Photobucket ToS changes

I've attempted to download photos from PB several times - tried testing with single albums at a time, and even single photos - hardly anything has successfully down-loaded. I did eventually get the emails, but not the down-loads (only a very few photos downloaded). I suspect this might be because so many people are trying to download their pictures at the same time. The site is being very uncooperative today in general.

Very irritating, especially because I literally have thousands of art, nature, and doll photos that I've posted on PB over the past 12 years (I shudder to think of all of the broken links of my stuff, and other follks' stuff, that will be littering the internet soon).

Fortunately, I do have all of my photos on our personal external hard-drive, so they're safe. But I know I won't have the time or energy to re-do all of my 10 years of blog and DoA, etc. posts. I've been slowly deleting broken image links on my DoA gallery posts, and marking them for deletion, and am only re-doing the image links on those I'm particularly sentimental about, or really love the photos.

I've also been slowly (because of the baulky PB site) deleting my pictures there, prior to closing my account. It's been a paid account for 12 years, and I was paid up through January 2018 - I strongly suspect I won't get a refund of that fee when I close it (early).

I do have a little free account that I've used for years as emergency backup - but will be going with SmugMug, which I think will suit my purposes for photo hosting.

 

Oh... FLickr won't host more than 200 photos for the free account? (even if they are small in size?) So you have to pay for the Pro account (around $60 a year)? --and will they still have problems with 3rd Party sharing after that?

Smugmug is a little cheaper. Are they cool with unlimited photos and 3rd Party sharing?

I'm really not sure what to do. I don't really trust putting all my photos in one photo-host, but I can't be paying for a bunch of them...

 

I had no problems uploading more than that. I have 712 photos uploaded into my camera roll on Flickr. However, they are set to private... so maybe it's just a limit of 200 public photos?


I've been uploading all of my box opening photos to that postimage.org site as well... I'm thinking having multiple places might not be a horrible idea...

 

I have over 3000 public photos on Flickr and have no problems.

 

I don't think there's a set limit of images you can post. I believe free accounts come with 1 terabyte of storage. So...200 images max if you put up 1-2 gig sized images apiece?

 

Smugmug is offering s free trial!

 

One thing I've found helps on my separate free account is to put everything in albums. For some reason the main photostream only shows the past 200, but every album I've ever created allows me to access every photo I've uploaded and attached to an album through there.

One other thing I remember from back in 2008 before I ever had a paid account at all is that every image remains viable. If you put it in a forum post, it will show up even if it passes the 200 cutoff on the home website.

 

I've currently switched my PB over to Ipernity. You do have to be a club member (paid account) for unlimited uploading but there doesn't seem to be anything about 3rd party hosting restrictions. I also think their organizational abilities are better than flikr (at least for me). Still have to go through and work on changing all my links - for now my PB is paid through August so I haven't gotten the email or blocked pics yet.

 

I was looking over Flickr's accounts in brief and it said that the amount of storage was the same for Flickr and Flickr Pro/Pro+ ($50/60). Hmmm... I might keep going with my transfer there, then. If I have to start paying, I won't mind. I think a fair price for a service is fine. I'd have kept paying Photobucket if their price and service was reasonable... but I suspect they want to kick a bunch of people off and reform their service in a different way.

Thanks for the info on other sites, like ipernity and postimage... I'll definitely check them out.

I did a search using that method of entering in part of my photobucket and user URL and got 10 pages of 20 posts each with images...!!! Yikes. I'll probably get very tired of fixing all the links and just abandon many of those 200 posts (many with multiple images).

 

I'm definitely not observing this at all. I've been pushing my Photobucket images to Flickr so I can update older posts; I'm currently at 1,694 photos, all visible. The "photostream" only goes out 17 pages, but it's not an effective way to deal with photos anyway, and everything is fully accessible through my albums.

 

Thanks, vicemage! I'll continue to upload old PB photos to flickr for now (I'm getting used to how it works). Flickr seems to allow for a lot of storage space, so I hope it will work for now. If I have to pay, I will. I don't mind that. I guess I should read all the ToS on these places to make sure! But people have been on Flickr for many years, so it can't be that bad... Hopefully they won't go bad like Photobucket!

 

As far as I can tell, they offer unlimited photos and 3rd party sharing for all levels, although they don't explicitly call it 3rd party sharing. At the moment, they're offering a 14 day free trial - so one can play on their site and decide if it's the best choice before taking the plunge. I would also suggest reading up on what the different account levels offer.

 

I've been posting like crazy from SmugMug on my LJ and here on DoA for the past year, and I've never had any issues with them.

 

if you need to dl your pics get at it .. that site is running like it's on dial up ><

 

Honestly, I hate when people remove the link. My favorite part about Flickr hosting is being able to easily see people's other photos! I'm mean, you do you, of course, but honestly its a great way to get more views on your photos and such!

 

*GROAN!! * Me too! 12 years of doll shows, simultaneously down the tubes?! :X

 

Well, my reasoning is that I mostly use Instagram for my best doll photos now and Flickr more for sales posts and specific informative things that need a photo, so I don't really care much about views or comments there. To be honest, my Flickr is rather boring and disorganized and considering the types of photos I share on the forum, I feel the extra info clutters things up and isn't very useful in my case. However, I can definitely see your point for those who do lots of gallery threads!

 

Anyone else wondering how many people are going to jump ship from photobucket after this? XD

 

On Wiki, they claim 100 million users... I'd bet 75%... or more. They seem to want to chase everyone off... I'm sure some people who could afford it are still paying up so that their images won't be broken. However, it's very likely this will kill off Photobucket, so even if they pay their $400, there's no guarantee PB won't just up and declare bankruptcy on them!

It's sad... I feel for everyone who has a decade or so of blogs or websites or forum posts messed with. There could be around a billion broken photo links floating about... now or in the near future.

A big chunk of the old threads here on DoA will be affected by the broken links problem...

 

if they are not already and you need them on your pc... batch them into albums and dl albums and you can upload to flickr faster than you can get the crap off the bucket... trust me on this one... do it in bunches and it's easier to sort in Flickr with 'camera roll' that is a nifty feature...