Photobucket two years after

P

postoak_imp

Been there
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In case you are wondering how well Photobucket's new business model of charging $499 per year for hosting worked. Nine months after they made the change the owner replaced his executives with a new team. A couple of months later the new CEO announced a new pricing structure with free hosting for a small number of photos. But the damage had been done. Today, Photobucket has 10 employees compared to 120 at its peak. It has downsized to a smaller building. Who knows what the future will bring?

Remember Photobucket? They're Back and Promising Nice Features

Photobucket restores photos “taken hostage,” hopes to lure back customers with cheaper plans after last year’s $399 debacle
 
Any cloud storage service ought to be used for backup and convenience access only. If you "pay to lose it", well, ... we've been warned.
 
Whomever suggested that pay to use model for a service that was free to use for over a decade, killed the business.
 
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I think they would have been okay if they had announced a $5 fee to keep your account active AND if they had publicized this widely. Then, a year later, again after much publicity gone to a $5/month fee.
 
With some limitations, one could consider OneDrive, DropBox and Google Drive.

As with anything in the cloud, they can give'th, ... and they can take'th away.
 
I've been using them since 07. I've got thousands of posted pictures hosted by the site and it will be a sad day for hosting if / when they fold. I started with them setting up a photo shoot putting a magnacharger blower on my 05 Mustang GT.

 
Postoak, postimages.org is good too.
 
Ha- I had a magnacharger on an ‘85 golf, installed in ‘85! Might have even been installed in ‘84, i forget.


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My first experience with "the cloud" was not a good one. When I got my new computer and Windows Hate, I also bought a program to copy my data and pictures over from my old computer. It took all day. The next day "the cloud" had moved on with all my stuff, never to be seen again.

That day I bought Outlook and I had my Internet Service fix it so my old data and anything new would remain on my computer. Paid for a big disk drive, might as well us it. Maybe retro, but it has been a good ride so far.
 
Nortoon_imp said:
My first experience with "the cloud" was not a good one. When I got my new computer and Windows Hate, I also bought a program to copy my data and pictures over from my old computer. It took all day. The next day "the cloud" had moved on with all my stuff, never to be seen again.

That day I bought Outlook and I had my Internet Service fix it so my old data and anything new would remain on my computer. Paid for a big disk drive, might as well us it. Maybe retro, but it has been a good ride so far.
Click to expand...
Remote clouds are great for data replication and sharing.

Keep master copies closer to your domain (e.g. home computer). Also consider a home-based cloud to backup your master since hard drives do fail. The bigger they are, the harder they fail.

- - -

I keep critical files backed up in the distant north of Ottawa, Ontario.
 
Nortoon, what GO says: make sure that big disk is backed up. They can—and do—fail.
 
Sad that so many photos are gone, and of cause I can't bring them back myself.
But as far as I can see, if there was any chance to bring them back this issue needs to be broken down like this :
- do the original posters still have the original photo files ? if yes, can we collect them
- storage is not the problem, bandwidth (for the servers) is, we need an estimate
- free sites can let you down, paid services can - but some are better than others, we need to read the fineprint on many sites, any volunteers ?
- is the community ready to pay 1$ per month per member ? that's prob all it takes
- are smaller pictures okay in most cases ? 100kb for most purposes, 1Mb for some should do the trick ?
- we need "private" backup once every 3 months, who can do this ?
- with under 300k posts, meaning under 100k photos in total, we are talking about 10Gb or even less. It isn't that hard.
- can the moderators find an efficient way to change all the links within the posts DB ?

Or do I miss part of the story or part of the problem ?
Please let me know.
 
j3gq, I don't know if the following will help, but here goes:

1. This issue arose when Photobucket imposed not just a charge, but an outrageous charge for their service.
2. In some cases the original posters have the photos; in others they don't. For example, I don't think the Ferret has retained original images.
3. Unless they've deleted the photos or closed their account, the photos are still available on Photobucket. As I recall the links now work again, although PhotoBucket inserts an overlay.
4. The Chrome and Firefox browsers have extensions that allow you step around the Photobucket controls and view the photos without Photobucket's overlay.
5. As far as I know there is no easy way for moderators to change the links. They have to be done manually. The forum owner may tell us that's wrong. There are also limitations on the number of images per post that, combined with the way the forum software handles sequential posts, may make it impossible to edit posts to update links.
6. Unless the owner is prepared to upgrade the forum software to enable it to control the display size of photos stored on the forum's servers I for one would advocate against change. Trying to read a thread where someone has posted a dimensionally large image is a right pain. The software makes the viewing of linked photos a way more comfortable experience.
7. Questions of changes in the way the forum operates its photo storage, back ups, pricing, etc are the sole preserve of the Forum's owner.
 
I appreciate your input, and respect your warning under 7. So I won't touch the subject again, not even with pliers ;(
 
I use postimage.org as suggested by Cormanus. It is simple for simple folks like me. If I loose all my photos I will just go take some more. The first ones weren't that good anyhow. :blush:
 
Inhouse Bob_imp said:
I use postimage.org as suggested by Cormanus. It is simple for simple folks like me. If I loose all my photos I will just go take some more. The first ones weren't that good anyhow. :blush:
Click to expand...
Might be obvious to say, but keep an original copy for yourself on a backup drive!

After all, these are our images, so might as well ensure some sort of control over them - no matter if the world crashes and burns.
 
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