Get Ready for A Lot of Broken Links

[Krissim Klaw]

For those that haven't seen yet, Photobucket is no longer allowing their images to be hosted on third-party sites unless you are willing to shell out $400 a year. Apparently this is rolling out and hitting heavy using users first, but unless something changes soon anything posted with image links from photobucket are about to crash. There are plenty of alternative sites out there to switch to, but get ready for a lot of broken links when it comes to older posts.

All you have to do is look at our lovely How to Add a Profile Photo Thread to see what I mean.

 

[Teamonger]

Yuck, that sucks but what can ya do.

 

[CosbyArt]

I noticed it somewhat when I was trying to use my welcome smileys in the introduce yourself forum... that is a lot of posts that need fixed (some 3,000+ from me alone not counting everyone else). Further insult from Photobucket is they only want $39.95 a month to show the images again, good luck with that.

I switched to another free photo host awhile back, but who knows how long that will last too. So perhaps I should stick with hosting them myself off my own website (I know that will work as long as I pay the yearly bill ).

I'll have to begin updating some of my post images and see how far I can get in my free time. Thanks @Krissim Klaw for pointing out the post itself, I wasn't for sure how far it affected them yet.

 

[Teamonger]

40 bucks a month is kinda crazy. 5 dollars and I would have at least considered it.

Time to go swap over to something else.

 

[CosbyArt]

40 bucks a month is kinda crazy. 5 dollars and I would have at least considered it.

Time to go swap over to something else.

Your right about that, $5 would have been worth not having to update photos and links to a new site. I've been slowly updating to my other host PostImage.org - they still do free direct photo links and don't seem to be following the PhotoBucket trend.

 

[Mystymantis]

Wow that is crazy! So all my images that are on other sites will disappear if I don't pay? Looks like I won't be using photobucket any more. What are alternative sites are there to use?

 

[CosbyArt]

@Mystymantis Imgur and PostImage.org are popular free ones, and I've used both without issue for posting images on this forum and others. However as I have been updating my image links slowly in my posts here, and do not want to have to update them ever again due to a image host changing their plans, I simply put the images on my own paid website.

That way I know my images will not disappear again, as my domain and website hosting is paid up for a few years at the moment, and will continue to be. I pay about $50 for a year of my own domain name (.com url address) and website hosting service from NameCheap.com. With so much disk space included on the plan it makes sense to use some of it to host my own image content.

Which is funny as Photobucket wants $40 per month (paid a year in advance) for much less service than what I get per year for my site. Incidentally I downloaded all my Photobucket gallery images, deleted them from their servers, and closed my account with them.

 

[cat_h]

Would Flickr work for posting photos to the forum?

I'm not particularly tech savvy so forgive me if that's a silly question

 

[Mystymantis]

@Mystymantis Imgur and PostImage.org are popular free ones, and I've used both without issue for posting images on this forum and others. However as I have been updating my image links slowly in my posts here, and do not want to have to update them ever again due to a image host changing their plans, I simply put the images on my own paid website.

That way I know my images will not disappear again, as my domain and website hosting is paid up for a few years at the moment, and will continue to be. I pay about $50 for a year of my own domain name (.com url address) and website hosting service from NameCheap.com. With so much disk space included on the plan it makes sense to use some of it to host my own image content.

Which is funny as Photobucket wants $40 per month (paid a year in advance) for much less service than what I get per year for my site. Incidentally I downloaded all my Photobucket gallery images, deleted them from their servers, and closed my account with them.

Thanks @CosbyArt. I will look into those free websites. And having your own domain website sounds awesome.

 

[Rick]

Yep. I will have a lot. 

 

[CosbyArt]

Would Flickr work for posting photos to the forum?

I'm not particularly tech savvy so forgive me if that's a silly question

Yes, Flickr works fine too (I forgot about that one).

Thanks @CosbyArt. I will look into those free websites. And having your own domain website sounds awesome.

Your welcome, and yes web hosting is great depending on where you signup. I've had various hosts for the last 10 years or so and many have some issue depending on needs it seems. In that regard I found my current host/registrar/service has been awesome for the last few years though.

Besides having a web host to run any type of website (hobby/business/blog/nothing), it works great as a image host, can work like a cloud type backup service, and has email (web and POP3/IMAP (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc)) access to the hosted domain name too (such as the example [email protected] (not my site)). The email is great and worth it alone to me, and no worries of some sites requiring a non-free email address anymore either to sign-up.

 

[CosbyArt]

I just finished updating all my topics I created/started that had broken photo links to my now webhosted content (thanks again PhotoBucket)  - all 99 of them (My DIY tutorials, mantid pets, and lots more).

They ranged up to 8 pages per topic, and in some a dozen photos or more per page... that was a lot of work and effort to do. Oddly when some members replied they included all my post photos, so I was able to fix those broken photos too being a moderator thankfully. I can really understand if no one else bothers to do what I just finished.

I will not however be updating all my 3,492 current posts checking/updating each post's photos, as what I did already took way too many hours/days. I will though update some slowly if the topics get new posts, or anyone sends me a PM about my specific posts that they need fixed.