The MLP Arena

TCB => Trader & Shipping Support => Topic started by: lunar_scythe on June 25, 2017, 01:00:33 PM

Title: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lunar_scythe on June 25, 2017, 01:00:33 PM
I have been using photobucket for 10+ years, and as of June 20th, they changed their terms to not allow linking from free accounts with no warning. :stressed:

So, either we pay them to let us use our pics, or go elsewhere to host our pics for sales threads...one guess which I am doing.

What is everyone's fav photo host sites that allow linking?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: HelloGoodbye on June 25, 2017, 02:44:36 PM
I like Flickr personally!  I've had quite good luck with it and I actually think it is easier use than Photobucket (once I got used to the differences anyway).
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: silverdawn on June 25, 2017, 02:55:52 PM
I've started using facebook.  I make a private album, then right click on the photo and "open in new window" to get the image url.  So far so good.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 25, 2017, 03:30:50 PM
WHAT?!?! I haven't used Photobucket for ages personally (I have my own server) but omg what are they thinking?!? Loads of people use Photobucket and they're gonna be screwed over by this.. ughhhh PB has been going downhill for ages imo but this is their worst move yet. Hopefully they sort themselves out soon >_<

Good luck finding a new image host :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: zombienixon on June 25, 2017, 03:36:00 PM
I  started using imgur a couple of years ago after getting fed up with Photobucket crashing all the time.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: himmie on June 25, 2017, 04:20:40 PM
I use Flickr.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Cswift on June 25, 2017, 07:07:11 PM
If I'm feeling lazy, I use tinypic, which doesn't require you to even make an account there. Otherwise, imgur. I feel like these options allow you to host pictures the most...shall I say, discreetly.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: bluerose9978 on June 25, 2017, 07:16:35 PM
I use photobucket, too. Ugh!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lunar_scythe on June 25, 2017, 09:36:29 PM
Yes, I was really shocked, I went to check something and I got that...thing instead of my pics, it won't let me even view them full size. >. <  if I go to the link it shows, I get a page that says

Quote
Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting at your current account level. We have created a Plus 500 plan thay allows you to continue using Photobucket to host your images with linking & 3rd Party Hosting

and if I click upgrade, of course, it wants me to pay a monthly fee.  :(
I think I'll try imgur, and if I dont like it, I will try Flickr.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 26, 2017, 05:23:57 AM
Be careful with using Tinypic - a friend of mine used to use it and they deleted some of her pics at random, and I've seen other cases where they replaced pics with random other ones (sometimes very inappropriate images >_<). It's probably fine for quick uploads but I'd be wary of using it for longterm things, if that makes sense.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on June 26, 2017, 05:41:23 AM
Yes, I was really shocked, I went to check something and I got that...thing instead of my pics, it won't let me even view them full size. >. <  if I go to the link it shows, I get a page that says

Quote
Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting at your current account level. We have created a Plus 500 plan thay allows you to continue using Photobucket to host your images with linking & 3rd Party Hosting

and if I click upgrade, of course, it wants me to pay a monthly fee.  :(

I'm really confused now. I have a free account on Photobucket which I use for all of my 'picture-needs' on the MLP Arena. However, I don't see any pop-ups or alerts, and I haven't got any problems viewing my pictures either. In fact, nothing seems to have changed for me. ???

Just checking with you peeps: Are you able to see the pictures on my wishlist (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,385408.msg1630863.html#msg1630863) and in my avatar and signature?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on June 26, 2017, 06:33:56 AM
Yes, I was really shocked, I went to check something and I got that...thing instead of my pics, it won't let me even view them full size. >. <  if I go to the link it shows, I get a page that says

Quote
Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting at your current account level. We have created a Plus 500 plan thay allows you to continue using Photobucket to host your images with linking & 3rd Party Hosting

and if I click upgrade, of course, it wants me to pay a monthly fee.  :(

I'm really confused now. I have a free account on Photobucket which I use for all of my 'picture-needs' on the MLP Arena. However, I don't see any pop-ups or alerts, and I haven't got any problems viewing my pictures either. In fact, nothing seems to have changed for me. ???

Just checking with you peeps: Are you able to see the pictures on my wishlist (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,385408.msg1630863.html#msg1630863) and in my avatar and signature?

I can see your pictures. But one thing I haven't been able to do is if I go into someone's photo album I can no longer view the larger image, it gets thrown behind a popup and then I get a list of images that are not the one I was trying to view.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on June 26, 2017, 07:23:24 AM
*sigh*  It's not hotlinking if it's to your OWN account and pictures.  Great job Photobucket.

Seriously... I just had this problem with Google Picasa last year...  :(  Seems like more and more if I want to have pictures online, I have to have them hosted myself!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: LadyMoondancer on June 26, 2017, 10:03:34 AM
LOL, what else does anyone use Photobucket for besides free pictures?  Seems like a dumb move fueled by greed on their part.

Personally I use Flickr.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 26, 2017, 12:08:56 PM
Yes, I was really shocked, I went to check something and I got that...thing instead of my pics, it won't let me even view them full size. >. <  if I go to the link it shows, I get a page that says

Quote
Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting at your current account level. We have created a Plus 500 plan thay allows you to continue using Photobucket to host your images with linking & 3rd Party Hosting

and if I click upgrade, of course, it wants me to pay a monthly fee.  :(

I'm really confused now. I have a free account on Photobucket which I use for all of my 'picture-needs' on the MLP Arena. However, I don't see any pop-ups or alerts, and I haven't got any problems viewing my pictures either. In fact, nothing seems to have changed for me. ???

Just checking with you peeps: Are you able to see the pictures on my wishlist (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,385408.msg1630863.html#msg1630863) and in my avatar and signature?

I can see your images just fine. I checked some older pics I had that I hadn't moved off Photobucket yet and they were fine, too.. hmmm.

Maybe it only affects new pics and everything that was already hotlinked to PB is fine? If that makes sense? lunar_scythe, did you change your avatar/sig pics lately? Otherwise I'm stumped as to why some are blocked and some aren't :x
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on June 26, 2017, 12:13:11 PM
did you change your avatar/sig pics lately? Otherwise I'm stumped as to why some are blocked and some aren't :x

Yep, I keep changing my wishlist pics all the time, some of them only today (not my avatar/sig pics, though). I'm just as stumped as you are!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on June 26, 2017, 12:21:43 PM
Yes, I was really shocked, I went to check something and I got that...thing instead of my pics, it won't let me even view them full size. >. <  if I go to the link it shows, I get a page that says

Quote
Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting at your current account level. We have created a Plus 500 plan thay allows you to continue using Photobucket to host your images with linking & 3rd Party Hosting

and if I click upgrade, of course, it wants me to pay a monthly fee.  :(

I'm really confused now. I have a free account on Photobucket which I use for all of my 'picture-needs' on the MLP Arena. However, I don't see any pop-ups or alerts, and I haven't got any problems viewing my pictures either. In fact, nothing seems to have changed for me. ???

Just checking with you peeps: Are you able to see the pictures on my wishlist (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,385408.msg1630863.html#msg1630863) and in my avatar and signature?

I can see your images just fine. I checked some older pics I had that I hadn't moved off Photobucket yet and they were fine, too.. hmmm.

Maybe it only affects new pics and everything that was already hotlinked to PB is fine? If that makes sense? lunar_scythe, did you change your avatar/sig pics lately? Otherwise I'm stumped as to why some are blocked and some aren't :x

I'm having the can't view full size images on older images as well, no idea about the hot linking though.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: bluerose9978 on June 26, 2017, 12:44:01 PM
Mine seem to be OK so far, too. I'm wondering whether Photobucket is going to leave older accounts alone and newer accounts only are affected?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tootie_tails on June 26, 2017, 09:55:16 PM
Ugh, photobucket, they want a monthly fee now?

I don't get how it works. My pictures, including signature, all show as posted. But they were all posted before June 20 of course.
Will they hit you with the popup message next time you log in, is that it? So that once they have given you the message the changes will be in effect?
In that case I need to find and set up an account somewhere else before I log in to photobucket again so I'm prepared and can move over stuff quickly.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Koudoawaia on June 26, 2017, 10:20:07 PM
I've been using Photobucket for a very long time myself. This is just plain horrible. I bet my sig is ruined right now.

Edit: Looks like my sig is intact and I did use Photobucket to place my signature's image and my account there is a free one.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Loona on June 27, 2017, 02:32:44 AM
I've also been using Photobucket for a very long time now, but less and less in the last few years because it just gets worse and worse.
Luckily my old hotlinked pictures are working fine, I haven't yet tried hotlinking new ones, so it might really be the case that it's only affecting newly added/linked ones. I hope so, because if suddenly my old linked pics disappeared I'd be very sad (many of my old files link to an old forum which I used to visit on a daily basis, it's now closed down, but the profiles and messages remain for archive purposes).

I sadly don't have an alternative. Flickr is rather an artistic platform for me, so I will not start uploading stuff I used PB for there - I'll be stalking this thread for other options that offer free storage without the fear of having my pictures taken down eventually :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tulagirl on June 27, 2017, 08:00:46 AM
I  started using imgur a couple of years ago after getting fed up with Photobucket crashing all the time.

This, I have really gotten sick of Photobucket. I quit using it a long time ago. It is so slow that New Years Day arrives before my pictures load anyway.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on June 27, 2017, 04:58:32 PM
I was going to use PB for my trade pictures because I thought it might be quicker but actually I think it will be just as easy for me to put them on my own server. Fortunately I have space to do that, and then I guess they are also in my control - but it is annoying.

The last time I tried to use PB which was before all of this it crashed my browser because of all its adverts, so I gave up with it and haven't been back since. I think they are potentially ruining their business platform. It's nice to have the heads up though that they are doing all this, even if it seems to be a slow roll out.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lunar_scythe on June 27, 2017, 06:35:08 PM
I have no clue; I didn't change anything.  I opened the app up and thats when it started, I didn't even upload anything to photobucket. :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on June 27, 2017, 08:00:06 PM
Good.
PB is a big pile of poopy, and anything that gets people to move to better platforms gets a thumbs up in my book.
Seriously sick of having to try and fight with PB to look at someone's sales or pics with its stupid pop-ups and random redirects and refusal to show more than low-res versions.  BLECH.

I went with Dropbox years ago. Does everything I need it to and is way more convenient to upload with, just shove stuff in a folder and right click for the link, done.

Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on June 28, 2017, 12:16:22 AM
lunar_scythe, I'm wondering whether you may simply have exceeded your bandwidth for this month? Because the pictures in your avatar and signature read "3rd party usage at over 100%". Maybe it'll all be back to normal in three days. :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 28, 2017, 12:05:27 PM
Hmmm, I'm wondering if it might be a bandwidth thing, too. Only other place I've seen it apart from lunar_scythe's images, is just now, the MH Arena logo broke for me - it's showing up with the same image now. If that makes sense.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on June 28, 2017, 12:52:39 PM
I am having the same problem on another site. I haven't uploaded anything on Photobucket for a long time.

Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: pinkkittywinks on June 28, 2017, 01:07:37 PM
How much do you have on photobucket? I wonder if you've gone over the "free" storage limit?

I get notifications saying if I pay a fee I'll be add free and if I pay another fee I'll get X amount more storage.

Love pkw xxx
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on June 28, 2017, 05:31:00 PM
Hmmm, I'm wondering if it might be a bandwidth thing, too. Only other place I've seen it apart from lunar_scythe's images, is just now, the MH Arena logo broke for me - it's showing up with the same image now. If that makes sense.

I saw that too which may suggest it is bandwidth, though that makes me confused as to why the mh arena logo would be on pb...o.o
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: pinkkittywinks on June 29, 2017, 11:49:54 PM
Well, it's happened to me now!

Love pkw xxx
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on June 30, 2017, 12:30:38 AM
I had an email from them too last night ...which just means I will not be using them again. Holding someone's images to ransom is poor customer service in my view, and I certainly don't intend to buy a subscription under these circumstances.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tootie_tails on June 30, 2017, 12:42:58 AM
I see it happening to various people around the board now.
I looked at someones profile and a picture there is gone and replaced with that 100% image. And the person who does the pony of the day threads, their avatar and signature pictures were gone for a while showing the 100% image. They have normal pictures again now but not the same pictures they used to have.

Is it random or is it happening to the people who have an insane amount of pictures uploaded? Did photobucket just lower the limit but still allow hotlinking?
 
*edit* Taffeta, what did the email say?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on June 30, 2017, 12:45:53 AM
Yeah I'm really really confused about what's going on... and is it true that photobucket is locking people out of their accounts and not letting them access their pictures at all without paying like $100???
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tulips on June 30, 2017, 01:11:01 AM
Well it just happened to me, I didn't get any emails or anything just some (not all) of my pics being replaced. I'm not particularly fond of Photobucket, so I guess I'll make sure all my pics acre backed up somewhere and upload them for use elsewhere.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tootie_tails on June 30, 2017, 01:53:27 AM
I googled and found some information.
It seems PB is replacing random pictures with the 100% image. So even if for example your signature picture is ok other pics in your account could be affected.
And they are asking $400 to let you use your account and post pictures again.
It's ridiculous... People around the net are asking if it's a hack or something but it seems not.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on June 30, 2017, 02:56:03 AM
I googled and found some information.
It seems PB is replacing random pictures with the 100% image. So even if for example your signature picture is ok other pics in your account could be affected.
And they are asking $400 to let you use your account and post pictures again.
It's ridiculous... People around the net are asking if it's a hack or something but it seems not.

Are you still allowed to look at the pictures on your account, just not post them anywhere? I'm not sure if I should be quickly downloading all my photos (((I don't have them all on my current computer...))) or if they will remain safe for my viewing only and I'm still allowed to save them to my computer?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on June 30, 2017, 06:21:12 AM
Are you still allowed to look at the pictures on your account, just not post them anywhere? I'm not sure if I should be quickly downloading all my photos (((I don't have them all on my current computer...))) or if they will remain safe for my viewing only and I'm still allowed to save them to my computer?

No, you will not be able to look at your photos, download or delete them. This blog post that I came across googling for answers sums it up very well. (http://www.laurenwayne.com/2017/06/photobucket-phail-how-to-ruin-host-site.html)

I was lucky that the changes had not yet affected me. I started by downloading any pictures that I had not already saved on my external hard drive, then deleted everything from my account, and, lastly, deleted the account itself. After 12 years of using the service, it was a rather brutal farewell.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on June 30, 2017, 07:02:24 AM
I got an email too. Mine says I have to upgrade to the Plus 50O membership to enable 3rd party hosting. I'm not even sure I can get in Photobucket anymore.

Ponyfan
Title: What's up with photobucket
Post by: jrr74 on June 30, 2017, 07:04:28 AM
Do i now have to upgrade my photobucket account if I want to link pictures here?  Is there anyway around it?  I am part of a photo contest here and is a set back for the participants and anyone else who uses photobucket free account
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Ponyfan on June 30, 2017, 07:11:02 AM
Photobucket is doing strange things. My signature on another site changed to a different image and I got an email from Photobucket that says I need to upgrade to a Plus 500 membership to be able to allow 3rd party hosting. I switched to Flickr for hosting/posting photos.

Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 07:25:26 AM
YIKES. Thanks for the heads up!! I'll be saving my photos asap, I hope it's not too late :(

This is insane, what on earth are they thinking?!?!
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: tootie_tails on June 30, 2017, 07:25:41 AM
there is a long thread about it here

http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,386878.0.html
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 07:26:37 AM
This (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,386878.0.html) thread has some more info.. basically, if you've got anything on Photobucket, it's probably a good idea to back it up ASAP because apparently some people are getting locked out of their accounts and being forced to pay to get their pictures back D:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on June 30, 2017, 07:26:48 AM
Guess I know what I'll be trying to do when I get home tonight...
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on June 30, 2017, 07:31:15 AM
I feel like they should be able to get into legal trouble over this somehow??? I really hope so??? Especially because they're also doing this to people who were already paying them and basically holding people's data for ransom? You can't just change the terms and services of a site like that with no warning? Especially because then users haven't actually agreed to them?
I'm really freaking out right now... I have so many pages all over the web that will be completely destroyed by this and thousands of pictures in accounts that exist nowhere else.  >_<
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Jocelyn on June 30, 2017, 07:47:59 AM
This makes me so sad. I used Photobucket for a long time too. It's been horrible recently, so I switched to flickr, but...I have years of photos from when I was younger, that didn't survive my various computer deaths :( I've gotten very good at cataloging and backing up current photos, but I haven't yet extended that effort to the old pics. I guess this is a kick in the butt to do so...I hope my account isn't locked yet!
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: jrr74 on June 30, 2017, 08:10:07 AM
Thank you so much for the link.  I should have known better that something about photobucket was probably already posted  :blush: I don't use photobucket except for here so will have to think about it.  Not quite sure what to do about the photo contest though  >_<
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: invaderhorizongreen on June 30, 2017, 08:18:18 AM
Well looks like I am gonna move to another photo hosting site, that I dont have to pay for. Does anyone have a good suggestion for one?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on June 30, 2017, 08:30:38 AM
I've had good luck using imgur in the past.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Strandperle on June 30, 2017, 08:54:21 AM
On this FAQ page they say that you will still have access to your photos:

http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009616207-My-account-has-been-restricted-due-to-3rd-party-hosting-Are-my-photos-safe-

But I don't trust them, especially after reading the blog entry Libelle shared  :blink: :shocked:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on June 30, 2017, 09:16:59 AM
How do you delete your Photobucket account?


Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: LadyMoondancer on June 30, 2017, 10:28:37 AM
I took screenshots just to confirm, yep, this is legit happening.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


visitors can't see pics , please register or login


These images are hosted by Flickr, lol.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on June 30, 2017, 10:52:35 AM
*facepalm*  I had better things to do with my morning than downloading all of my albums!!!  :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 10:59:27 AM
I'm freaking out about it, too. Even setting aside how long it'll take me to back up my pics (I had to go out - I've only just gotten back home, I'm gonna try and get mine as soon as I post this), TONS of people use(d) Photobucket. What about all the old pages that are no longer updated but are still up, that had images hosted on PB? :( I can think of a fair few images I need to save now..

I'm wondering if bandwidth is how they're getting people.. if that makes sense. So far the only pics I've seen get taken down and replaced with the "no third-party linking" image, are pics that were posted in places where they'd be getting a lot of hits. If that makes sense?

I can't believe this, though. It'd be bad enough if they had given us warning (since it'd still screw over a lot of people), but doing it with NO warning at all is very shady imo... :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on June 30, 2017, 11:20:03 AM
I'm wondering if bandwidth is how they're getting people.. if that makes sense. So far the only pics I've seen get taken down and replaced with the "no third-party linking" image, are pics that were posted in places where they'd be getting a lot of hits. If that makes sense?

I'm wondering if they're going by active logins possibly. I mean I don't have numbers for it but it would make sense. See something is going on with a service you use would likely send you to the site. But you know see what's, going try to login, and then suddenly your account is affected as well. That way they're targeting their resources to grab the people who are actively using the service instead of people who say haven't logged in in over a year.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: jrr74 on June 30, 2017, 11:28:39 AM
I just did a quick search on my old posts, and pictures from almost two years ago have been replaced by that PB picture   :mad:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on June 30, 2017, 11:29:54 AM
For those looking at alternatives:

Dropbox
Google Images
DA's sta.sh
Flickr

You're likely right Duenia; there's always been a bandwidth cap for non-premium accounts, but it seems like they've cut the limit down severely and put in this absolutely stupid lockdown whenever it kicks in.  I wonder if it resets at the start of the month?  Might be worth holding out and seeing if those affected pictures become accessible in July.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Shaiyeh on June 30, 2017, 12:06:27 PM
oh dang, is that so? I have so many years of  pony (and other) photos on there... I'ma gonna have to take a day for just backing this up then, I guess. :/
Is flickr less of a hassle these days though? I used to have an account but it was so difficult keeping it up with yahoo logins and stuff- it just never worked for me :S
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Sunset on June 30, 2017, 12:20:58 PM
Arrrg!  That is not right.  I would run home first thing after work to check on my own account but I have so much to do to get ready for going on vacation tomorrow.  This really shoold not be legal to give no warning!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 12:25:09 PM
I'm wondering if bandwidth is how they're getting people.. if that makes sense. So far the only pics I've seen get taken down and replaced with the "no third-party linking" image, are pics that were posted in places where they'd be getting a lot of hits. If that makes sense?

I'm wondering if they're going by active logins possibly. I mean I don't have numbers for it but it would make sense. See something is going on with a service you use would likely send you to the site. But you know see what's, going try to login, and then suddenly your account is affected as well. That way they're targeting their resources to grab the people who are actively using the service instead of people who say haven't logged in in over a year.

Hmm, could be. I just logged in and grabbed my pics and some old pics I had linked to PB (on a page on my own site, that probably no one else would be looking at) are still showing up properly atm, but who knows, maybe they'll be hit soon too :(

I was wondering if they might be reinstated in July, too. If they had changed the bandwidth cap right down to practically nothing, that'd still suck, but it'd be better than "absolutely no hotlinking at all", if that makes sense... Graaarghhh. I hate all this uncertainty.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on June 30, 2017, 12:32:14 PM
The last time I logged in to Photobucket before today was either around Thanksgiving or sometime in the spring. My account said 31% full and the help section said something about free accounts get only 2 GB of space and no hotlinking is allowed on the free version. Also the lowest paid level of membership also doesn't allow  hotlinking . Imnotsurehow I will post my signature pics with Flickr.

Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on June 30, 2017, 12:41:21 PM
 
I got an email too. Mine says I have to upgrade to the Plus 50O membership to enable 3rd party hosting. I'm not even sure I can get in Photobucket anymore.

You know, I wonder whether you will have to upgrade to the Plus 500 membership to access your account, or whether it would suffice to upgrade to the least expensive membership option if all you wanted to do is access your pictures and delete your account? Maybe wait a couple of days, check what other people are reporting on the world wide web, and see how things are progressing? I'm keeping my fingers crossed for everyone who has been affected so far!

I feel like they should be able to get into legal trouble over this somehow??? I really hope so??? Especially because they're also doing this to people who were already paying them and basically holding people's data for ransom? You can't just change the terms and services of a site like that with no warning? Especially because then users haven't actually agreed to them?

This business strongly reminds me of LiveJournal's change of terms of service in April of this year: From one day to the next, users were no longer able to access any of their journal entries, pictures, etc. unless they agreed to the new terms of service. They were not even able to delete their account without agreeing. Sadly, LiveJournal was able to get away with it.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: The_Loner on June 30, 2017, 12:43:23 PM
I use Flickr. Not for posting pictures on here, though, but it's pretty simple to share your Flickr pictures on a site like this one. Good luck! I'm excited to see your photo jrr74 :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on June 30, 2017, 12:57:37 PM
Really late reply on this but I think others have covered what the email said, basically the same info as others have said. I haven't been logging into PB so it has nothing to do with active logons. I did a while back but I actually don't have anything of any real importance on PB, thank goodness. I would have been suspicious they were being hacked given all the discussion about amounts and the holding hostage of images - but apparently it is legitimately a policy. I think it's a bad one, but that's their business. I just feel bad for all the folk with a lot of images stored on there. At the very least it is polite to give a month's notice to members to do other things with their accounts. Otherwise in my view it is not much different from ransomware if some people are having to pay to get their images back (the reason I was beginning to debate if it was a hacking of the site).

To add to that, I literally just went to the site and I can access my photos (as much as my browser allows me to now that they are so swamped with ads it kills my browser) so I think the locking out/paying ransom element is not necessarily true in all cases.

I am not planning on trying to retrieve images from PB, so I have no idea how possible that might be to do.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 01:07:06 PM
I downloaded my pics by going onto my library - on the right side it should say something like "download library" and then you'll be able to download a .zip file of all the pics in your gallery. It doesn't seem to download videos or .gifs though, I guess you need to save those manually?
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 01:33:56 PM
I posted this on the other thread but I'll post it here too just in case - for anyone trying to back up their pics, if you go onto your PB library, on the right there should be a link that says "Download album", and it'll give you a .zip file with all your pics in :) I tried it and it seems to work fine. Only thing it doesn't download is videos and gifs, it seems you have to save those manually.

(Also you need to download each folder you have seperately, I didn't realize this at first)
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Crowning_Glory13 on June 30, 2017, 02:24:47 PM
Glad I saw this. Man that is a panic for me!!!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on June 30, 2017, 03:41:59 PM
I have three different PB accounts on three different email addresses. Maybe six months ago I decided to change the theme of one of my accounts. I deleted EVERYTHING in the account and started uploading new pictures into it. I barely got anything in the account when suddenly PB told me that it was "full". Since then I've been getting emails from them saying "you account has been restricted". If I want my account to not be "restricted" I have to pay them money. Nope, not gonna happen. Last time I checked that was called blackmail!

Luckily, all my pictures are saved on my computer. PB isn't my only copy.

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: pinkkittywinks on June 30, 2017, 04:31:31 PM
I have to admit that Photobucket has been crashing my browser for months with all its advertising pop ups.

I've just deleted my account, I'm going to go back to using the Classified sales here for my pony sales :bigups:

Love pkw xxx
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Freeindeed on June 30, 2017, 04:45:18 PM
Oh, that stinks... I have an ancient Photobucket account that I don't use very much anymore, but it's got a bunch of my old pictures on it. I will have to try to save as many as I can, just in case.

Thanks for the heads up. :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: SkyCakes on June 30, 2017, 05:42:49 PM
I deleted my account its very sad after being a member with them for 11 years. :/ I went to Imgur it wasnt hard or complicated the photos uploaded very fast for me that was good. I hate finding someplace else but there are other places out there that are good for image hosting like Flickr, ect.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Snapdragon on June 30, 2017, 05:44:58 PM
Oh no! I have an ancient Photobucket account too, I love paging through all of my ancient photos! :( Thank you for the tip about the zip folders though!! That'll save me OODLES of time!
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Majesty on June 30, 2017, 06:29:57 PM
I saw this problem on the MH Arena as well.  I have only a few images on there I'd like to keep just for this site and the mh arena and playstation network.  Can I save the images to my desktop and delete my photobucket images and account?  I don't know if that would work.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Harmonie on June 30, 2017, 06:37:33 PM
This is so frustrating. I have relied on PhotoBucket for twelve years or more!

What frustrates me even more than this is that the images that are hosted on other sites have been replaced by that banner in entirety, even on PhotoBucket's site. Images I had hosted there that I used on other sites that were on my older computers I now don't have any access to because PhotoBucket 'erased' them.  :enraged:

Does everyone think we're made of money nowadays? I always kind of laughed at PhotoBucket trying to get me to upgrade every time I went on the site when over the course of twelve years I had only used like 12% of my allotted storage... but then they pulled this.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Majesty on June 30, 2017, 06:40:44 PM
This is so frustrating. I have relied on PhotoBucket for twelve years or more!

What frustrates me even more than this is that the images that are hosted on other sites have been replaced by that banner in entirety, even on PhotoBucket's site. Images I had hosted there that I used on other sites that were on my older computers I now don't have any access to because PhotoBucket 'erased' them.  :enraged:

Does everyone think we're made of money nowadays? I always kind of laughed at PhotoBucket trying to get me to upgrade every time I went on the site when over the course of twelve years I had only used like 12% of my allotted storage... but then they pulled this.

I'm the same way, I hardly used any storage and I kept getting these messages to upgrade my computer and what not to use my photobucket account.  It's been free all this time why now do they want to charge people.  It's like being on amazon and having constant "upgrade to prime" thrown in my face when I'm there.  If they start charging me for using photobucket I'm out.  I'll be avatar-less and signature-less it's fine.
 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Harmonie on June 30, 2017, 06:44:10 PM
What on earth PhotoBucket? Do they think we're made of money nowadays... That we don't already have enough bills to be paying?

I relied on PhotoBucket for 12 or so years. They always seemed like the best service. I joined Flickr around a decade ago, but Flickr's a different kind of community that seems more dedicated to photography and public sharing, whereas PhotoBucket seemed more for private hosting under one account.

I have a Flickr, but it has always been for posting photography and never images I used on forums and the like.

What frustrates me more than anything is that the "banner" image they've made to tell us to upgrade has been put over images, like it's completely replaced them, even on the PhotoBucket site. Some of those images I don't have on my current PC and now I can't even retrieve them. Are they really erased? Does PhotoBucket think that pulling such a stunt such as that is going to make me want to pay money to them? They failed the most basic idea of hosting my images.

EDIT: The images have been restored on the PhotoBucket site, now that they aren't be hosted anywhere. I had checked before to see if that was going to happen and it hadn't, so I assumed the worst. Well, at least I can restore those images.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Lhianneth on June 30, 2017, 06:52:09 PM
Adding my vote for Flickr to the ring. I haven't used my Photobucket account in quite a long time. When they got sold out a few years ago, and changed the system that your photos were sorted in, I kind of rolled my eyes and let my paid account lapse (I used to have a premium account because I used it for sale photos in another hobby, which used much more bandwidth; not having the premium account meant my photos generally disappeared before the end of 24 hours). Since switching to Flickr for my toy hobby stuff, I haven't looked back even once.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Harmonie on June 30, 2017, 06:52:46 PM
This is so frustrating. I have relied on PhotoBucket for twelve years or more!

What frustrates me even more than this is that the images that are hosted on other sites have been replaced by that banner in entirety, even on PhotoBucket's site. Images I had hosted there that I used on other sites that were on my older computers I now don't have any access to because PhotoBucket 'erased' them.  :enraged:

Does everyone think we're made of money nowadays? I always kind of laughed at PhotoBucket trying to get me to upgrade every time I went on the site when over the course of twelve years I had only used like 12% of my allotted storage... but then they pulled this.

I'm the same way, I hardly used any storage and I kept getting these messages to upgrade my computer and what not to use my photobucket account.  It's been free all this time why now do they want to charge people.  It's like being on amazon and having constant "upgrade to prime" thrown in my face when I'm there.  If they start charging me for using photobucket I'm out.  I'll be avatar-less and signature-less it's fine.
 

At least Prime is an added service. This is literally just asking us to pay for the same basic service we have been using for free for so long.

I'm shocked it hasn't hit you yet. I recommend you save your avatar and signature to your computer or something ASAP before PhotoBucket erases them by replacing them with the banner asking to upgrade.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Carrehz on June 30, 2017, 06:57:06 PM
It's just disgusting. Now, disabling images temporarily until the end of the month if we use up too much bandwidth, like they used to, that's fair enough. But disabling outside linking *completely* for free accounts is just.. I mean, what the heck else was Photobucket used for?!? D: I stopped using it ages ago admittedly (I have my own server) but it was always nice to know it was there as a backup option, and for other people's images. I know I keep saying it but I really can't believe they're pulling a stunt like this, especially since a lot of people have faithfully used them for over 10 years now :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Aadra310 on June 30, 2017, 07:19:56 PM
How do you delete your Photobucket account?


Ponyfan

Hover over your avatar or black and white face image near top right of the screen.  Click "settings."  Then there is a bar near the top that starts with a box, "Personal" and ends with "account."  Do the "account" one and then scroll down to "delete this account."  Gives a warning about backing up your images and such.  I just did it.  Needed a good excuse to get off PB, anyway! 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Noxxbunny on June 30, 2017, 07:34:34 PM
Well...can't say I've ever seen a business shoot themselves in the foot any harder than PB just has. What in the world is their team doing?! This is arguably the worst idea I've ever heard of. And it is SO weird who it's affecting and who it isn't. So far...none of my images have been replaced. Neither here or in my very large photo thread on another forum. I'm an active user too. Just...O_o

What would you guys say now is the most private image hosting site? I stuck with PB for so long because I don't want all this tagging stuff, upvoting stuff, rando comments. I just want to host and share in specific places. If I wanna share images with the whole world, I use Instagram or whatever. Flickr is probably out for me though because I would just feel like I'm stinking up the place with my amateur hobby photography and sales photos.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on June 30, 2017, 08:02:17 PM
That was not a shot to the foot.  That was a bullet straight to the brain.  :blink:
I wish we knew how the company meeting that preceded this went down, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: BethMcBeth on June 30, 2017, 08:19:43 PM
Whoa talk about a jerky move on their part! Thanks for the heads up!
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: Stormness_1 on June 30, 2017, 08:40:11 PM
I'm gonna have to switch. Which hosting service has the best phone app? That's what I usually use PB for now, transferring pics from my phone to forum posts without my cable on the go.
Title: Re: What's up with photobucket
Post by: TheBeatlesPkmnFan42 on June 30, 2017, 08:54:33 PM
I'm gonna have to switch. Which hosting service has the best phone app? That's what I usually use PB for now, transferring pics from my phone to forum posts without my cable on the go.

I haven't used any others so I can't compare it to anything else, but I use Imgur on both mobile and my laptop for my go-to image hosting.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on June 30, 2017, 09:29:06 PM
Well...can't say I've ever seen a business shoot themselves in the foot any harder than PB just has. What in the world is their team doing?! This is arguably the worst idea I've ever heard of.

I've seen something nearly as bad. Just this year too. Back in Feb it leaked that American Girl got the bright idea to start permanently attaching the underwear to it dolls. At the SAME TIME they released their very first bathroom with a toilet!  :argh: Forcing dolls to go potty with their underwear on.  :crazy: The AG fans revolted and the company was forced to reverse the idiotic decision.

The only way this isn't as bad as PB is because AG wasn't attaching the underwear and then charging us $400 to get it removed. What PB is doing should be illegal! It's nothing but ransom and blackmail!

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Noxxbunny on June 30, 2017, 10:31:37 PM
Well...can't say I've ever seen a business shoot themselves in the foot any harder than PB just has. What in the world is their team doing?! This is arguably the worst idea I've ever heard of.

I've seen something nearly as bad. Just this year too. Back in Feb it leaked that American Girl got the bright idea to start permanently attaching the underwear to it dolls. At the SAME TIME they released their very first bathroom with a toilet!  :argh: Forcing dolls to go potty with their underwear on.  :crazy: The AG fans revolted and the company was forced to reverse the idiotic decision.

The only way this isn't as bad as PB is because AG wasn't attaching the underwear and then charging us $400 to get it removed. What PB is doing should be illegal! It's nothing but ransom and blackmail!

sailorstitch

I did see that even though I don't have any AGs! I didn't see they reversed it though. Glad they did! Because yeah...that was also incredibly stupid.  :blink:

This here is some kind of cartoon mustache twirling villain stuff, but like the bumbling joke/idiot villain kind. "We lock up their data and charge them $400 to get it back! Brilliant!Muahahahahaha! ...What do you mean no one is paying the ransom and we're shutting down?"

I expect to see PB gone in a month or two at most if they don't reverse this too. A shame because I was one of those "been using it for a decade" people and I hate what it became the past couple years.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Loa on July 01, 2017, 02:16:59 AM
Merged a few topics ;)
Title: Photobucket Data Loss Warning **
Post by: lostpony on July 01, 2017, 11:58:15 AM
I hate to be an alarmist (ok some of you are not going to believe that I hate to be an alarmist, but still...):

Photobucket isn't just shutting down 3rd party image hosting, they are demanding you pay money to restore access to your own images stored there.  This seems to be a gradual phased-in thing so if you are like me and have a lot of stuff with them that you don't have organized elsewhere, take the time before they lock your images away to go in there and download them all.

If someone knows an automated way to do this, please post instructions here or somewhere to help us.  I only know about the manual method and a couple nights ago I stayed up most of the night manually pushing through image-by-image download of what turned out to be 577 images I had stored there.  This, and starting a new job (first day is today in about an hour Yaay! still have my old job, together will be about 30 hours of pay per week) has set back my effort to deal with fixing up my links and such to make sure my current posts here have their images.  But I will work on that soon beginning with a google drive share with all of them in a big lump.  Google Drive doesn't do embedded image links though so I am going to try and accomplish that with Flickr, which is a yahoo thing so annoyingly will interfere with my email login, ah well.  Gotta love technology (NOT).

No one likes to pay ransom.  It's bad and I think it's probably illegal (extortion) to change terms on us like this but....they are, and will probably continue to get away with it.  Please save your data, and  grab your stuff while you can!

thanks all for listening to my rant.  We'll get through this rough spot and be the stronger for it.  Long live our images!!

**edit:  thanks so much for putting these together for us, Loa.  I'm putting this thread in my sig.
Title: Re: Photobucket Data Loss Warning **
Post by: Mirnyj on July 01, 2017, 12:10:18 PM
Boo photobucket. I never liked it to begin with.
Moving this to OT
Title: Re: Photobucket Data Loss Warning **
Post by: JazzMatazz on July 01, 2017, 12:17:01 PM
well good thing I said good riddance to them ages ago. I don't think I'm attached to anything I had on there. their site has so many pop ups it was worthless to use when there are better sites now like imgur.
Title: Re: Photobucket Data Loss Warning **
Post by: Luxrayx on July 01, 2017, 01:12:21 PM
Oh, wow. I can't view my library, although it could just be my slow wifi.
Good thing I didn't have anything important on there... Right? :lookround:
Title: Re: Photobucket Data Loss Warning **
Post by: Carrehz on July 01, 2017, 03:07:47 PM
For anyone else trying to save their pics - here's a quick way of doing it:

Go onto your library. On the right side there should be a link that says "Download album", click on this and after going through the whole "are you a robot" process, you'll be given a link to a .zip file of all your pics. (the more pics you have to download, the longer it'll take to create a .zip file of them)
Two things: you'll need to do this for each folder you have, and this method of downloading does NOT include videos or animated .gifs (non-animated gifs *are* included in the .zip file), you WILL have to download those manually.

I hope this helps!! This is just awful :( I'm trying to get stuff off there as quickly as possible - tough since I had a lot of stuff on there.. I'd mostly swapped to using my own site to host pics, but I was still using PB for older pics I'd already uploaded there and whatnot. Plus it was just nice to have a backup option, you know? :( I really can't believe they're doing this. I hope everyone can save their pics before it's too late!!

*edit: If your pics have been taken down and replaced with the "no third party linking" image - here's (http://mlparena.com/index.php/topic,386878.msg1652516.html#msg1652516) how to get them back*
Title: Re: Photobucket Data Loss Warning **
Post by: Harmonie on July 01, 2017, 04:40:37 PM
Ugh. I have pictures up there from 2005. Pictures that only exist there and on old PCs that probably don't even work anymore.

I don't even know where to begin.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Chrissytree on July 02, 2017, 01:02:48 PM
The page is barely working for me. It's all broken up except for the adverts. I did get into my album for a bit but nothing was happening when I tried to download the album. Wondering if the site is slow with everyone trying to save their pics. I've got less than 1000 pics in there but some aren't stored anywhere else.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on July 02, 2017, 02:54:24 PM
Good grief it took far far far too long to figure out how to upload and share with Flickr!  Good news though, if you already have  a Yahoo account, you also have a Flickr!  ;)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 02, 2017, 03:07:40 PM
I opened an account with Drop Box. How do I embed the pictures into a message board? Or can I?

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on July 02, 2017, 03:11:08 PM
Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 02, 2017, 03:26:45 PM
Not as easy as PB was..... But I'll give it a try. Thanks!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Icicle on July 02, 2017, 09:57:36 PM
Aw crap. I had stuff come up when trying to download my albums and the links expired and now the stupid site doesn't work, I really hope I don't have to save up to get my own dang images. I really shouldn't considering, but I have important pictures on there that I'd like to have backed up in case I can't find them on my hard drives (like the picture of my mother, who passed away over a decade ago, and I only have the one picture of).

Like, I hadn't used Photobucket in a while because I didn't like the direction it was going, but the principle of the thing and them being my images and all. Right now I use imgur and have for a few years, works pretty well for what it is and has shorter URLs which I personally like a lot.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Loona on July 03, 2017, 02:46:17 AM
The page is barely working for me. It's all broken up except for the adverts. I did get into my album for a bit but nothing was happening when I tried to download the album. Wondering if the site is slow with everyone trying to save their pics. I've got less than 1000 pics in there but some aren't stored anywhere else.
I was also wondering if it's because so many people are trying to rescue their stuff from there now...
I haven't yet been hit by the overwritten pictures yet, so I wanted to proactively go through my account and download everything, but I can't even log in, it just makes me wait - until the connection times out.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tropical_Sunset on July 03, 2017, 07:14:54 AM
I used Photobucket for all of my hosting too.  I've been trying in vain all morning to get my icon to work.  I used imgbox to download it but it just shows up as a broken link. 

Same for flickr. I have a huge headache right now from all of this.  I really don't know what to do.

With flickr I'm going to "share" and copying the link that's provided afterwards but it does not work.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on July 03, 2017, 07:38:18 AM
I've never used flickr but I think I'll be sticking with imgur.
It took me several tries to download my albums on photobucket. Sometimes it would let me download an album of 500 pictures in less than two minutes... other times I'd wait ten minutes and nothing happened and so I'd just try again and again.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: frizzycat on July 03, 2017, 07:48:00 AM
I used Photobucket for all of my hosting too.  I've been trying in vain all morning to get my icon to work.  I used imgbox to download it but it just shows up as a broken link. 

Same for flickr. I have a huge headache right now from all of this.  I really don't know what to do.

With flickr I'm going to "share" and copying the link that's provided afterwards but it does not work.

I use Flickr a lot, so maybe I can help? Where are you trying to share to? There are several link options provided after you press the 'share icon'. If you're posting to the forum, after clicking on the share icon, click on BBCode on the pop up and use that link. There will be a variety of sizes for you to choose from too.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Luxrayx on July 03, 2017, 07:50:18 AM
I just deleted my stuff and my account with the message "I am unhappy with the services that Photobucket provides". That'll show 'em  :devious:
What's the most reliable photo uploading alternative? One that doesn't pull these kinds of shenanigans?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 03, 2017, 09:02:10 AM
Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tropical_Sunset on July 03, 2017, 09:24:47 AM
I used Photobucket for all of my hosting too.  I've been trying in vain all morning to get my icon to work.  I used imgbox to download it but it just shows up as a broken link. 

Same for flickr. I have a huge headache right now from all of this.  I really don't know what to do.

With flickr I'm going to "share" and copying the link that's provided afterwards but it does not work.

I use Flickr a lot, so maybe I can help? Where are you trying to share to? There are several link options provided after you press the 'share icon'. If you're posting to the forum, after clicking on the share icon, click on BBCode on the pop up and use that link. There will be a variety of sizes for you to choose from too.

I'd really appreciate the help!  There is only one link that appears after I hit share: visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 (with [img])
https://www.flickr.com/gp/76824052@N04/1k32mz (without)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on July 03, 2017, 09:31:06 AM
This is how I post pictures from Flickr

Click the arrow that says "Share Photo"  Click "BBcode" Pick the size you want from the drop down box Right click the link and select copy. Open a post box here and click paste. 

I hope this helps anyone that is having trouble with Flickr. :)


Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on July 03, 2017, 10:09:49 AM
It took me several tries to download my albums on photobucket. Sometimes it would let me download an album of 500 pictures in less than two minutes... other times I'd wait ten minutes and nothing happened and so I'd just try again and again.

Same here. I managed to download the first (and smallest) album successfully, however, with the other albums, I didn't have any luck. I ended up downloading all the pictures individually. It took me several hours to do so.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 03, 2017, 10:15:17 AM
Don't mind me. Just making a post to test one of my PB accounts to see if my photos are being blocked.  :lookround:

Spoiler
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 (http://s1016.photobucket.com/user/sailormufasa/media/Lance%20Bass/Lance%2053_zpsdfzqtbnv.jpg.html)

ETA: Ok, that's odd. My sailorstitch account is being blocked. That's my original account I opened 12+ years ago. But my other two accounts, sailormufasa and sailorgurgi, are working just fine. Well... as fine as I can expect from PB.  :what:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Chrissytree on July 03, 2017, 02:44:36 PM
I've managed to download my photos but I had to use the in-page navigation as clicking the back button made it unhappy. I did have to shut down my browser a few times to get it to work. If you click "download" and nothing happens then it's best to do "cancel" and try again. It didn't have much problem with doing 900+ pics in one go but you just have to persist and keep starting from scratch.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on July 03, 2017, 03:20:44 PM
Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch

What exactly didn't work?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Chrissytree on July 03, 2017, 03:39:46 PM
Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch

What exactly didn't work?

Are you trying to create new links? I'll have to look up how to do that again. Photos are find but links I've forgotten how to do it so I've had to remove mine for now.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 03, 2017, 03:41:36 PM
Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch

What exactly didn't work?

I copied the link into the img tags, but the picture didn't appear. It was just a blank space.

I've been playing around with Drop Box, Imgur and Flickr. Right now Flickr is working the best for me. I'm using that one to fix my photos on the other message board. But I'd still like to have Drop Box too if I can get the pictures to embed.

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tropical_Sunset on July 03, 2017, 04:24:06 PM
This is how I post pictures from Flickr

Click the arrow that says "Share Photo"  Click "BBcode" Pick the size you want from the drop down box Right click the link and select copy. Open a post box here and click paste. 

I hope this helps anyone that is having trouble with Flickr. :)


Ponyfan

I only get one link after I hit share and it doesn't work in anything (see my last post). I wish I could show you a screenshot, but... haha....
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on July 03, 2017, 04:29:27 PM
Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch

What exactly didn't work?

I copied the link into the img tags, but the picture didn't appear. It was just a blank space.

I've been playing around with Drop Box, Imgur and Flickr. Right now Flickr is working the best for me. I'm using that one to fix my photos on the other message board. But I'd still like to have Drop Box too if I can get the pictures to embed.

sailorstitch

What does the URL look like?
Edit: Oh wait I remember, pretty sure I wrote an auto-correct for this.  Change https://www.dropbox.com to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/

That should fix it?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: frizzycat on July 05, 2017, 05:45:12 AM
This is how I post pictures from Flickr

Click the arrow that says "Share Photo"  Click "BBcode" Pick the size you want from the drop down box Right click the link and select copy. Open a post box here and click paste. 

I hope this helps anyone that is having trouble with Flickr. :)


Ponyfan

I only get one link after I hit share and it doesn't work in anything (see my last post). I wish I could show you a screenshot, but... haha....

I had a look and yeah, I only saw one link after you hit share.  :blink: I poked around with my settings to try to replicate it.

Try this: click on your user icon in Flickr >settings > privacy and permissions >allow other people to share your pictures > select yes
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tulagirl on July 05, 2017, 06:53:27 AM
What I have done so far is just download all my albums so I have the photos and have deleted most of my albums.  I am sick of this whole thing.  I have like 24 photos left that seem to still show up on sites. If those start not showing up then I will delete the album and get rid of photobucket.  I have not been using it much for my hosting anyway.  Only a few things are attached to it like gif images for the forums and the like.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on July 05, 2017, 07:38:52 AM
I think most of my stuff is downloaded now. I need to go through and grab any animated gifs I might have missed. But that was seriously awful... I had to disable my adblocker to get the downloader to work and my computer started crawling there was so much popping up.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 05, 2017, 01:35:23 PM
I was talking to one of my coworkers today about the whole PB thing. She doesn't use PB and didn't know anything about this mess. After I explained everything she commented how this sounds very illegal. She was wondering if there was somebody we could contact about this situation. She mentioned the Better Business Bureau, but neither one of us were sure if they dealt with websites.

Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch

What exactly didn't work?

I copied the link into the img tags, but the picture didn't appear. It was just a blank space.

I've been playing around with Drop Box, Imgur and Flickr. Right now Flickr is working the best for me. I'm using that one to fix my photos on the other message board. But I'd still like to have Drop Box too if I can get the pictures to embed.

sailorstitch

What does the URL look like?
Edit: Oh wait I remember, pretty sure I wrote an auto-correct for this.  Change https://www.dropbox.com to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/

That should fix it?

I'll give that a try later.

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tootie_tails on July 06, 2017, 04:37:53 AM
I have given up on PB and trying to set up with flickr.
I can't find how to change the settings. Is this picture showing or is it only visible for me? (pic in spoiler)

Spoiler
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 (https://flic.kr/p/VasJZm)

Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: banditpony on July 06, 2017, 04:56:28 AM
I have given up on PB and trying to set up with flickr.
I can't find how to change the settings. Is this picture showing or is it only visible for me? (pic in spoiler)

Spoiler
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 (https://flic.kr/p/VasJZm)



I see the picture. :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tulagirl on July 06, 2017, 06:16:39 AM
I think most of my stuff is downloaded now. I need to go through and grab any animated gifs I might have missed. But that was seriously awful... I had to disable my adblocker to get the downloader to work and my computer started crawling there was so much popping up.

Yea I went through this too.  Those ads were awful.  It took a lot of time to download everything.  I would sometimes have to wait for a while to just be able to close ads that were blocking my ability to click on my albums or other things.  It was ridiculous.  A few times I had to refresh the entire website to try to get rid of stuff.  Just awful.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: NightGliderSA on July 06, 2017, 08:50:12 AM
I never read Trader and Classifieds Support - don't sell anything... so this is the first time I have seen this thread. And that is only because lostpony has a link to it - thank you lostpony!

I think that what PB did / is doing is absolutely shocking and I really feel for everyone who is trying to retrieve years worth of photo's from their site. Why the heck would they do such a thing?!  :shocked:

Please excuse my stupid question... I only opened a PB account in order to post photo's on this forum, so stand no chance of losing anything. However, what I would like to know is: is it necessary to use a third party (flickr, dropbox, etc) or can I post the photo's directly from my computer? Which is what I would prefer, actually. And if so, how could that be done?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Kiwi on July 06, 2017, 09:22:38 AM
Please excuse my stupid question... I only opened a PB account in order to post photo's on this forum, so stand no chance of losing anything. However, what I would like to know is: is it necessary to use a third party (flickr, dropbox, etc) or can I post the photo's directly from my computer? Which is what I would prefer, actually. And if so, how could that be done?

No, we chose not to offer that ability on this forum. That was a large part of what killed our last forum - all those pictures hosted on our server bogged it down too much and the whole thing crashed in the end. All photos have to be uploaded somewhere else first.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: NightGliderSA on July 06, 2017, 10:43:52 AM
Oh I see! Thank you for getting back to me Kiwi  :)

I have a dropbox account already, so will probably try that first.

Now, another thing I am wondering about is what will happen to all the historic posts? Will the photo references no longer work on them? That will be a huge pity, and will make it harder to use them for reference or research. A lot of history is going to be lost if that is the case...  :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on July 06, 2017, 11:31:44 AM
Now, another thing I am wondering about is what will happen to all the historic posts? Will the photo references no longer work on them? That will be a huge pity, and will make it harder to use them for reference or research. A lot of history is going to be lost if that is the case...  :(

This is my big worry, too :( I can save my own pics, but I can't save every other pic on Photobucket.. I've saved some stuff, but who knows what else will be lost. :( This is gonna really mess up a lot of stuff...

I put a link in my sig, too (I hope that's alright).
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 06, 2017, 01:17:59 PM
Thanks for the mention, NightGliderSA!  I'm glad my idea helped someone.

My next idea, since I don't have time to deal with fixing up all my old posts, is to just dump everything I had on Photobucket into a share on my Google Drive account and add a link to that in my sig.  It's not a perfect solution, but that way people can search by the image name (which can be obtained by "view source" or "inspect" etc) to find the picture they want to see in the archive.  I'll probably try and fix up the wording in the sig to make it more clear how do use it, but at least for now it gives access to the missing images all in one place.  They're uploading right now: 569 images.

Fie on you, Photobucket!  Good riddance though to a tool that has been blunted for too long anyway.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: NoDivision on July 06, 2017, 01:20:53 PM
I've skimmed through this post so sorry if I missed something - but do we know why this is so inconsistent? I haven't had any issues with not being able to use images hosted on photobucket. Just trying to figure out if there's something I'm doing differently than others? Or is it just a matter of time before they come for me too.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on July 06, 2017, 02:11:59 PM
Best guess is it's probably a bandwidth/usage thing.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 06, 2017, 02:52:01 PM
For me, the most-used image, the clapping-Pinky .gif that was in my sig, was the first to go and the rest slowly followed.

I am guessing the reason they aren't just shutting it all off at once is a matter of sneaking up on us....the first person I was aware of to have trouble didn't alarm me because mine still worked, so when one of my images did quit working I immediately spent the whole night manually downloading all the rest.  If I hadn't done that, I would have lost access to most of my images.

I believe it is the frog-in-boiling-water approach:  if you put a frog in a pot of tepid water and turn up the heat gradually, he will stay put and die but if you drop him into a pot of boiling water, he'll jump out.

In this way, we ignore each other's complaints about the ransomed images and allow our own to fall behind, increasing the chances of being able to extort us for money.

It's just a theory.  Further, several of my images I was watching closely still worked for me even after refreshing while others already weren't able to see them.

The fact they have an assurance posted that specifically states that we will be able to access our own images and that they are kept safe, yet we still lose direct access to them ourselves unless we pay a lot of money, really cements that this is a pernicious and deliberate attack on us and even though 99% of us will refuse to cooperate, a select few will be forced to pay and that will satisfy whatever greed Photobucket is basing this act on.

It's dirty all the way around and even if you are able to see your images now, the heat will be turned up and if you don't jump out now, you too will soon be boiled.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: banditpony on July 06, 2017, 03:19:55 PM
Has anyone been unable to access their images?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 06, 2017, 03:46:18 PM
YES.

The one I used in sig, therefore the most-accessed, got blocked not just in linking but also in the library interface within the pb account.

Here and there throughout this thread some others have stated that the image is replaced by the now-familiar guage image.

While some have wondered if the minimum-level annual subscription price restores access to such images, I don't think we have a confirmed answer to that question.  To restore 3-rd party linking access to them, it requires the $399. per year payment.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: banditpony on July 06, 2017, 05:34:53 PM
YES.

The one I used in sig, therefore the most-accessed, got blocked not just in linking but also in the library interface within the pb account.

Here and there throughout this thread some others have stated that the image is replaced by the now-familiar guage image.

While some have wondered if the minimum-level annual subscription price restores access to such images, I don't think we have a confirmed answer to that question.  To restore 3-rd party linking access to them, it requires the $399. per year payment.

What happens when you try to download that specific image? Do you download the gauge image? I'm wondering if the thumbnail is altered but the original image is intact.

because the http://photobucket.com/p500/ page says that the images are safe and downloadable-- you just can't 3rd party host them.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 06, 2017, 11:23:24 PM

What happens when you try to download that specific image? Do you download the gauge image? I'm wondering if the thumbnail is altered but the original image is intact.

because the http://photobucket.com/p500/ page says that the images are safe and downloadable-- you just can't 3rd party host them.

WOW.  OK, I just checked....when I click the gauge where my image is supposed to be, I see the library entry showing also the gauge.

Looks like this is my bad...  I didn't try downloading it anyway before, believing the resultant image would be the gauge not the image.

I just tried it now and I am pleased to report that I was mistaken, Yaay!  The actual image arrived instead of the gauge.

Thanks banditpony for persisting on this in spite of my naysaying. 

Everyone, do please make sure to try downloading your images even if they show the gauge because in at least this one example, the actual image was still there even though it was hidden under the gauge mask.  Sorry I was so quick to despair on this.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on July 07, 2017, 01:52:49 AM
What happens when you try to download that specific image? Do you download the gauge image? I'm wondering if the thumbnail is altered but the original image is intact.

I tried this with the picture in sailorstitch's signature. When I clicked the link, I got the gauge image. However, when I right-clicked the gauge image and chose "view image", I got sailorstitch's original picture! :)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 07, 2017, 06:20:57 AM
What happens when you try to download that specific image? Do you download the gauge image? I'm wondering if the thumbnail is altered but the original image is intact.

I tried this with the picture in sailorstitch's signature. When I clicked the link, I got the gauge image. However, when I right-clicked the gauge image and chose "view image", I got sailorstitch's original picture! :)

Good thing I haven't gotten around to fixing my MLP pictures yet. LOL

sailorstitch
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Libelle on July 07, 2017, 06:29:01 AM
What happens when you try to download that specific image? Do you download the gauge image? I'm wondering if the thumbnail is altered but the original image is intact.

I tried this with the picture in sailorstitch's signature. When I clicked the link, I got the gauge image. However, when I right-clicked the gauge image and chose "view image", I got sailorstitch's original picture! :)

Good thing I haven't gotten around to fixing my MLP pictures yet. LOL

sailorstitch

Lol, yes, that's what I thought as well! :D

Another good thing is that it seems possible to access one's pictures in order to save them after all - even if it involves a lot of work.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on July 07, 2017, 06:31:28 AM
Ah, that's awesome that they can be saved after all!! :)

I'm guessing it's a bandwidth thing too - my Photobucket doesn't seem to have been hit yet, but then about all the pics I still had on there are on pages where very few people would be looking at them (i.e. not on a forum page that'd be looked at many times). If that makes sense. Meanwhile almost all the pics I -have- seen get taken down, are in places where they'd get a lot of hits. So I'm wondering if pics getting many many hits is what triggers the gauge image appearing.

I do agree with Lostpony's "frog-in-boiling-water" analogy too, though. There's got to be a reason why they haven't rolled it out for everyone :s.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lonewolf on July 07, 2017, 07:04:42 AM
Just now reading up on this. Imageshack did the same thing  a couple years ago.
So far I still have access to my account. If they do lock it, pretty much everything I have there I still have on this computer (and most of those are just memes I reuploaded :P ).
As for other sites: Last I knew Flickr and Imgur both have limits to how much you can upload (unless you pay). I use Tinypic for the most part (they do try a popunder ad on you, but my combination of Adblock, No Script, and UBlock  shoots all of their ads down).
That really narrows down the number of hosting sites.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: banditpony on July 07, 2017, 08:56:56 AM

What happens when you try to download that specific image? Do you download the gauge image? I'm wondering if the thumbnail is altered but the original image is intact.

because the http://photobucket.com/p500/ page says that the images are safe and downloadable-- you just can't 3rd party host them.

WOW.  OK, I just checked....when I click the gauge where my image is supposed to be, I see the library entry showing also the gauge.

Looks like this is my bad...  I didn't try downloading it anyway before, believing the resultant image would be the gauge not the image.

I just tried it now and I am pleased to report that I was mistaken, Yaay!  The actual image arrived instead of the gauge.

Thanks banditpony for persisting on this in spite of my naysaying. 

Everyone, do please make sure to try downloading your images even if they show the gauge because in at least this one example, the actual image was still there even though it was hidden under the gauge mask.  Sorry I was so quick to despair on this.

It's not your bad. It "appears" the image is gone. It's very deceiving and confusing. I didn't want people to think their images are lost if they aren't. but... maybe one day they will be gone!

But again, to everyone, download your images now. This is a lesson not to put all of your eggs in one basket.

Just now reading up on this. Imageshack did the same thing  a couple years ago.
Yeah. I lost all of my images on imageshack. I think I had warnings, but the time I looked, they were gone. Lots of weird things that didn't make it past computer upgrades since 1998.

So that's my point. EVERYONE needs to download their images now. Photobucket didn't take away the storage. They just stopped their free hosting services. But they can take away the images too.

There's lots of options out there for image storage, sharing, and hosting. But the best thing is to have your own storage on top of the "free" services. (nothing is for free).
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on July 07, 2017, 09:38:00 AM
Yup, I remember Imageshack going down too. :(

I'd be careful using Tinypic; a friend of mine had some of her images deleted from there without warning, and I've seen a few cases where people's images hosted on there have been replaced with an entirely different image (sometimes rather graphic ones O_O).

And yes, yes, always keep backups! Keep backups of backups!! Just, in general, on the internet, if you think you'll miss it if it's gone, SAVE IT. I've lost stuff from computer crashes or sites dying (anyone remember xs.to? An old image-hosting site from the mid-2000s) before and I'd give anything to get those back. Back up everything!!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Noxxbunny on July 07, 2017, 11:11:08 AM
And yes, yes, always keep backups! Keep backups of backups!! Just, in general, on the internet, if you think you'll miss it if it's gone, SAVE IT. I've lost stuff from computer crashes or sites dying (anyone remember xs.to? An old image-hosting site from the mid-2000s) before and I'd give anything to get those back. Back up everything!!

This. This whole thing is just annoying and inconvenient to me. Anything that's on my PB, I have backed up in quadruplicate in various places... Quadruplicate is probably excessive for most, but I'm thorough and paranoid about data loss  :lol:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on July 07, 2017, 01:48:25 PM
And yes, yes, always keep backups! Keep backups of backups!! Just, in general, on the internet, if you think you'll miss it if it's gone, SAVE IT. I've lost stuff from computer crashes or sites dying (anyone remember xs.to? An old image-hosting site from the mid-2000s) before and I'd give anything to get those back. Back up everything!!

This. This whole thing is just annoying and inconvenient to me. Anything that's on my PB, I have backed up in quadruplicate in various places... Quadruplicate is probably excessive for most, but I'm thorough and paranoid about data loss  :lol:

I don't think it's excessive at all, I'm the same way XD I admit I didn't have backups of some of the stuff on my Photobucket before this, but I've rectified that now ^^; I'm really more worried about the thousands of other peoples' pictures on there than my own stuff, tbh.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 07, 2017, 03:04:56 PM
The issue for me is organization.

I have lots of things backed up, and backups of the backups, but over time I lose track of what is where and as the data grows, having too many copies of some things increases the problem with making sure I have any copies at all of something else.  Especially smartfone pictures which really proliferate.

The other issue I have with backups is things that are simply not backup up yet...recent work that can be lost when a computer dies etc.  I have several months of work trapped on a small laptop that had parrot-damage to its keyboard, specifically the delete key is missing but also shorted, so it simply deletes everything you try to look at and when it happened I had a look in the recycle bin to undelete things and it started dumping everything that had been moved there so I was like Nooooo and just shut it off.  At some point I'm going to cut the traces on the keyboard's PCB and rescue my files that didn't get purged.  Eh. 

Now that flash drives are as big and fast as they are, my plan is to move away from keeping active data on the local drives at all, and just keep working files directly on flash, then use the capacity on the local drives to do date-based incremental backups of the flash drives, with occasional full-copy flash backups that will be actually labelled and made in at least two copies that are kept offsite in at least two different places.  And....keep an index of backups too.  Dreaming now, right?

For me the worst was in about 2005 when I had a lot of freight stolen in transit and lost a lot of data that was in my shipping container, and later the backups were also lost in another location where they were kept.  So 2 copies of data can prove insufficient....I lost the complete local drive of unpublished works by a deceased family member that I was supposed to help publish.  I was so busy at the time that I never even got to read the material myself so it's just a huge indescribable and unforgivable loss.

Most recently, while I have copies of everything I had on Photobucket, I didn't have them in a consolidated archive so scraping them all together from their various different places would have been pretty unlikely.

So....backups are nice but a well-maintained system of organization is just as important especially when circumstances get tough and you get distracted from precautions you would ordinarily put time into.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on July 07, 2017, 08:59:52 PM
My accounts are starting to get hit with it now... thankfully I backed up. Just got done fixing my sig and profile images here. @_@
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Raindrop on July 07, 2017, 10:44:29 PM
I downloaded all my photos and closed out my account.  You would think they were making enough money with all of the pop-up ads!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Teddy on July 08, 2017, 04:10:24 AM
Thanks for all the help and info in this thread! I just downloaded all my Photobucket images to my computer and will use imgur from now on. I also just deleted my Photobucket account, which I have had for 13 years. How sad that they made this hasty (and quite frankly, evil) decision without giving us any warning.

Have a nice life, Photobucket! :P
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on July 09, 2017, 07:49:12 AM
So I wasn't going to download any of my PB stuff but I did have some older things on there which I probably have on another disc somewhere but you know, just in case. So after a lot of refreshing and clicking, they downloaded.

Though in the folder they all look fine and normal, when going through them on preview, some of the images were stretched and distorted to look like they were just a long thin line.

I suggest people check their images are fine before deleting their account. It might just have been something with the format of my images, but they were all JPG images, not gif or any other format, so I wanted to just flag this in case it affects anyone else.

Again, they look fine when you open the zip, extract them and view the thumbnails in the folder, but on preview they were warped. It also might just be an issue with preview or with my PC, because my PC is evil, but just in case...better safe than sorry.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: HoustonCollector72 on July 09, 2017, 08:07:58 AM
I was just fixing some of the pics gone from my brag thread last night , I have not seen this PB change , but I only have a couple of pages affected , looks like i was using Tapatalk for a while to get pics from my mobile on here , then something happened that i switched to Flickr a while back.

PB  was always too much for work to use to get the pics on here
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on July 09, 2017, 09:19:03 AM
If you have any kind of Yahoo account you also have a Flickr account, you just may need to associate the two.  And there!  You have 1TB of free storage (for now....)!

Another tip on file organization:  use software tools to help you compare any duplicates.  I use a combo of Clone Files Checker (to ID where the files are and manually clean), and then a Beyond Compare scan  so I can easily move large numbers of files/folders where I might be overlooking something. 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on July 09, 2017, 10:57:01 AM
So I wasn't going to download any of my PB stuff but I did have some older things on there which I probably have on another disc somewhere but you know, just in case. So after a lot of refreshing and clicking, they downloaded.

Though in the folder they all look fine and normal, when going through them on preview, some of the images were stretched and distorted to look like they were just a long thin line.

I suggest people check their images are fine before deleting their account. It might just have been something with the format of my images, but they were all JPG images, not gif or any other format, so I wanted to just flag this in case it affects anyone else.

Again, they look fine when you open the zip, extract them and view the thumbnails in the folder, but on preview they were warped. It also might just be an issue with preview or with my PC, because my PC is evil, but just in case...better safe than sorry.

In the past I have had a few images on my computer that appeared warped in the preview and I never understood why... but I was still able to open them in some programs and they were fine. I can't remember if I opened them in a browser or tried a different picture viewer though...
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on July 10, 2017, 10:09:18 PM
So I wasn't going to download any of my PB stuff but I did have some older things on there which I probably have on another disc somewhere but you know, just in case. So after a lot of refreshing and clicking, they downloaded.

Though in the folder they all look fine and normal, when going through them on preview, some of the images were stretched and distorted to look like they were just a long thin line.

I suggest people check their images are fine before deleting their account. It might just have been something with the format of my images, but they were all JPG images, not gif or any other format, so I wanted to just flag this in case it affects anyone else.

Again, they look fine when you open the zip, extract them and view the thumbnails in the folder, but on preview they were warped. It also might just be an issue with preview or with my PC, because my PC is evil, but just in case...better safe than sorry.

In the past I have had a few images on my computer that appeared warped in the preview and I never understood why... but I was still able to open them in some programs and they were fine. I can't remember if I opened them in a browser or tried a different picture viewer though...

Well, my computer has issues (a long list,seriously) so I would be inclined to blame it, but I wanted to headsup just in case it was a PB thing and not a Fuyu-the-brat-laptop thing. I've never had it happen on any computer in any context before and I've had a lot of computers on a lot of OS over the years, so you know, just in case it isn't Fuyu being a brat...;)

I admit that with writing my chapter and such I haven't had a chance to mess around with them in Photoshop to see if they open all right there.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on July 11, 2017, 09:57:43 AM
I got another email from Photobucket last night. It says "We've noticed you've been using Photobucket for 3rd party hosting"  One email said my account was targeted for excessive use and excessive 3rd party hosting.   


Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 11, 2017, 11:13:40 AM
I got an email too the other day, urging me to upgrade.  Didn't say anything about excessive use though, that's probably next.

It would make sense if the charge was reasonable, like $8 a month or something but minimum of their largest account at $399 in one wallop to do 3rd-party hosting?  Who are they kidding?

I bet they die before anyone gets their full year of service.  That they suddenly require a full year of payment up front signals desperation.  Probably they are building their executive golden parachutes, and will go belly-up real soon.

Oh yes, I love your new Twilight siggy, Ponyfan!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: NightGliderSA on July 11, 2017, 11:16:06 AM
I was talking to one of my coworkers today about the whole PB thing. She doesn't use PB and didn't know anything about this mess. After I explained everything she commented how this sounds very illegal. She was wondering if there was somebody we could contact about this situation. She mentioned the Better Business Bureau, but neither one of us were sure if they dealt with websites.

Put your picture in your Dropbox folder.
Right click on it, choose 'Copy Dropbox Link'
Bam, you have a URL.  Put it in [] img tags the way you'd normally do.  There's a button for it on this forum and most others to make it easier.

That didn't work. I have some images on another message board that I need to fix ASAP before the mods of there start screaming at me. Leaving broken links up is against the rules. :(

sailorstitch

What exactly didn't work?

I copied the link into the img tags, but the picture didn't appear. It was just a blank space.

I've been playing around with Drop Box, Imgur and Flickr. Right now Flickr is working the best for me. I'm using that one to fix my photos on the other message board. But I'd still like to have Drop Box too if I can get the pictures to embed.

sailorstitch

What does the URL look like?
Edit: Oh wait I remember, pretty sure I wrote an auto-correct for this.  Change https://www.dropbox.com to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/

That should fix it?

I'll give that a try later.

sailorstitch

https://www.dropbox.com/s/exhedux1rvw0u07/2017-06-25%2016.04.40%20sm.jpg?dl=0

Post Merge: July 11, 2017, 11:20:39 AM

Apologies for the above post - trying to figure out how to post my photo's with Dropbox... darn you PB!! This only gives a link - how do I post an actual picture? You know, like we used to be able to with PB (sadly shakes head)
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 11, 2017, 11:42:46 AM
OK with the above-mentioned thoughts as to the legality of their actions, I just couldn't stand my ignorance any longer.  So, I had a quick peek at the California Secretary of State website to determine what jurisdiction they might be sued in.  I discovered that "PHOTOBUCKET.COM, INC" is indeed a California corporation (entity #C2877441) based in Palo Alto (right near me!) and is therefore subject to California laws and without question this change in policy constitutes a number of California torts including but not limited to fraud and for those who relied on their service for sales, also interference with economic advantage.

What they've done is without question actionable, however, the cost of litigating it far exceeds any potential damages that might be won even with punitive damages unless one happens to be a lawyer and therefore able to pursue a class action against them, which would still be dubious because they probably won't survive long enough to collect any judgments obtained and litigating such an action is very expensive.

The fact they have not actually destroyed/prevented access to the data means they aren't liable for conversion or extortion as I had original presumed....hiding the images behind false thumbnails is deceptive, yes, but drastically limits their liability as a "reasonable person" should try to download their images and if they are too stupid (as I was) and fall for the false thumbnail, that's not the same as actually withholding the images, and this demonstrates that they are legally savvy and know how to manipulate us while limiting their liability.  Undoubtedly their legal team is prepared for any onslaught anyone might bring.

So....actionable, yes; reasonable to pursue....no.  Plus, their agent for service of process in Delaware just resigned in December, the month following their last corporation renewal filing, so they are clearly in turmoil and making a desperate grab for revenue before drastically restructuring or folding, so a judgment wouldn't likely be collectible anyway.  Anyone outside of California would also have to allege damages in excess of $75,000 in order to sustain an action in federal court.

Just an amateur hack's quick legal analysis of the feasibility of suing them for their misdeeds.  Not worth it, not going to happen.  Sorry.  We just have to deal with it, and move on.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: banditpony on July 11, 2017, 12:13:54 PM
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Change the webpage to https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com instead of https://www.dropbox.com. And put it inside the image tag. I also dropped the ?dl=0 not sure if that's necessary

Quote my post to see how I got it to show.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: NightGliderSA on July 11, 2017, 12:31:17 PM
Thank you!! I understand and now I can go and fix all my broken photo links, really appreciate the help!  :biggrin:

Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: PrincessTiffy on July 12, 2017, 10:49:06 PM
I just got the email from Photobucket about excessive usage lol. I don't use it or link pictures very often. But I guess my post about the loyal subjects figure in the pony corral triggered it. I've never posted that many photos on here lol. But all the picture are still viewable on here and don't have the upgrade gauge like I've seen so I'm confused.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 12, 2017, 11:02:45 PM
I love your example pic there, banditpony.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: NoDivision on July 13, 2017, 06:14:12 AM
They've finally come for me!  I'm trying to decide where to put all of these old images. I already use Flickr pretty regularly, but only for photography that I want to be viewed in like a gallery format. I don't really want to clutter up my account with a bunxh of really old pictures or random signature graphics.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: pinkkittywinks on July 13, 2017, 06:30:48 AM
Thank you Baby Sugarberry for the DropBox tips :)

So I deleted my account on 1st July and got a notification saying my account would be deactivated/deleted/removed on 2nd July BUT I checked today and it's still active  :blink:

I've deleted all the images I had stored there, so my account is empty, but I'm still getting emails from photobucket saying I'm third party hosting! There is nothing to host. I guess the system is just going crazy with all the people removing their accounts?

Love pkw xxx
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: jrr74 on July 13, 2017, 07:11:43 AM
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on July 13, 2017, 07:32:09 AM
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:

I know... it's kind of an archiving, isn't it?  :( 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on July 13, 2017, 07:52:19 AM
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:

In a community of 20+ years there are losses and there are gains. This is just one of those downtime moments :/ Does make me wonder about the overall history of our era given the dependence on digital records...all it takes is for a website server to go or an archive to disappear...we're running the risk of leaving no record for posterity :/
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lonewolf on July 13, 2017, 06:21:07 PM
Finally got the email from them. They have a Twitter account so I think I'll leave them a somewhat nasty message.

Edit: LOL I checked. Everyone's already doing it. Saying extortion and blackmail to their face.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on July 14, 2017, 08:03:12 AM
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:

I know... it's kind of an archiving, isn't it?  :(

Yessss, this :( So, so much history lost... over 10+ years worth.. :( I really can't believe they've done this.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on July 14, 2017, 08:27:53 AM
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:

I know... it's kind of an archiving, isn't it?  :(

Yessss, this :( So, so much history lost... over 10+ years worth.. :( I really can't believe they've done this.

really shows how the everyday user of the Internet was dependent on free services!  Most people don't have a private server in their house; most people will never get one.  Most people will never learn how to actually run a website hosted entirely upon them.  Sadly I am having to learn this nonsense now! 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Squirtsquirt on July 14, 2017, 09:05:26 AM
I used to have my own server and such, but now that I'm not selling as much, or even trading, it just wasn't worth it. 

I'm glad I saw this.  I've been pulling my pics off PB for the last 2 hours.  Mind you, I have less than 200 pics on there!  It's been all the stupid ads and such slowing things down, then for some reason, things would just freeze and I'd have to log in again to download another album.  I'm hopefully on the last one, then I'll be done.  I have pics on there from 6+ years ago, and I don't want to lose them.

As for the accounts, I could see the ones getting flagged that have a lot of content or hits.  My account is using 2% of what I'm allotted, so I'm a very small fry compared to some people.  I just wanted to pull my pics out on the off chance they finally just lock everything that isn't paid. :/
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: mlp4me on July 14, 2017, 09:38:52 AM
My goal this weekend is to get a decade worth of stuff uploaded off of PB... Wish me luck!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on July 14, 2017, 09:53:50 AM
My goal this weekend is to get a decade worth of stuff uploaded off of PB... Wish me luck!

Good luck!! I was backing stuff up for a week, it's no small feat :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tootie_tails on July 14, 2017, 12:24:32 PM
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:

Plus the same thing is all over the internet now, on all collectors websites, any interests websites and so on... When I first googled the PB issue I got results from various boards, lots of websites. :huh:

 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on July 14, 2017, 12:46:00 PM
One silver lining is that this resolves image theft issues for some people :)  You can't have it on your site and link it back to the original owner but claim it's yours.  :/ 

IDK I am trying to see *something*  good in all this...

I notice now that the MLPArena plug-in below in the Reply function, the area that links to my PB is now also "Hooves Up".. you know, the tool so you can easily use PB for a forum?!  I don't think the mods changed this ; I am betting this is PB's fault...
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ringlets on July 15, 2017, 03:37:17 AM
My goal this weekend is to get a decade worth of stuff uploaded off of PB... Wish me luck!

same here :(  thousands of pics ...I've used up more than 70% of what I'm allowed on there *siiiigh*  wishing you all the best!  :hug:
So all the pictures using PB on these threads are now gone, never to be seen; unless the OP is willing to take the time to upload them again.  This breaks my heart.  Huge piece of history vanished in thin air
:wail:

I know... it's kind of an archiving, isn't it?  :(

Yessss, this :( So, so much history lost... over 10+ years worth.. :( I really can't believe they've done this.

*nods in agreement* so sad  :bawl:  :cry:  :sad:  :cloud:

Finally got the email from them. They have a Twitter account so I think I'll leave them a somewhat nasty message.

Edit: LOL I checked. Everyone's already doing it. Saying extortion and blackmail to their face.

Good! :bigups:  I hope they get so many complaints that they change their greedy little minds !


Post Merge: July 15, 2017, 04:18:37 AM

Never used Flickr before but giving it a go now  ...
testing..  visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 (https://flic.kr/p/WFMKNw)
seems to work ok :whew:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 15, 2017, 11:47:23 PM
The irony for me is that in the past I always used paid-for services and then when I either ran into trouble in life and couldn't make payments, or just forget to make a payment or something, then everything got messed up.
For a long time I've used free services that pay for themselves by ad revenue as much as possible not just to get them free, but because they didn't have the weakness of having to make payments. 

Heck, I even had "lifetime" accounts with companies that lasted less than a decade.  I tried it all.

There's just no perfect solution.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on July 16, 2017, 10:32:19 AM
One silver lining is that this resolves image theft issues for some people :)  You can't have it on your site and link it back to the original owner but claim it's yours.  :/ 


I don't see how that works. Image theft is more of a problem when people download someone else's image and reupload it to their own server as their own (or put it on ebay as their own). If it's being linked from PB then there's a paper trail. Also, people who are going to steal are going to steal.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: banditpony on July 16, 2017, 10:48:23 AM
One silver lining is that this resolves image theft issues for some people :)  You can't have it on your site and link it back to the original owner but claim it's yours.  :/ 


I don't see how that works. Image theft is more of a problem when people download someone else's image and reupload it to their own server as their own (or put it on ebay as their own). If it's being linked from PB then there's a paper trail. Also, people who are going to steal are going to steal.

Right. PB terminating their free image hosting service has nothing to do with theft.

When a certain pony ID site stole my images, they downloaded them and put them on their own private server.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on July 16, 2017, 11:05:06 AM
One silver lining is that this resolves image theft issues for some people :)  You can't have it on your site and link it back to the original owner but claim it's yours.  :/ 


I don't see how that works. Image theft is more of a problem when people download someone else's image and reupload it to their own server as their own (or put it on ebay as their own). If it's being linked from PB then there's a paper trail. Also, people who are going to steal are going to steal.

Right. PB terminating their free image hosting service has nothing to do with theft.

When a certain pony ID site stole my images, they downloaded them and put them on their own private server.

I've had mine used on ebay :/ Also I've had the text of my old website copied and used on another website as well as pictures being used. I know it's sort of a risk though with ID sites. I think it's worse when it's someone's artwork, because I can take a photo of my pony and someone else might think it's a nice picture, but if I'd spent weeks working on an image and someone else then just lifted it, I'd be super annoyed.

I don't like people using my images without a linkback but so long as they don't put them on ebay or publish them in a book, it's probably not the end of the world if they appeared on another ID site. There are some of my ponies that I would be really upset about if that happened, and others that would bother me less.

But art theft? Totally different ball game. I don't think that the PB thing will have any impact on stuff like that at all.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Strandperle on July 18, 2017, 07:10:22 AM
I was spared until now, but now my collection website is broken too. Have to upload every single photo again somewhere else... oh my.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on July 19, 2017, 08:47:46 AM
Mine worked until today - linked a new image for the first time in quite awhile (I haven't had time to pick a new host) and boom.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on July 19, 2017, 01:22:55 PM
Still getting emails from them telling me that my account will have features disabled or whatever. It's too buggy a site for me to try and delete everything so they are welcome to do it for me at this point. I don't have anything else I need to save.

But I love that in this "we are restricting your account, pay us money" email they tell you they are the world's number one 3rd party hosting site.

I think that's before they started shutting down many of the accounts using it because of this, but anyhow...

So weird how inconsistent this shutting down process is, because I don't know why I've had the emails twice and I haven't even checked if my images are or are not affected :/
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 19, 2017, 02:58:25 PM
I don't think they've ever been #1 at hosting.  They're clearly a foto printing business and their focus has never been the hosting.  They added commercials for ad revenue as a secondary business when it was clear that their platform was being used for free web hosting by lots of people, and they should have stuck with that.

Unless they mean #1 most hated, that could be true now.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: sailorstitch on July 19, 2017, 04:52:00 PM
Unless they mean #1 most hated, that could be true now.


 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :silly:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ringlets on July 20, 2017, 05:07:39 AM
Unless they mean #1 most hated, that could be true now.


 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :silly:

this so much!!  :lmao:  :lmao:  :lmao:  :lmao:  :lmao:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on July 20, 2017, 05:27:28 AM
It's really sad seeing so many broken pages all over the internet now... some that are maybe even a decade old and there's no way to fix them because the original posters have moved on to other things... and so many old sites will be broken too.  :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tulagirl on July 20, 2017, 12:19:53 PM
I just closed my Photodunkit account today.  They finally hit me and I only had 17 photos shared in various places.  I am glad to be done with them.  It takes an hour to do something on that site that should take 5 minutes because the ads take up the entire screen.  Epic failure on their part.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ponyfan on July 20, 2017, 12:38:09 PM
Still getting emails from them telling me that my account will have features disabled or whatever. It's too buggy a site for me to try and delete everything so they are welcome to do it for me at this point. I don't have anything else I need to save.

But I love that in this "we are restricting your account, pay us money" email they tell you they are the world's number one 3rd party hosting site.

I think that's before they started shutting down many of the accounts using it because of this, but anyhow...

So weird how inconsistent this shutting down process is, because I don't know why I've had the emails twice and I haven't even checked if my images are or are not affected :/


I keep getting those emails too about once a week since I tried to log in to delete my account.

Ponyfan
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: QuestorStar on July 20, 2017, 04:57:00 PM
WOW I was wondering why I kept seeing so many of those 'please enable third party hosting" images in people's signatures. wow. I don't know if I've gotten any emails from them. I have 2 email addresses and one is a "catch all" and it recently had 500+ unread emails. I love the features Photobucket has...editing within the site, the ability to quickly rotate multiple pictures, how they format urls for you...but yea, I logged in recently after being gone a few years and holy pony! ads, ads, ads on top of ads...like....is photobucket taking lessons about ad pop ups from porn sites?? O.O fo' real.

I never figured out flikr either. They were not friendly for uploading multiple pictures and easily sharing quickly. Am about to look into Imgur.

I could not get anything to download through Photobucket. I click "Download" and literally nothing happens. I tried it with several folders. I'm using Windows10 and Chrome
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 20, 2017, 05:39:35 PM
I didnt know how to use download when this first happened and stayed up most of a night using right-click save image as from library view. I had 577 images.

Flickr works easy for single images so if you find a good solution for larger volumes please be sure to let us know here, thanks so much!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Kiwi on July 21, 2017, 03:56:50 AM
I still haven't had any emails from Photobucket. I did save my photos though, just so they are backed up. I didn't really use my Photobucket much anymore anyways, so that's good.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: The_Loner on July 21, 2017, 05:28:55 AM
I never figured out flikr either. They were not friendly for uploading multiple pictures and easily sharing quickly. Am about to look into Imgur.

Flickr works easy for single images so if you find a good solution for larger volumes please be sure to let us know here, thanks so much!

You can uplodad 200 pictures at a time to your Flickr account, just a FYI
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 21, 2017, 11:30:31 AM
Good to know, The_Loner.

While Flickr is linked to a Yahoo account, it does allow me to have my regular email account open while still being logged into my pony yahoo account for flickr.  So it's more flexible than google accounts that way.

So far Flickr is quite satisfactory for me and much quicker and easier than using the clunky ad-soaked photobum interface was.

I hope they switch out that ugly gauge with something more attractive because I think we are going to see their image in a lot of places around the Internet for a long long time.  Maybe a gold coin or the Monopoly man or something?  Ugh I hope they don't sell the space to Trump and put his picture there instead...eeeeeeeeeeeks.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Duenia on July 21, 2017, 12:00:45 PM
Is there an easy way to get the src URL for a picture on Flickr without having to extract it from the embed code? I didn't notice one when I was in there the other day.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Koudoawaia on July 22, 2017, 12:39:17 AM
Well that ugly banner showed up in my sig so the icon there is hosted on imgr now.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on July 22, 2017, 03:18:23 AM
I kind of want to find a browser extension to replace that stupid banner with something better and less infuriating.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 23, 2017, 11:59:12 AM
Joyful discovery!  Don't delete your pb accounts...the original images can still be seen by third parties.

This morning it occurred to me that if the ugly gauge image hides a still-existing image in our own accounts, then maybe the same is true for other people's accounts....I tested it, and it's true!

This means you can view the image in anyone's posts here or anywhere else so long as they haven't closed their pb account or deleted their images.

What you do is click on the ugly gauge, taking you to the pb interface, then right-click on the gauge thumbnail, select save image and the downloaded image will be the original picture.


It's clumsy but it works.  Get the word out!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: tootie_tails on July 24, 2017, 08:41:55 AM
I'm still struggling with flickr.
How do I change the settings on my albums? I somehow made some of them public and some of them private. I don't know how they ended up like that and I can not find a way to change it.
Title: Problems with photobucket can anybody help?
Post by: aniko79 on July 24, 2017, 07:15:32 PM
Hi all, I have problems with photobucket. I can't see pictures from other members at the arena anymore! Instead of a picture comes this image:visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 (http://s1168.photobucket.com/user/angielilaluna/media/IMG_1213_zpsrimrpl0d.png.html) Ant when I wanted to upgrade my account it says that I need to pay 399 USD to upgrade my account. Can anybody help me? Did anyone have the same problem? Thanks in advance for your help!


[merging with the existing thread ~ Kiwi]
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Baby Sugarberry on July 24, 2017, 07:28:38 PM
Photobucket has stopped offering itself as a free hosting service.
You'll have to upload your pictures to one of the alternatives and go from there.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on July 24, 2017, 08:34:17 PM
Or pay 399 for a year. Yes they are actually serious.

Eventually more people will realize you can still save-as the image and get the correct picture though, so if you have a lot of old posts that youd like people to see but dong have time to fix, i recommend you dont delete your account or images.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on July 24, 2017, 08:47:08 PM
I'm not deleting any of my accounts... even though I think I've snagged everything off of them I'm gonna leave them there. *shrug* Later I need to go through all my posts on the arena and replace images...
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ringlets on July 25, 2017, 04:16:17 AM
Joyful discovery!  Don't delete your pb accounts...the original images can still be seen by third parties.

This morning it occurred to me that if the ugly gauge image hides a still-existing image in our own accounts, then maybe the same is true for other people's accounts....I tested it, and it's true!

This means you can view the image in anyone's posts here or anywhere else so long as they haven't closed their pb account or deleted their images.

What you do is click on the ugly gauge, taking you to the pb interface, then right-click on the gauge thumbnail, select save image and the downloaded image will be the original picture.


It's clumsy but it works.  Get the word out!



I'm sooo glad that this is true :whew:  I used to post loads of pic spam on here, picfic story brag threads .. while I haven't been up to doing any new ones due to RL for a while,  all the scenes on my old picfic threads etc took me ages to do and I used to be so proud of them. I also posted loads of other pony pics and doll pics... I have the pics left on PB and I'm saving them elsewhere too. There are way too many to re-do though on all the old posts (I have about 6000 pics on photobucket *sigh* ) , so if I leave them and people can still see them, that's awesome :cheer:  :frolic:
I'm still annoyed at the epic fail that is PB though.
I reckon there are so many peeps downloading their PB pics - that's one of the reasons why sometimes it will let me download an album quickly off there and other times it wont get past the "I'm not a robot stage" or it freezes. Or it lets me but only inbetween ads and only one pic at a time :facepalm:  But.... If I try it say... Monday morning, or some weird time when it's quiet on the internets, then it works ;)
Same with Flickr - I couldn't upload anything to start with when I was trying on a Saturday morning. The it let me do a couple of pics later.  I tried again in the week and it worked fine uploading multiple pics. I tend to have issues uploading and downloading at busy times- which I reckon is due to photobucket fail rather than just my computer right now as everyone is doing the same thing  :awake:
hmm did that make sense?.. :wonder:
I'm still working on saving my PB pics elsewhere and it's taking a while , so I haven't had much time to properly play around on Flickr and see how everything works yet.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: bluerose9978 on July 25, 2017, 12:32:31 PM
Apparently PB finally hit me. I will have to change it when I get home from vacation.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: ringwraith10 on July 25, 2017, 12:49:58 PM
Well then. I just realized that all of my pictures are no longer up. Oh well, I don't post pictures that often, anyway. My livejournal looks like crap, but when I need to post a picture on here I'll just find some other way to do it.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on August 01, 2017, 01:40:03 PM
Hey does anyone know if flickr support .GIFs?

I tried to upload my little clapping pinky image to flickr that I like to have in my sig and all I can get for a link is a jpg of the top image instead of the animated thing.  I think when it's uploaded I lose the animation but I can't even be sure of that because the file name seems to be lost (at least to view) in the upload.  hopefully this is user error and they do support gifs.

edit:  I can't even find support on the flickr site directly and everything I found with a google search was confusing as there are apparently all sorts of names for the different places you can be within their site and I am just confused generally, very hard to understand, and it seems animated .gifs are simply not supported and while there are some described work-arounds that are full of this special vocabulary so I can't understand them, none of them seem to apply to an embedded image so it's looking like flickr isn't going to be useful for animated .gifs and since I plan to create a number of hand-drawn short animations and publish them as .gifs for quick easy use, it's looking like flickr just really isn't going to end up working out for me in the long term.  Disappointing.

Does anyone know if Deviant images can be embedded directly?  Maybe I can link to it from the library of the person who is making it available for use, that way the artists library would also be encoded in there so others can find the rest of his/her work too.  Also I'd be able to use my own Deviant account to host any animated .gifs I end up making...theoretically.

I'll read back through the thread and try out some of the other suggested sites.  Who knew basic image hosting was going to be such a problem, hrumph.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taffeta on August 01, 2017, 02:45:30 PM
I think I have had three separate emails from PB now. The same email. I barely use PB so it must be that people access a thread or something that has a photo on it somewhere on this forum or the MH one and that triggers it. I am not taking mine down because getting into it is way too difficult with all the popups, but there's nothing of value on it anyway.

@lostpony, I am trying to think what it was I used on the old Bleach forum for animated sig files, but I think it *might* have been the site itself :/ I have a bad feeling it had a capacity for uploading sig files and that was what I linked to. I just can't help thinking there was another site and it definitely wasn't PB because none of those images are in my PB account.

If I remember I'll come back and post.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Carrehz on August 01, 2017, 05:16:20 PM
I know dA definitely allows hotlinking to images posted normally, and I'm *pretty sure* it allows hotlinking to images posted in their Sta.sh thing (haven't used it myself so I can't be certain).
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on August 01, 2017, 05:31:40 PM
Thanks Taffeta and Carrehz!

I'll check out DA because I only need something more than flickr for animated gifs and so if I can just put those on da and use flickr for the rest, that'll work for me.  I'm already liking flickr and disappointed to run into a wall on something as basic and universal as animated gifs, just so ridiculous.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: LadyMoondancer on August 01, 2017, 08:39:03 PM
I don't think Flickr allows animated gifs.

DA does but I don't think it allows works that you yourself have not created.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on August 01, 2017, 09:01:04 PM
Yes the gif I want to use now is created by someone else and on DA (explicitly offered as free to use), and any gifs I'd upload there would be my own creations.

I'm going to do some simple animation tests like flapping ponies in probably 12 hand-drawn frames per second to practice drawing, get a feel for time-advancement between frames, and learn some kind of minimal paint software to put them together with before moving on to bigger projects.  I'll need somewhere to host them so I can post them around to brag and get some motivation to do better/bigger things which would hopefully end up on Youtube.

So if I can't get an embedding image link thing working from the other person's clapping pinky creation, then I'll have to find some other place to host stuff and i guess move everything there instead of splitting with flickr.  I'm getting way too many accounts around to deal with trying to get started, and it's getting to be a big distraction from actually doing any learning art.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Hannah66665 on August 01, 2017, 10:55:55 PM
Imgur works great for gifs if that's the issue... I haven't backread everything so I'm not positive what the convo is about.  :P
Title: Free to upgrade Photobucket account? Please delete
Post by: Littlesparklepony on August 02, 2017, 03:44:20 AM
Hello!

I wonder if there is anyone else who have problem with Photobucket?

Photobucket told me to upgrade my account otherwise I can´t upload Pictures here or on other sights.

I wrote to them and ask if it´s free but the didn´t respond.  :pout:

So my question right now; is it free to upgrade?
I will be very greatful if someone can help me out.

Thanks a lot!




Post Merge: August 02, 2017, 03:50:47 AM

I just found out that I´m not alone with this problem and it´s not Free.

So I guess you can delete this post.


[merging with existing post ~ Kiwi]
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: ashlyne on August 02, 2017, 06:01:17 AM
I haven't read all 15 pages of this thread yet, but wanted to pop in and drop off this info. I've used photobucket for years, and it's become increasingly crappy, from their mobile site to trying to download images and albums. So this is just the HUGE straw that broke the camel's back.   Because I've been a Plus Member, they'll keep my links active until I need to renew, so I have till next May thankfully. But I've got a TON of pictures and albums that I need to download and get off there.....hundreds upon hundreds!

Now the download album link has been very quirky for me. Half the time I get the "Hmmm...something went wrong" message and unless I close everything out and start over in a new window, I can't get it to work. The download itself, when it is working, is super slow.  Well, now I keep getting that message no matter what. I've used Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.  Nothing will work and I'm wondering if they just flat-out disabled it on purpose.

I managed to get maybe a third of what I need downloaded and have been looking for a work-around. I think I found one that is going to make my life MUCH easier:
https://sharecoding.wordpress.com/photobucket-downloader/

It adds a new button inside Photobucket, if you use the Chrome browser.  It's SUPER FAST... like a couple of seconds!  The free limited version is fine for me, because I don't think I have any folders with more than a hundred images.   But even at $2, if I need to upgrade, it's well worth the money.     The only unfortunate thing is that it won't download sub-albums -- you have to do that separately.

Still, I wanted to share with those that are in the same boat as me and are overwhelmed with how to get all my albums to somewhere safe before I have the "It's you, not me" breakup talk with Photobucket.   
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Wardah on August 03, 2017, 03:28:41 AM
Joyful discovery!  Don't delete your pb accounts...the original images can still be seen by third parties.

This morning it occurred to me that if the ugly gauge image hides a still-existing image in our own accounts, then maybe the same is true for other people's accounts....I tested it, and it's true!

This means you can view the image in anyone's posts here or anywhere else so long as they haven't closed their pb account or deleted their images.

What you do is click on the ugly gauge, taking you to the pb interface, then right-click on the gauge thumbnail, select save image and the downloaded image will be the original picture.


It's clumsy but it works.  Get the word out!


You don't even need to save the image to see it. If you right click you can copy the image url and paste it into a new tab. Very useful if you are someone like me who mostly uses their phone and would rather not clog it up with downloaded images.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on August 03, 2017, 08:19:46 AM
Ahhh so that's why I have not been able to get GIF's to work!  Good to know.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tulips on August 04, 2017, 02:38:40 AM
I haven't read all 15 pages of this thread yet, but wanted to pop in and drop off this info. I've used photobucket for years, and it's become increasingly crappy, from their mobile site to trying to download images and albums. So this is just the HUGE straw that broke the camel's back.   Because I've been a Plus Member, they'll keep my links active until I need to renew, so I have till next May thankfully. But I've got a TON of pictures and albums that I need to download and get off there.....hundreds upon hundreds!

Now the download album link has been very quirky for me. Half the time I get the "Hmmm...something went wrong" message and unless I close everything out and start over in a new window, I can't get it to work. The download itself, when it is working, is super slow.  Well, now I keep getting that message no matter what. I've used Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.  Nothing will work and I'm wondering if they just flat-out disabled it on purpose.

I managed to get maybe a third of what I need downloaded and have been looking for a work-around. I think I found one that is going to make my life MUCH easier:
https://sharecoding.wordpress.com/photobucket-downloader/

It adds a new button inside Photobucket, if you use the Chrome browser.  It's SUPER FAST... like a couple of seconds!  The free limited version is fine for me, because I don't think I have any folders with more than a hundred images.   But even at $2, if I need to upgrade, it's well worth the money.     The only unfortunate thing is that it won't download sub-albums -- you have to do that separately.

Still, I wanted to share with those that are in the same boat as me and are overwhelmed with how to get all my albums to somewhere safe before I have the "It's you, not me" breakup talk with Photobucket.   

I wish I'd seen your post sooner, I was having the same problem that Photobucket's album downloader wasn't working. I ended up going through my albums, picking out the photos I wanted to keep the most, and downloading them one by one, ugh. I am done with photobucket, for months it's been a pain to upload, and each time I try to access it the site tanks the internet and causes so much lag (probably all the stupid ads).

It'll be interesting to see whether this move actually ends up being a profitable one for the company. They'll lose a lot of free users, which will mean a lot of ad revenue, so I wonder if those who do become paying users will outweigh that?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on August 04, 2017, 02:43:41 AM
Unlikely.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ethereal Rhapsody on August 07, 2017, 04:49:28 PM
Can I ask you something Flickr users? I'm new to Flickr, just joined this afternoon after deleting my Photobucket account. I'm annoyed at Photobucket. I refuse to pay! So I've saved everything I wanted to keep and deleted my account. Just as well really, those pop-up ads were annoying too. Also in the recent years, everything on the website ran extremely slowly.

Back to Flickr: I've read the guidelines and stuff but I'm still confused. According to the guidelines I only upload pictures that belong to me. I understand that (they don't want to be treated like Pinterest) but it doesn't tell me what I want to know. Does that include adoptable art? What about personal avatars and signatures (again using my characters from or inspired by a specific fandom) made for me by other artists?

Can I or can I not upload adoptables or artwork that has been made for me, using my characters and personas?

I credit all of the artists and all of the pictures are set to private so that only I can share the links with Arena (pony adoptables in sigs).

Also I take it you can't upload dolls that you've made on doll makers? That would count as a screenshot, right?

If I can't do those things on Flickr. Can anyone recommend another free gallery website that allows me to do those things and isn't as complicated as Flickr?
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lostpony on August 07, 2017, 05:11:36 PM
I believe if you've been given art by its creator as an "adoptable", you have a full use license that makes the art yours so long as you don't violate the terms of its use established between you and the creator.  Generally that should mean you can do anything you want with it so long as you don't profit from it or take credit for it, or, (if such a restriction is implied by the artist) modify it.  If the artist wants you to give them credit for the adoptable, then you might be best to include that credit directly in the version of the image you upload to flickr so there can be no misunderstanding.

Unless the flickr policy states that you must be the art's creator, you do still own the art under your use license so you should be OK.

As to things where you've gotten something "for you" from some kind of website or software, I believe such things also have a full us license.

If you follow the clear terms established between yourself and the creator of the art, I do not believe flickr can say that you do not own the art.

Finally, rules are only as effective as their application:  I didn't read those terms and I don't personally care.  I plan to upload whatever I want to, and so long as I don't do anything that would infringe on the rights of anyone who might make a complaint.  Meaning, so long as I obey any terms established between myself and the artist, no one is going to have any grievance to complain to flickr about.  If no one complains, then flickr's policy shouldn't be enforced even if I do make a mistake and infringe on their policy, because no one's intellectual property rights are going to be violated.

If anyone thinks I'm wrong about any of this please speak up and I will correct this so no one gets led astray by my opinion as to what's safe.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Artemesia's Garden on October 03, 2017, 02:10:38 PM
Book marking as looking for an alternative to Photobucket and Facebook!

 :yikes:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: EnaRocketQueen on October 04, 2017, 02:54:01 AM
Book marking as looking for an alternative to Photobucket and Facebook!

 :yikes:
Same. I really can't get on with Flickr
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taxel on October 04, 2017, 10:01:41 AM
Have you tried Imgur? You can upload an unlimited number of pictures and have an unlimited number of albums. As long as you make sure everything is private and you don't "share to community" its a great image host.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Skylar on October 06, 2017, 10:51:55 PM
I don't have the brains or the patience to go thru all these image sites and figure this out. Can someone just tell me the easiest one to use for putting pics on this site so that I can sell the stuff I need to get rid of??
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taxel on October 08, 2017, 07:00:36 AM
I don't have the brains or the patience to go thru all these image sites and figure this out. Can someone just tell me the easiest one to use for putting pics on this site so that I can sell the stuff I need to get rid of??

Flickr is probably easiest overall. Just don't advertise anything for sale on that site.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Aadra310 on October 19, 2017, 06:56:51 AM
Is there a way to use Facebook to post images here?  I'm pretty sure I read that on this thread but I can't find it now and I've been through the whole 15 pages!  I really hate to signing up to new sites that I rarely use and I already have a FB account.  Yeah, you have to not use Internet Explorer as your browser because it won't give you an image link to copy.  Thanks, Skeen!

Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: silverdawn on October 25, 2017, 12:45:35 AM
Just a note on imgur, I tried to use it to host my auction images and after a few days, they all started coming up broken. :(
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Lady Frostbite on October 25, 2017, 02:08:42 AM
Anyone else getting daily emails from Photobucket trying to sell you account upgrades? The sheer NERVE  :enraged:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Loa on October 25, 2017, 02:01:32 PM
That was always going to be the intent.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Taxel on October 28, 2017, 09:47:25 AM
Just a note on imgur, I tried to use it to host my auction images and after a few days, they all started coming up broken. :(

Did they delete your images or did the site go down? I've never had them mess with my uploads but the site can get overloaded and go down from time to time.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: silverdawn on October 28, 2017, 03:45:08 PM
Just a note on imgur, I tried to use it to host my auction images and after a few days, they all started coming up broken. :(

Did they delete your images or did the site go down? I've never had them mess with my uploads but the site can get overloaded and go down from time to time.

The images are all still in my folder, but maybe I used too much bandwidth remote hosting? It kinds burns me a bit, because it happened on auctions I'm doing for a friend.  So now I have no way to fix them since they all have bids :(  A couple of examples

https://www.ebay.com/itm/142544572306?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

https://www.ebay.com/itm/142544570012?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Ringlets on November 06, 2017, 05:09:30 AM
Anyone else getting daily emails from Photobucket trying to sell you account upgrades? The sheer NERVE  :enraged:

yep I keep getting those   :rolleyes:  now they are trying it on another way- instead of asking me to pay "only $399" or something like that they've broken it down to "it only works out at $2 a day " (or words to that effect )., Yeah no  :throw:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tropical_Sunset on November 21, 2017, 07:14:25 AM
Okay I have a Flickr account now, set to public... How on earth do I get the images to show up?  What URL do I use?  I am still so lost...

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


They just don't work.
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: lovesbabysquirmy on November 21, 2017, 10:45:23 AM
Okay I have a Flickr account now, set to public... How on earth do I get the images to show up?  What URL do I use?  I am still so lost...

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


They just don't work.

Go to the photo, click on the arrow that looks like it's turning over.  COPY the code from the BB section into a Notepad - then take out all the tags that aren't  [ IMG ] tags.  Paste that into your Arena message.  :) 

It took me a couple of tries but I figured it out fast enough.  It just is annoying that one has to go through the extra step of removing the Advertisement for Flickr before you can paste the code. 
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Tropical_Sunset on December 01, 2017, 09:45:58 AM
You are my hero. Thank you so much! It seems to be working now!  :frolic:
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: StrawberryFair on January 22, 2018, 07:46:10 AM
imgur rocks! Free and super easy interface!
Title: Re: Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...
Post by: Starflashbaby on April 24, 2018, 08:50:33 PM
Is there a way to use Facebook to post images here?  I'm pretty sure I read that on this thread but I can't find it now and I've been through the whole 15 pages!  I really hate to signing up to new sites that I rarely use and I already have a FB account.  Yeah, you have to not use Internet Explorer as your browser because it won't give you an image link to copy.  Thanks, Skeen!



Hi can someone explain this in more detail to me please? I have a facebook account that I can use.
so
1. make a personal album
2. right click picture
3. open in google chrome window
and then what or am I confused? thanks I

Is this hotlinking from facebook ?
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