Photobucket

[Yannis]

I just got an announcement from Photobucket that it NO LONGER allows 3rd party hosting, such as the one when we embed pics to the B 31 forum.
In the process to update my services so that 3rd party hosting be allowed, I discovered that they will charge $399.99 per year!
Therefore, unless there is another solution for embedding pics to the forum, I will not be able to upload any pics from now on, as I do not intend to pay that amount for this service.
Thank you.

[Lars]

Yes, this is just blowing up - gonna be a massacre. Photobucket is taking an enormous risk, probably gambling that they will keep 10% of their customers and shifting income from ads to subscriptions. Risky business.. Guess we need to look into other pic hosters.

http://uk.pcmag.com/webcom/90124/news/p ... e-internet

[Yannis]

Yes, Lars, until they too decide to do the same in the future..
Whats the worst part I read in your thread, is that all previous pics embedded will disappear...in other words, ALL pics embedded in the forum will vanish. Nice, huh?

[mike ohlstein]

You can always open a free Dropbox account. Put your files into Dropbox, and post a link to the file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjy3uxoe8pg5nsa/mike.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pb0u1aj42nja6 ... a.mov?dl=0

[Bruce]

There are alternatives to photobucket. Has been for a while.
Everyone should have backups of pics on a cloud, a cd, zip drive, thumb drive or hard drive. Photobucket is depending on people with no backups to pay the piper.

[Tony Meola]

Problem is, even with the cloud. If they make a change to file structure youvould loose files. Also, if they go out of business or get taken over by another host.

Tome the safest thing is to also have some type of local back up. Back up drives are cheap. By two, back up files daily on one, then the next month just unplug it and plug in the second one and keep rotating them monthly. Keep the one not in use in a secondary secure place. If you have a catastrophy at home then you still have the back up and it is only out of date by a month.

[Lars]

There are alternatives to photobucket. Has been for a while.
Everyone should have backups of pics on a cloud, a cd, zip drive, thumb drive or hard drive. Photobucket is depending on people with no backups to pay the piper.

Bruce, agreed. There are many alternatives for hosting - some likely to stay available, others may take the PB route. And I am not so worried about loosing pics, it will probably stay possible to download your pics from PB.

The main issue is that old threads with PB-links will loose all their illustrations unless you go through the monumental task of reestablishing links to new pic sites. I am concerned about Captain Patrick's fantastic building tips and tutorials - do you know if they are based on PB hosting? If they are, perhaps we should take action to preserve them, by creating PDFs or similar.

[Bruce]

All of Pats pics are part of this web site and our server. They are not 3rd party hosted.

[Tony Meola]

I am told you can still grab those pics and download them to your own computer no charge. You should do this before that goes away.

[ford351c594]

just did it. it just gives you a zip file with all your pictures. really easy. copied the file to my pictures and extracted. they are now all in the pictures in my computer.

[Yannis]

So now all threads with photobucket hosted pics are...pictureless.