Photobucket to stop allowing direct linking unless you pay.

[Mike]

It happens once every Preston Guild

[caterhamnut]

Thanks Mike - at least it gives me some time to migrate somewhere else for the WIP's

 

[James G]

On 03/07/2017 at 1:35 PM, Mike said:

Yes, quite.  It's been a fraught time for the members "lucky" enough to be affected.  'angin's too good for the berk that thought this one up, but what's done is done.  We (i.e. you guys) have to look for a solution, as cussin' out PB doesn't do much for anything other than our moral well-being, sadly.

Yes, calmed down now so onward and upward...going to look at using one drive.

[Mike]

I know it's annoying - I'm not personally affected, but I can empathise with you chaps, and it saddens me that all that valuable information and all those thousands of build and RFI threads are now bereft of their pictures.  Such a callous, brainless act. The more I think about it, and from speaking to friends, it's an effort to realign their client base.  Scrape off the freeloaders, and concentrate on corporate and small business hosting where they can charge extortionate prices due to their reliance on the service (at least for now).  i.e. the people that are going to be forced to pay the ransom of their businesses will suffer, or possibly even go under.

 

Anyone forced to pay the ransom this year, is almost certain to be looking for alternatives to put in place before the next renewal, so I wouldn't want to be PB's CEO this time next year when the money tree dies.

[Moggy]

18 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

That's very true Mike. It's been down as low as zero Centigrade tonight. A little warmer than the weekend when it was down to around minus seven.

 

I pity people with older computers trying to do this in Southern Europe, Southern US, QLD etc.

 

It feels very deliberate. 'Get off our site because you're clearly not wealthy enough'. Not only fees to use the service, but to stop the older computers from burning up due to the Flash ads.

 

Duvet and laptop. Now porridge with honey and a cuppa and onwards again. Reading the BBC article.

 

There'll be thousands of people all over the planet doing this. I wonder if the PB price malarkey will create a restructuring of other companies price plans  .

 

Mrs. T is away with work so the hours are mine, have at ye, PB ye varmints  !.

 

Best regards 

TonyT

 

One tip about Flash: I stopped using it about two years ago since it consumes too much processor time, ties up unnecessary memory resources AND the code is invasive. Results? Since it is mostly used for advertisment it actually saved me from a lot of annoyance. There ara a few things I am not able to see from time to time - it usually means thet it's click bait of some kind.And since nothing important suffers from this I am happier as it is now.

If you have an older computer this is potentially an internet perfomance enhancer.

BTW I am using a latest gen computer - but I have a number of older computers at home for a number of different functions

 

Cheers, Moggy

[IanC]

I think I'll use Imgur from now on. But I'm not going to bother migrating and re-linking my PB photos from previous RFIs.

 

I'm just going to build all the kits again.

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

34 minutes ago, IanC said:

I'm just going to build all the kits again.

Well done that man!

How long will that take you then?

[Kingsman]

And yes, I can't read the calendar.  D'oh!  My Independence Day quip kinda lost its impact.  No more early o'clock inspirations before rushing out somewhere........

[janneman36]

I am trying village photos, the only thing is that you have to ad the [ IMG ] at the front and the  [  /IMG ]at the end .

But it works and the upload is also quicker and far more easy, thank you PB for letting me see some better methods to upload ...

I have deleted my account as well....

 

 

Edited July 5, 2017 by janneman36
info corrected

[TonyTiger66]

3 hours ago, Moggy said:

 

One tip about Flash: I stopped using it about two years ago since it consumes too much processor time, ties up unnecessary memory resources AND the code is invasive. Results? Since it is mostly used for advertisment it actually saved me from a lot of annoyance. There ara a few things I am not able to see from time to time - it usually means thet it's click bait of some kind.And since nothing important suffers from this I am happier as it is now.

If you have an older computer this is potentially an internet perfomance enhancer.

BTW I am using a latest gen computer - but I have a number of older computers at home for a number of different functions

 

Cheers, Moggy

 

Thanks Moggy 

Thats exactly what all the 'Flash' was. 

We cut and sand it off of our models, I think it would be best cut and sanded off if the internet too; it just seems to be video/cartoon adverts driving the processors nuts and, as you say, hogging all the memory.

 

Is it simply a case of turning it off in the browser? I normally use Firefox.

 

I want to 'trash the Flash' for good !

 

Best regards

TonyT

[Moggy]

It is a plug-in.

Deactivate Shockwave Flash in Mozilla Firefox browser

To disable Shockwave Flash Player, open Firefox browser, click on three horizontal lines visible on top right corner and select Add-ons.

 

 

Go to the Plugins. Find Shockwave Flash and select Never Activate from the drop-down menu.

 

Any other plug-in can be deactivated the same way.

 

Uninstall Flash Player from Windows PC

If you want to totally uninstall Flash Player from your computer, you can take the help of Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller developed by Adobe itself. This is a free portable program that will remove Flash and Shockwave from all browsers that use it. It is available for download from the Adobe website. After downloading the program, close all  browsers and then double-click on the setup file to run it.

 

 

Click on the UNINSTALL button to remove Flash from your computer as well as your browsers.

 

There are manual hacks to uninstall Flash but you should OK with the avobe

 

Cheers, Moggy

[trickyrich]

gosh I only stepped away from this thread a couple of days ago and it's tripled in size!!

 

I see photobucket has made it into the main stream media, well down here anyway! 

 

PB news downunder

 

It'll be interesting to see what happens, do they go under or do they give up this ransomware ploy, I suspect the first!

 

I honestly think the days of free hosting are running out. It's not a business model that works, unless it's attached to another "paid" product or you get hammered with Adds. Some of the "free" photo hosting sites I looked at were full of pop-up adds. So I'd be very weary of joining any "freebie" sites anymore....if it's too go to be turn then in most cases it's not!

 

I'm lucky in one way I have all the originals on my drives at home, but still still trying to update all the links......

 

I don't know if anyone else has started using this lot SmugMug or not, but from all the ones I tried they seem to be the easiest to use with a good interface. It is a "pay for storage" site but their rates are quite reasonable. Plus they give you 14 days to try it out and play with it before you need to subscribe. It has quite a lot of nice features, everything is nice and easy to find, no huge menus to go through either.. Plus uploading is a dream, I uploaded 130 images at once, no error as you get with PB and in about the 1/3 of the time!

 

The only odd thing with the SmugMug site is you need to select the size of the image you want to post in the thread (it offers you a range of auto-resized images up to the original size of your image, which is nice), then you need to use the "insert other media" option here and "insert image form URL" to paste the image in. You can still just paste an image in like you use to with PB it's just a smaller image, see below, same image;

 

if you just copy and paste link into the thread

 

...or the same image, this time I selected the size I wanted (original in this case), then used the "insert image from URL".

 

It's an extra couple of steps but it works nicely.......now I just need a couple of weeks free to redo all the links!!

Edited July 6, 2017 by Julien
no swearing pls

[dogsbody]

6 hours ago, janneman36 said:

I am trying village photos, the only thing is that you have to ad the [ IMG ] at the front and the  [  /IMG ]at the end .

But it works and the upload is also quicker and far more easy, thank you PB for letting me see some better methods to upload ...

I have deleted my account as well....

 

 

 

I was going to use Village.Photo, but it will only link images to some forums, not the full picture. Also, I couldn't resize the images to fit some forums, either. So now I have gone to Flickr. Apparently, I already have an account with Flickr, since 2013! I don't even remember doing that.

 

 

Chris

[Rafbanter]

On 5 July 2017 at 7:06 PM, keefr22 said:

 

Have they though? Have you actually bought anything off those advertisers? I use an adblocker & the few ads that get through that (usually from PB themselves when I was in my account) I close instantly without looking at. So they've actually never made a penny from me.....

 

Keith

Hi Keith

The point is not whether I have actually bought their products or not. The point is that Photobucket have been making money from charging these advertisers to spam my pages. That is where they have  in fact made a penny ( or more ) from you as well if you were ever with PB. 

Dorland

[Black Knight]

8 hours ago, trickyrich said:

...

I don't know if anyone else has started using this lot SmugMug or not, but from all the ones I tried they seem to be the easiest to use with a good interface. It is a "pay for storage" site but their rates are quite reasonable. Plus they give you 14 days to try it out and play with it before you need to subscribe. It has quite a lot of nice features, everything is nice and easy to find, no huge menus to go through either.. Plus uploading is a dream, I uploaded 130 images at once, no error as you get with PB and in about the 1/3 of the time!

 

The only odd thing with the SmugMug site is you need to select the size of the image you want to post in the thread (it offers you a range of auto-resized images up to the original size of your image, which is nice), then you need to use the "insert other media" option here and "insert image form URL" to paste the image in. You can still just paste an image in like you use to with PB it's just a smaller image, see below, same image;

...

I choose the BBC code; copy and paste by using a mouse right click both times, straight into the reply text box

ala;

Size = small

 

size = original

[trickyrich]

ok, I'll have to try that way.

[Caerbannog]

Agree with the danger that any free site will stop their free accounts sooner or later (other internet sites have closed their free accounts before - but at discussable success...). The problem with PB is that they changed their mind on that over nicht and ask for a ridiculous price if you want to keep that one feature why you probably use PB (well me at least  -I only used it for BritModeller). Even those who currently have a paid account will suffer from this once their paid year is over...

I have all pics at my hard drive too - but relinking each and every post I did is a PITA. I started this with the GB banner I did for this year and unless you have your files named and sorted in a way you can see where they belong it will be a tad unnerving :-)

[stevehnz]

I've opened a Flickr account & linked some photos to the DH Megabuild Mosquito gallery. I found it pretty easy both coming & going but I'm nervous as to the future, & the idea of a basic plan at Smugmug has some attraction, not too spendy, good features & hopefully once in & paying, one won't be hit with a ransome demand for ones images. Something to think about over the next while, nothing comes with guarantees these days.

Steve.

[Mike]

How's everyone getting on with copying their photos back?  I know a few people are having trouble downloading them, after speaking to @Dads203 yesterday, he's having a torrid time trying to download his albums back to his PC, even though he was a paying customer.

[lasermonkey]

Downloading the albums is rather soul-destroying. *If* it works (the "Hmm, something appears to have gone wrong" message is all too familiar) you have to hope that a browser-killing ad doesn't pop up, then there's several layers of that God-awful Captcha thing to go through and  half the time, the download page just hangs. Apart from that, it's fine!

The thing is, until a couple of years ago, I was happy to pay the thirty bucks a year. It was only when they started messing around with it (it became slow, unstable and never worked on my iPad, despite them constantly telling me it should) that I and plenty of other people ended our paid accounts. Another example of a business thinking they know better than their customers. Worked out well for them, eh?

 

Cheers,

Mark.

Edited July 6, 2017 by lasermonkey
typo

[Caerbannog]

I can imagine that downloading from PB has become even more adventurous now that probably many people will try to get their files back...

[stevej60]

This is very strange,I still have my PB acount and still uploading to a couple of WIP's,I now have a Flikr account and I see we have a great how to guide

now posted for this host so I'm holding of any RFI post's till I master the process,I,ve started deleting my PB older pics rather than having them "killed off"

by PB.

[avro683]

Are there any other platforms than Flickr we can use for pics please? I ask as a fellow member clicked on a picture and it corrupted his laptop to the extent that it's not useable. 

[Scratchbuilder]

I have a banner on Photobucket which says 5% Full. Does that mean I'm safe?

I also have just deleted from 23 pages of pics. to 15.  Will THAT ensure I'm safe.?

 

I really don't understand all the other stuff, so would appreciate knowing if I can continue to use PB without being ransomed?  I ONLY use it for forums like this one.  And don't post much.

 

Cheers,

Martin

[Avgas]

16 minutes ago, Scratchbuilder said:

I have a banner on Photobucket which says 5% Full. Does that mean I'm safe?

I also have just deleted from 23 pages of pics. to 15.  Will THAT ensure I'm safe.?

 

I really don't understand all the other stuff, so would appreciate knowing if I can continue to use PB without being ransomed?  I ONLY use it for forums like this one.  And don't post much.

 

Cheers,

Martin

 

Martin, the issue isn't storage space but rather hotlinking your images. My guess is if you're not a heavy user then perhaps you're a little way down the list. Maybe they're doing it alphabetically, who knows. They'll get to you in time, don't you worry about that!