Photobucket images - not for forum use

**Janet H** · 07-13-2017, 07:16 PM

Recently the image hosting service Photobucket changed their terms of use for account holders and no longer allow embedded images to be displayed on forums. As a result the forum had many threads lose their photo documentation.

Moving forward we will disallow links to Photobucket and ask that you store your images with the posted text that they were intended to augment, here on the forum.

Forum members can store images posts and threads using the attachment option found in the advanced reply editor or in photo albums set up in individual profiles. There is no cost to store images here and this will ensure that your content is not diminished by an image hosting service changing their minds about how your content is handled. Thanks for understanding.

Jim Bennett · 07-13-2017, 07:47 PM

I post almost all photos, other than those taken with my cell phone, on a photo hosting site, SmugMug. I have done this for near 10 years. I do have to pay for this service, but am not limited by file size at all. It is also convenient, as I store all processed photos there, but only post a select few here. Hopefully with a well known and respected hosting site like SM this will never be an issue.

In the past, I have rarely bothered to upload to a forum, as the size allowed is limited, and thus the photos need to be resized. I kinda found this a pain to reprocess a photo to do this when I already had one I could use. If there was no issue with the size of the file uploaded, it certainly would make it easier to do.

gbaglo · 07-13-2017, 08:06 PM

I've not resized any photo I've ever posted here. I think forum software takes care of it for me. Just means waiting for the upload, which can take some time.
PhotoBucket is a large, well-respected hosting site too. I don't pay anything as I only use it on a limited basis, like giving access to a large number of pix to another user.

**Janet H** · 07-13-2017, 08:07 PM

We're looking at the size issues and hope to increase them but the photobucket thing has been a real eye opener. If you don't host them locally and your provider changes the rules you may be stuck.

gbaglo · 07-13-2017, 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Janet H

We're looking at the size issues and hope to increase them but the photobucket thing has been a real eye opener. If you don't host them locally and your provider changes the rules you may be stuck.

Absolutely. Which is why I do my own backup on my own device, in addition to backing up automatically on iCloud.
I currently pay $1.55 a month for the iCloud backup, but there is nothing preventing Apple from raising that to $100.55 a month, effectively holding my files for ransom.

float5 · 07-13-2017, 10:15 PM

I have also never done any re-sizing to post photos here.

I know that people have mentioned here before not to use those hosting sites as the photos will be lost.

Brian B-P · 07-14-2017, 02:02 AM

Janet, thanks for the heads-up, and the enhancement to intercept attempted Photobucket links.

I participated in another forum (unrelated to this one) which was shut down when the owner tried to sell it and didn't find a buyer who would operate it; as a result, all content posted in it was lost. A few years ago FiberglassRV was hacked and all of the recent content - including photos - was lost (this was before Social Knowledge picked up that forum). Any free online service can easily lose what you have posted, so share away... but as Glenn suggested, maintain your own copy.

To me, the frustrating part of the Photobucket change is not that any content is lost (it is still available to the owners), but that it can no longer be seen as intended, and in most cases even if a poster is willing to go back and replace Photobucket links with uploads or alternate links, they will no longer have the ability to edit those old posts.

In another forum the administrators offered to replace Photobucket links with links to alternate sources if the members provide them - that could be a lot of work for administrators and for members, but could salvage valuable reference threads.

Jim Bennett · 07-14-2017, 07:28 AM

I have no fear that SmugMug will go the way of Photobucket. Other small, usually free, hosting sites have failed too. Like Brian said, any online presence can ultimately fail and you lose anything stored there. But, if a forum site goes out of business, the photos there would only be associated with it, so not a huge loss if they failed. I would be more than willing to do all my photos as attachments if the size was permitted.

Not only do I host my processed photos on SmugMug, I have all of them on my computer, as well as at least one portable backup drive.

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