Photobucket ToS changes

Thank you so much for this announcement (and for featuring it at the top of the forums in very large print)! I have been frantically moving my images over to imgur for the past few days and updating my threads as I go, but I was a bit worried that some of my threads might get reported in the meantime!! I had considered posting in Ask the Mods, but now I don't need to.

I'm pretty livid with Photobucket for this and will be deleting my account as soon as all my images are moved and deleted. Even if they change their policy back, I don't plan to ever go back to them because of this underhanded policy change with zero notice. I think this move was a huge mistake on their part and it's very likely that this will severely negatively affect them (I foresee members leaving by the thousands and never returning to using Photobucket).

I wish everyone the best of luck in transferring their images! I chose imgur because I already have an account there, but there's also flickr and many other sites I'm sure (even deviantArt could be used as a "photo hosting" site if you want).

Thanks again to the mods for this very informative and helpful announcement!


ETA: Turns out Imgur doesn't really like third party hosting, so I've changed over to Flickr (turns out I had an account there too that I've never used). It actually seems to be much more intuitive than Imgur and I'm liking it a lot so far! Starting over sucked though...

 

Forgive me for seeming dense, as I know very little about the technical aspects of posting, but will this affect ALL images shared with Photobucket? I have hobby photos on my Bucket going back almost 10 years.

 

I agree with the above. Its just unfortunate that all my stories/etc will now have all broken links. Photobucket has been going down the drain and I'm sure they just made themselves invalid in the long run. (Plus my posts on other sites...)
Can anyone post other image sharing sites we can use and what the best options would be in the long run, then?

 

Yes. Sadly it will affect ALL images shared using Photobucket. I have the same problem as you. I've been using Photobucket for about a decade too. Luckily I've also uploaded a lot to deviantArt as well, so many of my threads still have some photos. I just think about all the broken images in older discussion threads, and it makes me sad. Photobucket really screwed thousands (hundreds of thousands? more?) of people over with this move. And to do it with zero notice is pretty despicable... I've heard about people on ebay whose sale threads have broken image links and because they have bids, they can't edit them. It could affect the sale! It's pretty bad... They really didn't think this through.


Also, $400 a year? What's up with that?? That's just insane.

 

DeviantArt Stash, Tumblr (make a private blog or upload photos in drafts and then link the photos directly from there), and Imgur I think are the top methods people are switching over to. That, and making a Wordpress blog and just uploading your photos to it and linking from there, just like the Tumblr method.

ETA: There's also Flickr, of course! Which many in the doll community have already used for years.

Photobucket really put the last nail in the coffin for themselves with this.

 

My images are still showing up. I just went to my Bucket, and it's annoyingly riddled with ads. IDK how much of a damn chore it's going to be to get everything moved....

 

Thank you for posting this.
I was hoping sooner or later someone would as this has created alot of headaches for many.
Not only doll groups, forums etc but also many use photobucket to host photos on their website.
I hope others post places that will host 3rd party images.
I know the doll page does but they only keep them up to 90 days.
I would hate to see places like this become non existent because of no one being able to share photos anymore.
Best of luck to all.

 

Also just posting this for anyone wanting to remove all their photos from Photobucket:

You can read how to download full albums off your account here!

This will save you from having to save/download individual files one at time!

 

you're alife saver

 

Thanks so much for this. I've been using Photobucket since the beginning. Well, guess it's time to go somewhere else now.

Thanks again.

 

I just tried opening an Imgur account. Literally withing 5 minutes of uploading my first set of doll photos, I was getting filthy, judgmental fetish/kink comments on them. I removed the images and deleted the account immediately. I don't need that kind of negativity and anxiety attached to something that's supposed to make me happy.

I guess I'll start moving stuff over to my Flickr.

 

I've had my Imgur for as long as I can remember (2011 apparently), but you'll likely need to go into your Settings and make sure that the Default Album Privacy is set to Hidden ("Albums will be hidden by default. They will not appear in your album list, but each one will still be accessible by going to the album's URL."). Otherwise photos are publicly visible on the Imgur site, unfortunately.

It may also be worth noting that I never "verified" my email account with them, which shows the message: "This means you will not be able to share your posts to the gallery." I'm not 100% on if that has anything to do with no one being able to see my images unless I link them directly or not, but still worth mentioning.

 

If I'm remembering correctly, Imgur does technically have a disclaimer somewhere that you cannot use their services for 3rd party hosting. I myself only have a Flickr account, so I'm not sure what it fully entails, but that was brought to my attention recently.

 

Well this is frustrating... you'd think if they prohibit it, they'd find a way to prevent it (Photobucket clearly has no problem doing this). So all my work for the past few days has been wasted... >.<

 

Oh nooo that's awful! I do know that people have used Imgur to do all the 3rd party hosting stuff, so I'm not sure about any of it though... I'll have a look around and see what I find.

Edit:
Aww they do say this in their ToS:
"Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network."

So maybe they would not like something like using an IMG tag here on DoA, but just using a link here that goes to Imgur would be OK?

 

I'd really recommend Flickr to anyone searching for a new photo hosting service. It's very easy to use in my experience, and it offers BBCode links for offsite posting. Plus it's been the only photo sharing site that hasn't screwed up my image quality after uploading, and there are few to no ads, and nothing annoying or obtrusive.

 

I use Google+. I am a Google fangirl.

 

I am still a little confused about this move. Wasn't the whole point of Photobucket to be exactly that? A place to store photos so you can show them elsewhere?
And now they want you to pay 400$ a year for that? At that point it might be smarter to find a small, own server and just pay for that

Anyway, I personally have used Imgur myself for years now.
It does say that you shouldn't use it as a "content delivery network", but they probably mean that in a way that if you have your own website you shouldn't exlusively use Imgur to host all your content there. After all Imgur was created as a way for Reddit users to have a reliable hoster to link to
Imgur does have an active community though, and it's important to make sure not to share photos openly. I personally don't even have an account there and just upload anonymously/not into the gallery since I only use it for sharing stuff online and not as a reliable place to store my photos. For that I still have a an external hard drive.

I think the best place to switch to is probably Flickr though, especially when you have lots of pictures.
Tumblr isn't a good idea because they tend to change their links once in a while, killing the direct linking.

 

Flickr does seem to be the best option for me... and I just tried to create an account and it turns out I already have one. lol! Should have gone with that all along.

Guess I'll start all over now...

 

Popping in here to say that Flickr is probably one of the better options since it does have a pretty solid community built into it already. Additionally, it generates automatic code for posting here (no need to click the tag, just copy and paste, AND it lets your choose your size, which is something I appreciate so images aren't MASSIVE when you load the page.

If using imgur, do make sure that your albums are set to private. Also be aware of their TOS that does seem to prohibit 3rd party linking.

Tumblr is fine but with the current way tumblr has been handling things (including lgbt users), it's kinda of....... sketchy right now? And I haven't used DeviantArt Stash but I've heard it's pretty decent for that kind of stuff.

 

Someone on Zone of Zen mentioned Post Image as a place to go to. It is specifically for bulletin boards and forums.

Postimage.org — free image hosting / image upload

 

Thank you SO much for the information about how to download whole albums! That has saved me so much time........thank you, thank you, thank you!

It will take me a long time to repair image links though as I have used PB for over 10 years.

 

Ahhh! I am not computer savy and I dont do social media. It took me fotever and lafew of doa members help to get me to understand how to post pictures here on doa from photobucket.
Uhhh were do I go now, I am never going to do the social media thing.
Photobucket has always been a pain though

 

I've used PB since the beginning. Back then I had a lot of pictures from my Sims game. For at least 10 years I have paied 25$ a year, but I'm not paying 399.99 per year.

I wonder if I can get my 25$ back. I just paied 22nd of June for a year.

This really sucks!

Dustbunnie

 

This just makes me glad I went with flickr. Photobucket really shot themselves in the foot on this one.

 

I am trying Postimage.org — free image hosting / image upload

I am a little afraid of flickr as they have always wanted to be a destination site, not a hosting site. They have changed hands, so maybe that has changed.

 

I am just so glad that I made the move to Flickr years ago!

I also recommend Flickr for anyone that needs a new place for your photos, it's definitely a nice site and there's a ton of doll people on there too! ~

I do feel for all of your that have many year's worth of images on Photobucket. I do...well...did use photobucket for another thing(adoptable run on another site) and I'm having to upload everything to another place now. My images haven't been replaced with the "3rd party hosting" image yet and I'm hoping to have everything moved before that happens to easier be able to replace everything but it certainly takes quite some time to upload everything elsewhere!

 

I have been using postimg as well. They had a bit of funding trouble and only allow "family friendly" images (so I'd watch the naked dolls), but other than that it works out fine. Though if you don't make an account, I think the amount of time your images stay up will be limited.

 

Feel free to message me anytime. I would be happy to help you out if you want it!

 

Welp, guess it's time to make a Flickr or use Google+. Ugh my Photobuckets (3 of them) have stuff from 2004 and onward...

Sooooo yah all my links will be dead so my threads can be deleted or whatever the mods wanna do with my old threads.

I'll just work on moving my project journal photos for now. Ugh what a pain.

EDIT- So I just took a look at my recent WTB threads with images and an old thread from 2007, and all my images are still there. So that's good I guess? But I'll still make the switch for future stuff anyways.

 

Thanks for informing us. I had no idea about this. I guess it's time to kill my super ancient Photobucket account and move on to other places.

 

I think I'd prefer to use Flickr, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to upload the URL to DoA. They say use a BB code but I don't see that anywhere on the ap for Ipad. Can anyone help me please?

 

There's a "share" button in the bottom right hand corner of of the image after you upload it (it looks like a little arrow). On the pop-up that comes up when you click it, there's an option for BBCode; you can then choose the size you want and copy and paste the offered code. I can probably find a tutorial of this doesn't make sense... Let me go look!

 

I have not found a way to post a flickr photo from my phone.

 

Flickr doesn't yet have a way to post BBCode images from your phone; at least, not that I've found. (I looked a lot when I first started using Flickr.) It's a bit annoying, but I've never really found it too disrupting, considering I edit photos on the computer first anyway. I also go back to posts on DoA I've already made and copy the BBCode there if I'm on my phone and want to put the picture somewhere else.

(Also, here's a brief but correct photo tutorial on how to find and use the BBCode option on Flickr for anyone who needs it! It's actually super easy once you know where everything is!)

 

@KiyoshiSenshi Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but my Flickr 'share' option doesn't look anything like the tutorial. My options are 'Share' and 'Email', and the address in the 'Share' option just turns into a blue question mark box once I bring it over here. Any ideas?

EDIT: Turns out I have to add the photos to an album before I get all the fancy options! Problem solved
EDIT #2: So, the BB Code offered just comes up with a little box that says "I M G" (without the spaces) when I bring it over here. I'm so confused.

 

Yeah, you have to make sure the photos are set to public before you get the "share" option. Adding to albums might do it too!

If you're getting an error, it could be that the pictures are too big. I keep mine at 2000px on the longest side and that seems to work okay, but any larger sometimes gives me an error instead of showing the picture. If you keep getting the error anyway, maybe post a picture here so I (or someone else) could look at the code?

 

Perhaps the DoA administrators could write up a report linked from the user control panel that is like the current list of posts, except is a list of your posts with an IMG tag in it?

Bonus points for displaying some post context and having an easy method of updating the links.

Otherwise it will be difficult for users to even identify which posts of theirs has images in it.

 

So... I got an email from PB today and it was advertising a weird assortment of products (all non photo related). I guess this is just a wake-up call to transfer my photos and close my account at PB, as they are turning into something super-sketchy (and their website is practically unusable now--full of pop-up ads covering the entire page).

I've got a paid account (and old Plus/Pro account that is not the $400 one--so 3rd Party views can be yanked at any time), so far my photos are still showing up, but I just don't trust them at all now.

I've been using imgur for the past 3 years... but the wording of their TOS makes me nervous. I think they are still trying to grow their numbers, so won't tick off people yet... but it's annoying.

I've been moving some old PB photos to Flickr, but I'm worried that they might get overwhelmed by all the people fleeing PB and change their services. Oh, well. What can you do?

 

@Leiothrix I think Posted by Member combined with [ IMG ] (without the spaces) should work. I've used it to find doll pictures in threads.

 

Flickr is great. It takes a little time to get used to how things work there, but it's great. I've been using it for a while now, because of photobucket.

 

You can search for your posts with photobucket images. Go to photobucket and check the link for one of your photos. Look for:
/img.photobucket.com/albums/v366/nancy_schroeder_ca/<foldername, etc ....>

I just used v366/nancy_schroeder_ca and search photo stories for "v366/nancy_schroeder_ca" in this forum only.

That gives me a the posts in photo stories that have links to my photobucket account. Searching by forum reduces the number of results you get at once.

Note! You do need the quotes around the search term.

 

Okay, turns out I just need to copy/paste it in and not use the little image insert button. Sheesh! Thanks for your help!

 

No problem! I did the same thing when I first started using Flickr. I'm glad you could get it working!

 

For the ones who have trouble with the whole BB code thing: it's not needed.
All you pretty much need is the direct link, which can be easily recognized as one because it ends in the file format of your picture (and not ending with something like .html or .com or whatever)
That means, the link looks something like blabla.com/stuff/xy.jpg

After you managed to get that link you just need to click here on that little icon with the mountain/sun, paste in that link and boom.
If you check the BB code editor (the little wrench icon on the top right of the post box) you will see then that this button pretty much just wraps your link with BB tags.

You usually get that link by right clicking on the picture, then "View Image". You will see then the picture all on its own, without a website layout around it, and the .imageformat ending.
On mobile this usually works by pressing long on the picture and then following some prompt like "open picture in new tab".
In case of Web Flickr, first click on the downwards arrow with the horizontal line underneath, which opens a menu with the available sizes.
Pick the one at the bottom, which then leads to a new page where you can pick a size at the top, with the picture underneath. Pick the desired size, then right click on the picture and either do "View Image" or straight go for "Copy image link" (or similar, my browser is in German).
Grab the link and do what I described before.

 

Mods, thank you for sharing this info and making it so easily visible!

I too had a Photobucket account and used it since about ten years ago until last year for all of my doll photos. Only then did I stop because it became so overrun with ads that I couldn't even use it at all, and not even my ad blocker would work with that site. It was just such a pain that I gave up and switched to Flickr. My only complaint on Flicker is that I have to delete out a bunch of stuff in the link to remove my name and such showing up, but it's been very easy to use and edit and organize. If anyone is unsure of where to go from here, I'd strongly recommend Flickr. It's a little different from Photobucket but once you learn, I think it's actually easier and loads much faster.

Sadly, considering I have over a thousand posts on this forum, I don't have to time to go find every single photo I've posted using Photobucket and redo them all, so if anyone sees my broken links, especially if they were from years ago, feel free to delete them. Not only is time an issue, but due to all the ads, I can't even access all of my old photos on there and I've since switched computers and don't even have backup copies of many of those photos anymore at all. :/ I'll make sure all sales threads and doll profiles are updated, but that's about all I can really do.

 

It feels like all photos from photobucket should be blocked. They are, in essence, illegally advertising their own site. Or, maybe they should receive a bill for advertising from every forum they have screwed over.

 

Ugh. I have been on Photobucket ever since starting this hobby, eleven years and counting. I'm inclined to just say screw it. If the threads I started end up with broken images, delete them, I don't care. That is WAY too much work to redo them all.

I've got a Flikr account but frankly that site confuses the hell out of me. Figuring out how to actually post images is a pain. There's another site called Postimage.org that I've been using, which is a lot easier in regards to sharing pics to forums and such. So there're two other options, at least.

If Photobucket doesn't completely sink itself with this ridiculous change, I'll be really, really surprised.

 

Wow. And here I was considering switching over to PB not too long ago when I was concerned about running out of space on LJ. Thankfully, the latter decided to raise our allotted space before I did. But their Scrapbook still has some annoying quirks/limitations, so I'm not sure if I should recommend them as an option.
Good luck to everyone dealing with this mess!

 

Ironically, I'd pretty much abandoned the original PB account I set some odd years back, and only set up another within the past couple weeks and started using it. It really is ridiculous that they just decided to make these ludicrous changes to their services. Ugh . Ah, well--I'll just keep mostly to my Flickr.

I did check out that postimage site that a few people suggested, and it looks like a decent backup for quick stuff. I must thank those that posted it

 

Popping in to echo the Flickr love, at least for the purposes of offsite linking. Flickr did revamp their website four or five years ago for the worse, but it didn't affect the ease of offsite linking. (It may have even been the one thing that the redesign made better...)

Some more info about why Flickr's a good option that I haven't seen touched upon here in the topic yet. They're rather welcoming of just about all kinds of photos, so nude doll photos, even racier things than that, are welcome. Just make sure you have the content setting set appropriately for each photo. They have safe, moderate, and restricted. Read up on the specifics. "Easy" sharing is disabled on restricted photos, but on the rare chance you post restricted-level photos here that would still be appropriate for here (For example, some non-sexually explicit BDSM photos I've done fall into Flickr's restricted category. Though fully explicit stuff is allowed on Flickr, I haven't posted any of that here.), there is a workaround, though it is more time consuming. Nesting an IMG tag inside a complex URL tag can give you a displayed lower resolution image plus a full resolution image that you get when you click on it.

As an alternative, perhaps have a look at Ipernity, though at first glace right now it seems like free accounts do have limits. I remember lots of people jumping ship to Ipernity after the massive displeasure from the Flickr redesign years ago. I haven't kept up with it, though, so I don't know how good of an option it is.

I kind of remember something else, 100px, from years ago, but I think they're gone.

 

Photobucket seemed to have turned itself into some kind of ransomware with this move, and it's disappointing. I've decided to abandon it last year when there was a minor (but temporary) debacle of images not showing up when being linked to other websites. In hindsight, it sounds like a trial run of the current situation, heh.

Although I've just recently made a Flickr account and transferred the most critical of my dolls' photos there, I still have plenty "random shots" littering my Imgur as it's quite a hassle to move them. PB's recent move has likewise made me wary of Imgur, but for now I'm not totally ditching it.

 

Well this makes the platform totally useless to me as well XD I guess I better move my images off and delete my accounts then as well...

 

Since everything is becoming monetized these days and I'm tired of corporations holding my content for ransom I'm going the route of using my own domain. I'm already paying for a hosting plan that allows up to ten domains, so I might as well.

For those who'd like more control over their own content, I highly recommend tigertech.net for hosting. I've been using them for years and they are carbon neutral, incredibly helpful, and very reasonably priced. You can publish a wordpress site with one click, customize it as much or as little as you want, and then just use it as media storage. I have a Flickr but I don't like posting boring stuff like sales photos and I'd be embarrassed to drag newbie face-up pictures from ten years ago over there. Hosting your own site means you can keep all that private and just use it as a stable platform for your images.

 

I have also read reviews of Smugmug.com that look good for a reasonable price.

 

I wouldn't recommend tumblr for this, unfortunately. While images on your tumblr will always be fine on tumblr, they silently change the actual URL of their hosted images every six months or so - adjusting one of the many numbers - so that hotlinked images all break. It's fine to use tumblr if you need something super short-term, like using it for sales images, but it's not a long-term solution by any means.

 

$400 just to allow third party sharing? Wow, that's ridiculous.

 

Great thing about Flickr is there's a whole community there too. I should use mine more!

Time to get my old stuff off my abandoned PB and upload them somewhere else.

 

$400? Holy hell. $33/mo sounds a little friendlier, but $400/yr? I've had my account for 10+ years but slowly stopped using it just because all the ads made it an eyesore, even with an adblocker; furthermore, you couldn't view just an image if you clicked on a direct link -- you had to load an entire page, and that was stuffed full of ads too! Ugh

Oh well; at least with my declined use and helpful post from earlier, I can download everything in one shot and be done with them. My usage is low and I'm comfortable enough with Imgur and Flickr to use them instead.

Hope Photobucket has good luck on their new business ventures!