Many images lodged with Photobucket and displayed on various forums, now just display PB's warning about third party use not being allowed unless a ridiculously large premium has been paid to PB.
There is a work around, at the browser end....
For Firefox users go here:
For Chrome users:
You've copied an abbreviated form of the links, unfortunately
All the more reason to cease using it and use something that works with minimal fuss.
Sorry, try these...
While that solves part of the problem, it does not fix the issue for people who have years worth of posts to fora which include links that no longer work.
Would it not be better to vote with your pictures and shove them somewhere else? Brian
Has anyone actually spoken to them about this. it does seem to be a wonderful way to completely ruin what business you had, since everyone will remove their stuff and nobody will see their ads at all. Brian
Serves them right for using crap photo bucket in the first place, You can tell I have an aversion to photobucket. :)
Brian Gaff expressed precisely :
Well yes, but I have a considerable number of images, posted on lots of forums. Some of those posts I made are locked, so I can no longer even edit them to change the link to the image.
It was a long so job posting the images on PB, in part due to the advertising, but once posted they appear instantly in a forum.
There's advertising on FB?
Your eyes are going :-)
Yes. Sadly, can't find an easy way of moving my 'album' on PB elsewhere.
Actually, age-related presbyopia is correcting my myopia.
You can stop (most) of it using a blocker etc on Firefox. The reason PB have given for taking this action. But I suspect there is more to it.
The sheer amount of the subscription they are asking for, supports that idea.
1) Set a ridiculous price per individual user. 2) Wait until they don't pay. 3) Charge the forum owners instead. 4) Profit.
Or alternatively watch individual users post all new photos using one of the many other photo-hosting sites and then quoting a URL to that site in the forum.
I've noticed in forums that missing Photobucket photos is nothing new. Of the various forums that I use, if ever there's a missing photo in a posting, it will almost always be from Photobucket. That predates the latest fiasco by several years.
I don't know whether PB set a time-out on photos so the link no longer works several months after the photo was uploaded, or whether it's caused by the user account which posted the photo being deleted.
I much prefer sites which allow the photos to be uploaded and linked to without the need to register and login, especially for one-off photos that I only need to be visible for the lifetime of the posting until no more people are posting to the thread.
Yes, but not from the deluded mind of Mr P Bucket.
Not sure if that's users taking down photos, of if they expire after nobody view them for a bit, but as you say it's hardly a new phenomenon for forum posts to lose their images.
OK, I should have read another paragraph before starting my reply ...
Yes, I think sites run by vBulletin seem to work that way, rather than phpBB, but I tend to avoid them, no doubt PB see that one way or another forums are getting advert money for their members' eyeballs and paying for hosting, vbulletin add-ons etc and want a slice.
Quite apart from the fact that PB now want you to pay (through the nose) for them to host photos that you link to in a forum, I would not use any hosting site that only gave links that displayed the host's logo and branding. The one I use has various options such as the photo being embedded in a branded page, but I always go for "Direct Link" which allows you to embed just the photo (and no accompanying "furniture") within [img][/img] tags in the forum posting.
As someone who helps run an internet forum for woodworkers, we have been hit very badly by the photobucket policy change and a lot of construction post by members describing their work have been virtually destroyed by the loss of photos. Experimenting with the addons as well as the fix of adding "~original" to the url it appears this is not a 100% fix.
Photobucket URLS that have the server "smg" do not respond to either fix whereas my photo album which uses "s115" does work.
By no means a complaint but hopefully an constructive observation that might find its way back to the developers of these fixes via Harry.
Bob
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