ,going to lose members ,sorry lost me bye all .

[Flying Scott]

Back in the late 1990s I was admin. of a form called Australian Gemstones.
If was a free form but after a couple of years the creators of the site wanted to charge a fee
I handed my admin power to another member and hoped out, within a few months the whole thing crumbled never to be seen again
Flying Scott

[Rowdy]

Judging by a couple of posts above it would seem that some members think that it is this site that's wants to charge for the hosting of photos. It is Photobucket that wants to charge the fee and this site is not affiliated with them in any way. Photobucket is just a means of putting your photos on any forum and there are still many other FREE photo hosting sites out there that can be used.
Rowdy

[nuggethill]

Third party hosting my photo's on the other sites are still there posted straight from photobucket that's a relief
G'Day Chris T I'm going to stick with the site (photobucket) to see what happens but if they charge me I'll opp out
I had the same impression Rowdy that chris t and Scotty thought that it was this site that was going to charge
Andy made it clear it was Photobucket that was doing the dirty deal

[shivan]

Ok all who read this, photobucket is an individual site to this that hosts photos. A lot of us used photobucket to upload photos to link to this forum. Now photobucket wants to charge people $400 dollars to link photos to other websites.

Alluvial gold prospectors (AGP) is still a free forum and still has all its helpful information. The only thing that has changed is that most of the photos that were hosted on photobucket will not show up, but you can still see the photo by right clicking where the image should be and clicking on open image in new tab/window.

[chris t]

Yes your right there it has been a good forum, jump the gun a bit ,I won't saw bye ,some of the people have been very helpful ,so much to learn with what is said ,just wish there is a central place to meet up and do some prospecting together one day .

[cronicbadger]

The high cost of the 500 plan seems to be a filter to remove most of the non-commercial clients who use PB for third-party hosting, rather than to simply recover costs using fairer means.

For example, my own photos hosted there would hardly have any economic impact on then given their small file size and low usage, and I'd certainly pay a smaller annual fee to avoid the hassle of not having to move.

My Photobucket-hosted images are still up, but I don't know for how long. I'll find an alternative way to host them.

By now there must be millions of people visiting websites and seeing "Photobucket" plastered all over dodgy-looking pages - bad publicity.

[rustyau]

Sign of a business going bust as far as I'm concerned.
Download your images before you loose the lot. Instructions and link below.
Russ

support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/201892970-Downloading-Albums


Downloading Albums

Need to download all of the images in an album? Whether its your own Photobucket account or another User, you can download the entire album's worth of images in one fell swoop.

Find the album you want to download by first navigating to the Library.
Select the Album you wish to download.
Look in the lower right corner of the page for "Album Action" and find the link to Download Album.



Validate that you are a human by sliding the arrow.



Next, all of the images in your album will be gathered and compressed into a .zip file. The next page you'll see will prompt you to download the compressed file.
NOTE: If you have a lot of images, it may take a little while to compress. We'll notify you via email when the file is ready to download. Make sure your current Photobucket account is updated with your current email address. Click here to learn more about changing your email address.
After downloading the compressed file to your computer, unzip it and view your pics. NOTE: You may need a 3rd party utility to decompress the .zip file. Click here to learn more.

Note: Currently, this feature only works with images. Your videos and gifs will need to be downloaded individually. Click here to learn more about individually downloading media.