photobucket - 3rd party linking $399 per year

photobucket - I hope they go belly up in 6 months or less.

What a way to shaft millions of people because of greed.

I had been with them for about 6 years total, last 3 of which was on the 50+2 plan...heard this freight train coming down the tracks, so brought everything into my laptop in May and cancelled my account. PB served it's purpose back in the day, but is not user friendly anymore.

I use Google Drive at $9.99 a month for 1TB of storage. If you just store picture, you can use their free unlimited version....really UNLIMITED for free.

Amazon offers 2TB of storage for the same.

For unlimited image storage, I'm using SmugMug. Heard about it a couple years ago from Malcolm Talley.

Coupon link for 20% off subscription plan. I have the Power plan - billed annually.

I've had my SmugMug account for quite a while. Best way to go for images. I put all my in-line, embedded images in an "Unlisted" gallery so that anyone can view them in a forum post, but can't find them browsing around my site. Lots of options. Mine even has a custom URL instead of a SmugMug URL with my name appended (a little extra cost, but not much).

One thing to remember about general file hosting sites such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. is that their primary purpose is to store items for yourself and potentially a few friends or co-workers to collaborate on. While they will all allow you to embed images in a forum post, for example, they may briefly or permanently block that ability for your account if you exceed some bandwidth limits.

MCTalley said:

I've had my SmugMug account for quite a while. Best way to go for images.

Click to expand...

Thanks for turning me onto SM. I like it alot. I use the app on my phone and when uploading (on the laptop) images from a trip where I'm uploading to several folders or galleries, I'll open up multiple tabs and upload 2 or 3 galleries at a time, rather than wait for one to finish.

Smugmug has been getting my money and my pictures since 2005.

Before moving lots of photos, files, or data into the "cloud", I pick a service that looks like they have a good business model and won't be going out of business, or raising prices dramatically down the road.

Not to go too far afield, but I have over 17,000 notes and data files stored on Evernote. I think they'll easily outlive me.

I have some stuff on Dropbox and Google Drive free accounts, but if they begin asking for money, I can easily move it all.

danemayer said:

Smugmug has been getting my money and my pictures since 2005.

Before moving lots of photos, files, or data into the "cloud", I pick a service that looks like they have a good business model and won't be going out of business, or raising prices dramatically down the road.

Not to go too far afield, but I have over 17,000 notes and data files stored on Evernote. I think they'll easily outlive me.

I have some stuff on Dropbox and Google Drive free accounts, but if they begin asking for money, I can easily move it all.

Click to expand...

I'm all for learning something new....especially anything with technology.

So...what are the benefits of Smugmug over free Google Drive (with unlimited photo storage)? I know I can go to my Google Photo's and just type a persons name....camping....truck....location...etc, and ALL of the matching results are shown. It is crazy impressive. I can type my son's name and it will pull all his pictures....from age 5-21 years old.

So, that is the standard....does Smugmug do this?

Again..by no means am I trying to dis Smugmug....just want to know the benefits you guys see, as I might have been missing something for years!

Oregon_Camper said:

I'm all for learning something new....especially anything with technology.

So...what are the benefits of Smugmug over free Google Drive (with unlimited photo storage)? I know I can go to my Google Photo's and just type a persons name....camping....truck....location...etc, and ALL of the matching results are shown. It is crazy impressive. I can type my son's name and it will pull all his pictures....from age 5-21 years old.

So, that is the standard....does Smugmug do this?

Again..by no means am I trying to dis Smugmug....just want to know the benefits you guys see, as I might have been missing something for years!

Click to expand...

Over the years I have seen many, many free internet services evolve into a fee service, often at very unattractive rates. I don't want to go to the effort of setting up storage and have the rug pulled out from under me after storing thousands of photos, files, notes or other digital records.

Smugmug has always catered not just to casual photographers, but also to professionals. IMO, they are here to stay with a stable pricing model. While not free, the fees are reasonable.

Evernote is similar. They provide free service but the service is so good that many users migrate voluntarily to the fee service within a short time. That's how they make a living. Again, the fees are reasonable.

So bottom line, I'm not paying fees to avoid the possibility that I might have to pay fees in the future. I'm avoiding the possibility of having my files held captive to someone who's going to gouge me, or by someone who goes out of business.

I think Porthole's basic complaint is about gouging people after they upload all their photos.

danemayer said:

I think Porthole's basic complaint is about gouging people after they upload all their photos.

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No that is not my basic complaint.

My account is the free version, 2GB of storage and I have 8GB of bonus storage for whatever reason that is, I don't recall.
I am using .9GB, less then 1/10 of my allotment.
To literally overnight go from no charge to $400 is ransom and no better then any of the hackers out there locking down websites and demanding payment in bit coins or whatever.

My issue is about the blatant greed that popped up with no warning. Many web forums don't have photo embedding or hosting like this forum. But even on this HL forum I will use the photo linking to my pb account, as sometimes that is just easier when trying to tell a story where the pictures are better off shown as you go instead of displayed in a gallery.

Now every single post I have made here or on any forum where I linked a picture you will see this in the post instead of a picture.



Good example here where I used links instead of uploading images from my computer.

Things I learned at our "Latest" NASCAR camp out

I've used pb for years and to try and go back and edit the posts with links is impossible to do. pb Image tags have unique file names.

From Wikipedia

As of June 30, 2017, Photobucket requires a $99 annual subscription to allow external linking to all hosted images and a $399 annual subscription to allow the embedding of images on third-party websites, such as personal blogs and forums. This policy change, enacted with no advance warning, has been highly controversial.[SUP][6][/SUP]

The above is from a linked article from PCMag.com

https://www.pcmag.com/news/354711/photobucket-breaks-image-links-across-the-internet

And it is not just us minions affected, Amazon, eBay etc as well.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40492668

BTW, tinypic is owned by photobucket


Now for some reason, using one of the 4 pb links still shows a picture.

I'm with Porthole on this. I've been with PB since about 2004 and have thousands of photos embedded in about a half dozen forums since that time. No warning, no anything just an email requesting $399 annually. Absolutely like ransomware in my opinion. All forum photos gone in a blink of an eye.


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So can anyone with a published PB picture that has been suspended see the code used if you go in for an edit?...or is that just viewable to Mods and Admins??

the pictures or the account is not suspended.

pb just no longest allows third party linking, such as linking a picture here to your pb account, unless of course you opt to pay the ransom

When I first saw this I was amazed that they could make such a significant policy change, especially to accounts that have been established for years, without some sort of grandfather clause or discounted rate. $40 a month is insane.

Since then I've tried really hard to see it from their perspective... the original business model was store your pics here for free and buy prints from us. So much has changed since then (smartphone revolution) and I don't think they could have anticipated the volume of pictures that would become. Storing those photos costs money and I bet the vast majority of accounts are like me and have 1000s of photos stored on thier site but haven't ordered prints in years. Then there's the ones that just abandoned their accounts (and pictures) for one reason or another. Next will be a policy change where your account and all your pics will be deleted after x amount of time of inactivity.

IMO They would have come out better just discontinuing the 3rd party hosting service altogether. To be honest, I'm kinda glad this happened. Thier website has become combersome to use with all the ads and I have been meaning to download all my pics to an external hd. The ones I want on hand I will keep in Google Photos.

Greg
2012 | RAM 2500 | CCSB | Custom tuned by Double R Diesel
2016 | Heartland Pioneer | DS310

Yeah I need to download all of mine as well before they decide to delete them.


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