Photobucket no longer allows hotlinking from free accounts...

[sailorstitch]

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

[tootie_tails]

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

[banditpony]

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

I see the picture.

[tulagirl]

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.

[NightGliderSA]

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?! 

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?

[Kiwi]

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.

[NightGliderSA]

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... 

[Carrehz]

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).

[lostpony]

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.

[NoDivision]

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.

[Baby Sugarberry]

Best guess is it's probably a bandwidth/usage thing.

[lostpony]

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.

[banditpony]

Has anyone been unable to access their images?

[lostpony]

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.

[banditpony]

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.