Photobucket ToS changes

PB says they will allow those of us with paid accounts to continue 3rd party hosting until Dec. 2018. I'll stop my payment after I'm done replacing photos (which might go up to the deadline). But will definitely stop my recurring payment the moment they stop my 3rd party hosting ability! I hate even paying them now, but I'm not ready to lose my photo links...

 

What were you paying? The cost has gone up.

 

@nancy_schroeder_ca --- Oh, good question! I'm terrible at checking these things, and I really should, because I don't trust photobucket AT ALL... Thanks for the reminder... I was on an old plan that they no longer offer... it shouldn't have gone up, but I haven't checked!

 

I was on the $10 a year ad-free plan and I remember I would have had to go up to the current lowest cost plan which was about $25 a year if I remember correctly. Sorry, but I don't even want to visit the site again!

I deleted all my photos and sent the email requesting to close the account.

 

I don't blame you for wanting to never visit PB again. I try not to go there at all, myself. I have just been downloading photos that are here and on some other forums/blogs, and then uploading to Flickr and replacing on the various sites. Going to PB is just an exercise in frustration.

 

Thank god you made the new rule. The Photobucket broken images were getting me annoyed lol.

Maintenance - Photobucket Cleanup

 

I'm gonna slowly be replacing all my pics onto imgur and going through my threads.

 

I posted a tip for searching for your Photobucket posts earlier here: Photobucket ToS changes

It's good to also only look for posts by your member name.

You can't change the ones in replies. I went through and changed all I could and asked the moderators to fix a few in closed threads that I thought were worth keeping.

I hope the moderators will consider deleting the quote from a reply rather than deleting the whole reply, but I realize that may be difficult for them.

Photobucket really made a mess for everyone!.

 

Here we are in October and I STILL cannot download any of my albums. I've tried Chrome, I've tried Firefox, I've tried Internet Explorer. I just keep getting that "hmmm something didn't click. you can try again now." error message. I really don't want to have to manually download every darn picture.

 

There's a tutorial with broken pics that I wish I'd copied. I sent the author a PM but they haven't been active here in a while. Is there any other way to get in touch with the person or figure out where those pics might be? Even if it's a mod thing?

 

I'm having the same issue as jessholy... i can't get mine to download. This is such a pain!

 

I know that feeling! I actually downloaded an image scraper to batch-grab my pictures and it worked much better than photobucket's regular "options." (I emailed tech support about that broken album download option. They told me "yeah we know it's busted. get your pics manually." Argh!) The one I got was Bulk Image Downloader. I had best luck being logged into my Photobucket account, then opening the downloader. The free version can only grab 100 images at a time, but once you get the hang of it, it's not too difficult to work around.

Also, can I just marvel at the fact that I had to get a third-party downloader to retrieve MY OWN IMAGES off the hot mess of a website photobucket has become? Geez Louise!

 

Oh, so they actually admit their download option is broken? And they still have it up there? --Sadly not surprised at needing the third-party downloader. I really think they want to get out of the hosting business, but can't do it because people still have paid accounts, so they are doing their best to drive everyone away...

Thanks for the downloading info @Tokoz.

 

@Tokoz you are a life saver! Is it only 100 images a day or in an hour? This is going to save me a bunch of time! Was this the best one you found? I didn't even think to look for a third party program!

 

It's 100 images per click of the "start download" button, lol! So, if you had a gallery that contained 60 pictures, you could grab it all in one go, but a gallery that had 120 images would have to be downloaded in two separate batches. And that was just the first program I downloaded. I didn't comparison shop; I was too angry at PB. "Your bulk downloader won't work, PB? Well! I'll just go get my own! hmph!" was basically all I was thinking at the time. There are a bunch of bulk downloaders out there.

 

Do you have to view all 100 images at once to download them?

 

I... don't think so? I'm not sure what you mean. What a program like this does is look through a folder or gallery and identify all the images. Then it lets you pick which ones you want to download. The program I got was a stand-alone program so it didn't really matter what I had open in a web browser. I made sure I was logged in to get my private galleries, but for public ones, I don't know that you'd even need that much.

 

Aaaaah ok! Well you explained how it worked perfectly! Thank you!

 

Is there a way to make sure our edits worked? I can still see my photobucket images when I look at threads I created so I chose to edit a thread with a smaller number of images. I hosted my photos on Flickr and used the tutorial in this thread to replace them. Now I just want to know if it worked or not...

 

It took me 7hrs just to upload all my photos from my computer to my Flickr account, some maybe double, but gee wiz that was a pain to do. At least I can upload from there to here, but there is no way on this planet I am going thru every single thread of my picture posts just to re-load them. I am too old and too crossed eyed right now, my pics on Flickr are made public so have at it looking at all my dolls past and present in my collection.

 

You may need to hard-refresh your browser. In most browsers you can do this by holding down "Shift" while you hit the refresh button. See if that makes your new images show up!

 

Check tomorrow. I think there may be a delay before the updated pages are used.

 

It's because you have to set the album to private. I have hosted images on there for awhile now but I have my albums all set to private so no one can see them unless I give them the links.

 

I need some help. It looks like photobucket will no longer allow me to download full albums per:
You can read how to download full albums off your account here!

Is there any tutorials on how to do this including whether or not I should pay for the ad free version?

 

Go page to page 13. Starting at message 252 there is discussion about image down loaders. I don't think a paid account will help the down load but it would give relief from the relentless adds.

 

Thanks Nancy! That helps a lot!

 

Nancy already told you about the conversation but if you use Google Chrome and have an ad blocker, you can at least stop the ads from popping up.

 

Oh, that would be nice! Thanks again for your help!

 

I wish there had been an email to all Den of Angels members regarding the deletion of posts. I was visiting the forum after a break today, read the announcement and started replacing broken images, thinking I have enough time because the cleaning doesn't start until the end of the year (three months time?), just to find some of my old posts deleted already because they had broken images.
If it's something such as posts/threads being deleted, it would be better to give inactive members a chance to update everything in time.

I always used Imgur as well, but I guess I need to fix my galleries AGAIN, because Imgur doesn't want you using their links. I wonder why such hosting services even exist if you aren't allowed to use them...

 

The announcement has been up for four months. For the mods to personally email thousands of members would be very very time-consuming.

 

Just a reminder that the end-of-year cleanup is specifically for the Photobucket "hostage graphic". Posts and threads with broken photo links or "this photo no longer exists/is unavailable" type notices from other photo hosts have always been removed when encountered, especially from older threads/posts. (MP threads, being recent posts, are usually given a heads-up and time-frame in which to replace them.)

 

oh boy, just found out about this, this is definitely going to be a task! I better get started

 

There are mass emails to all accounts registered.

 

The giant RED message at the top of a page when you log in should be effective.. also if they mass mail out... they get mass mail 'back' which is not really acceptable... Notices are put at the top of main screans. Ppl ignore it they can ignore emails... Also i have seen too many ppl saying that they do not get email notifications for things they follow... The PSA at the header is the better option as it's there when you log in. And not all moderators have the ability to even send mass mailings.

 

I just want to thank you for such advance notice. Granted, I neglected to log in for a month, but I'm still appreciative of the bulletin. While I've not had time to reload images elsewhere, I AM copying all the photo information and stories onto my laptop to rework later. I didn't realize how prolific I was!!! Nor how I've neglected my hobby in recent years.

I do have my serial database well-copied over, the Alex and Lexi Saga, but certainly not all of my other threads. It's a work in progress and I should be finished before the New Year.

Again, I truly appreciate the notice. It would be heartbreaking to lose all that hard work. Even though I have all the originals, they're not in story-order.

 

I wish there was an unique safe place where to upload pics. What if this will happen again with other host pics free services on line? What we can do? Some forums have incorporated the possibility to host images directly in the forum itself. Do you think is it possible one day this? What other place we can use to upload pics if we dont want use or we don t have any account in other places?

 

@dollypeach

We have looked into the costs of hosting images on DoA directly in the past, and unfortunately we can't afford it due to bandwidth costs.

If you aren't interested in utilizing Flickr or Imgur, or any of the other alternatives that people have mentioned, there may not be many other options left, sadly.

 

Thanks. Yes I'm interested to use Flickr or Imgur or similar but I wonder which one is the best in terms of durability. I think Flickr is ok. I will try to open an account . Or maybe Google images.

 

You may want to consider hosting them yourself. While it will cost a little, it's not necessarily as expensive as one might think and then you are completely safe. Not only that, but most web hotels offer additional services such as cloud storage and webmail and so on. You will also retain full rights to your images.

For example, I use a web hotel that costs 12skr a month (that is roughly 1,2 euro) and the domain name costs about 100skr a year (about 10 euro). I host my blog there as well as use it as back up storage and image host.

I’m sure there are plenty of similar services out there.

 

Ditto. I've been hosting my own images since...well, for as long as I've been putting images on the internet, basically. It's why I almost never have to deal with issues with my photos going down, and when I do, it's usually very brief (a few hours at most), and related to server maintenance.

 

There are sites like Smugmug that are easy to use at a low annual cost. Then you don't have to deal with hosting images yourself.

Postimage is a nice free site.

 

This. While I did not host with Photobucket, and I’m pro account on Flickr it’s enough of a warning that I’m not entrusting my content to any social media or free/3rd party hosting site again. We do have storage built into our website package so in 2018, I’m going to start using it. Social media sites have been a large and long trend starting back in the MySpace days and free Wordpress and Blogger accounts are also still very popular, especially if you are just starting a website BUT...freebie sites have quite a few drawbacks as well, advertisements you don’t choose, they lack the guaranteed backups, control and even cloud storage for your content and having your own actual website gives way more security and control over your own content.

I hate it that Photobucket changed the service it provided and just left so many people flailing with very little notice and few options and I’m really grateful to everyone who takes the time to re-host their DoA images, even if you only replace the database ones...a very important resource for everyone in the hobby! I fear we will lose quite a few older ones and of course all the ones from members no longer active.

 

I am using a combination of Postimage and my paid LiveJournal account for hosting. I am working most recent backward. I know I have a lot more pics in the earlier days and I am going as fast as I can. I took off today to work on this.

 

For those of you with a Photobucket image in your signature, it may look fine to you but the rest of us get the nasty little Photobucket grey update notice.

 

Photobucket seems to be down so we cannot get our photos moved over.

 

Now after moving and reposting a bunch of photos using postimage, I see broken images. When I go edit, it says:

503
Service Unavailable
the service is temporarily busy
please try again later

 

I took a break in 2017 so I'm just finding out about this big change but I can see my pictures, can you guys see them? /threads/happy-10th-birthday-doc-zen.673493/ or do you see the photobucket notice?

I have photobucket since 2005 I think and I have over 18,000 pictures. I used to pay premium in the beginning when the price was only like $20+ a year but then I changed to AdFree and that's what I currently have. $400 a year is outrageous!!

I should be careful too because I use photobucket to store all my pictures, I think I will have to buy an external hard drive to backup all my stuff and as for sharing I'll probably start using flickr once I get back into the hobby again or just stay in instagram.

How things get harder with time instead of easier...

 

I can see them as of today but as others have said, check your membership and the expiration deadlines. Photobucket is a mess and they did not reconsider their new policy as far as I know!

 

Thank you for letting me know!! I payed for the Adfree account on November 4th 2017 (it was automatic payment) but I will call them to make sure. The last time I spoke with them they were very helpful.

 

Oh many I went through my posts and updated a bunch of my pictures using a new site and now the site I changed to is broken or something and so I have to do it all over again and I'm already past the 2017 deadline.

Guess I have my work cut out for me tomorrow and I'll have to work fast.

 

Interesting article here about the rights you give over to the hosting services:
How Photobucket Broke The Internet (And Why You Should Care)

 

It's not any guarantee... but if you intend to try and fix your links, try putting an obvious note at the top of your post saying that (it's a bit of a pain, since you still have to hunt down and edit all your threads). It may save your thread for a while.

---------------

I've been sort of lucky-- I have 10 years of doll photos on Photobucket, but I had a paid account so I won't get the Coercion Icon until my account is due for payment sometime in the Spring... I've been slowly transferring the forum-sized photos on Photobucket that I've posted here over to Flickr.

I've got larger photo files in duplicates, somewhere on my gazillion external HDs, so that's not a worry... but in order to fix images, I just want to find all the posted, re-sized photos. I've been hunting my threads down here on DoA (I will still need to do this elsewhere before my photos stop showing, but most of them are here).

I've been Searching with the first part of the Photobucket URL and my account name--that seems to have brought up most--but needed to re-try with a more abbreviated form to get more.

I've been fixing photos thread- and post-by-post because I don't want to save my entire Photobucket (as I already have all my images saved), but just those that are being used, and just those I need at the smaller size. The smaller size is just easier to upload quickly and it's all I need for posting.

I've been saving the photos into a big messy folder of images--renaming them so I can group them and make sure I'm not bothering with doubles, uploading them to Flickr because it's free (so far) and seems to allow a large number of files. It might also die, but that seems to be how life goes--believe me, Photobucket isn't the first major host to have messed people up here... but it seems like there isn't a lot of really good options out there. I also use Imgur for my new photos--they can convert my files to forum-size and are free so far.

Then I get the new BBC links from Flickr (make sure you just paste those in directly, without using the image icon, since they already have the coding) and paste them into the threads and posts, so I can just visit the posts one time to fix them. It's been working for me so far, but I have... oh, maybe ten or more pages of threads and posts to fix! I've already been through maybe twice as many as that. (I've been a busy, chatty, photo-sharing person here!)

--
I like seeing the old threads get fixed...
I know most people won't be interested, but it's sad when I see all those great old photos and threads go away...

 

Do the Mods want us to start "Report"ing any highly used/useful threads with Photobucket-Dead image boxes? I guess what I mean is, How can we help you out, Mods?
This is a huge issue on a site wide scale, I know, but as an ImageShack user I haven't got many images that need fixing often, so what can I do to help?

 

I have let several users know that images in their signatures are broken. They see them because they are signed on but the rest of us don't see them.

 

Reporting threads with broken images is always welcome. It's not imperative to go out and hunt them all down right now, since we're getting a fair amount of Reports just because it's an issue right now. There are a few people who haven't noticed their images are broken and are only now worried about fixing them (it happens!)... so being super good at Reporting broken images might catch some of those people's threads up. Unfortunately, we already gave an extended time to the Photobucket Coercion Icon folks to try and fix, so all of those are now liable to be deleted if Reported.

Down the road when people aren't thinking about it, it would be great if people checked now and then, and Reported. It's especially nice if you report your own threads, if you know you aren't going to fix them. But we do appreciate Reporting broken images at any time.

Remember that threads with working photos in other posts, or with working links to photos are still OK, even if they have broken links.

=====

It's nice that you are letting others know about broken links, so they can fix them, @nancy_schroeder_ca .

 

Amazon Prime members: Amazon lists unlimited cloud storage for photos as a Prime Member Benefit, but I have not read the rules on hotlinking or 3rd party sharing for images, to be able to use the image links on forums etc. Is anyone familiar with this feature? Could it be another option? (Assuming one plans to remain a Prime member...)

Also for those still having trouble retrieving their images from Photobucket, (and yes, this seems rather obvious so forgive me if it's been mentioned) but you can click your image here in DoA to display the full-size image and then right click and save the image to your computer drive and then re-upload to the image service of choice, replace the link in your post here.
MAD LOVE to everyone replacing their images, especially in database and comparison threads, your photos are so appreciated and valuable!

As I come across them, I'll start reporting database and reference photos with broken photobucket links to the image owners if they have logged on within the past, hm year, I guess? Hoping I won't get a grumpy reply for nagging them though...

 

Most people should know by know if their photo host has broken their 3rd Party hosting links... A few members who haven't been on for a long time have only just realized what's going on, but most people know. We've also given the Photobucket folks quite a few months to try and fix things...

On the other hand, there are some other problems with photos not showing that aren't due to Photobucket or for services ending... But it's really up to the members themselves to check if their photos are working or not.

 

Is anyone using Smugmug? If so are you able to get the BBC code using an android phone to post pictures here?
I've just a few days left on my free trial and can't figure out how to do it.

 

If you use the internet browser instead of the app you can get the Before. Here's a sample

 

Is there a way to get Google Photo to show as an image and not just a link? I've played around and I have not figured it out.