Photo bucket charging $399.00 per year

19 Jul 2017

Photo Bucket has blocked all my photos here, unless I pay a $399.00 fee per year, to upload what they call, 3rd party hosting.
I guess my photo posting is over here if I can't post directly from my computer.
I noticed I am not the only one this has happened to.
Dave

19 Jul 2017

extortion

19 Jul 2017

Use www.imgur.com

It is free and you can hot-link to third party sites. They also, when you click your picture, the ability to copy and paste known methods of using your pictures, such as HTML, a direct link, BB code etc.

I am unsure which method is used by network54. Lets try:

Image link:
http://imgur.com/9UFPPAo

Direct link:

Markdown link:
[Imgur]()

HTML:

BBCode:
[/img]

Linked BBCode:
[url=<img src="[img<span class="link">http://i.imgur.com/9UFPPAo.png" alt="[linked image]"></span>[/img][/url]

Unresolved image reference ↗

19 Jul 2017

Photo Bucket is out of my control. Their new policy has caused great damage to this site since much of our legacy material is now lost.

You can post pictures from anywhere as long as you have a URL. You just give the URL starting with http://
One alternative for everyone is for you to send the pictures to me via email and I can add them to your post. It helps if you give them simple names such as you initials followed by consecutive numbers.

I wish there was a better way, but I really do not want to change vendors for the forum. We have too much invested in it.

Joe

PS. If you have important pictures from past post send them to me and I can go back and edit the posts to reinsert the pictures.

19 Jul 2017

Unfortunately there is not much that can be done other than as you said, manually altering people's images which given this site and it's context, is probably a full time job for the next 2 years. People can get their images back:http://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us ... ing-Albums

But, again, needs manually altering to put them back which would be a massive undertaking for you and other admins.

It might actually make more sense to start over with a new forum solution, something modern that lets you control things better, add features and then people will be able to edit their own posts if you don't restrict it, so in the future if any such thing happens, they could fix their own images.

This forum system you use is a major major pain and I have seen before you mention that the legacy is what has made you not consider switching. Perhaps this is the absolute best time, now that the main service people have been using for images is trying to gouge people into paying VAST sums of money.

19 Jul 2017

A quick temporary fix. Use chrome and get this extension:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... n?hl=en-GB

then add a rule:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/261154

Then make sure the three blue buttons are lit blue for from, to, 3rd and then press custom on the right side and press URL.

It should look like this:

Also disable the blue 3rd button at the bottom right so the bottom row looks like this:

This is only temporary but will again begin showing the images to people using the extension. What this does is fake the referer so that the image's website (photocrapit) thinks the image is being accessed from it's own website. So you can then download the image, upload it to imgur.com and then edit the post with the new direct link.

This is the very best I can offer you to preserve your images.

Unresolved image reference ↗

19 Jul 2017

using the above method, here is what the folowing thread looks like when I view it with the extension enabled and configured as I have suggested:http://www.network54.com/Forum/261154/t ... /any+idea-

Unresolved image reference ↗

19 Jul 2017

Actually to clarify, using this method if you "save as" on the image that now appears, it will download the fake square "pay us money" image. So you much "Copy image" when you right click it, then you can go to imgur.com and press Ctrl + V and paste it there and it will upload and then you can use this new image.

19 Jul 2017

An old thread but there is an email for someone who supposedly made something to migrate a network54 site to vbulletin (non-free but best in the world forum system)https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/v ... -migration

Maybe that person can do such a thing again?

19 Jul 2017

David, there is some hope .............

Photobucket's decision is not very popular amongst lots of other sites on the 'net, so hopefully some "peer pressure" will convince them to adopt a less costly position!

19 Jul 2017

Anon, after I told them what they could do with their "bucket", I went into my account library and manually deleted all my photos on photo bucket before they locked me out and stole all my photos. Now I will have to decide on a different path.
Dave

19 Jul 2017

They are a big website, they have backups of your images I promise you. Not that they probably care. I would have personally downloaded all my albums if I had pictures up on their services rather than just delete them.

22 Jul 2017

Photobuchet act as Ransomware Trojans. Block content and extorts money to unblock. Plus violation of the fundamental principle, according to which the Law of retroactivity does not have

22 Jul 2017

https://www.change.org/p/photobucket-re ... party-rule

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/16/ph ... -fee-hike/

https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=%23photobucket

23 Jul 2017

Hi all,

I am far from being an expert on this topic but the first thing that came to mind is that we collectively chip in once a year and pay them their money.
Each of us would pitch in $5 or 10 bucks and we share the account and password.
We can each use it to post pictures here under one account. It would not be wise to use this for personal pictures elsewhere.

I am not sure if they have limits on how many users can access the account but this might work.

Mark
O--O

23 Jul 2017

I feel giving them that money is condoning what they have done to everyone who has used their service. There are tons of other methods of increasing revenue and they chose to absolutely jam their users. F them, seriously.

23 Jul 2017

Paying money to arrogant extortionists is the latest thing

03 Aug 2017

I'm not sure this forum will recover from the photobucket disaster. Paying them money to them now also does not seem like the right thing to do.

As Robert Heinlein said, someone is always going to pick up the bill ("there is no such thing as a free lunch"), I'd be okay paying a few dollars every year for a shared hosting service, but not photobucket. I'm pretty sure they have no idea how big the damage the have done is, and how big the disappointment with their users is.

Editing 50 old forum entries to retrieve the photos is not something I feel like doing at the moment.

How do the others feel about the whole thing? Do we just start over with a new service?
Joe, are there any forum backups? Can the old foum be saved?

Nils

03 Aug 2017

I am working on the problem. I am setting up somewhat complicated systems here to try and see if I can set up a system whereby the site could be "saved" as an archive site/link and then use some kind of new forum system or continue here fresh withpeople using other free services that do not charge for hotlinking. I cannot promise I will have any success. I am in the process of doing some testing right now.

03 Aug 2017

Joseph Lauher, I am in the process of doing somewhat complex things on my side to obtain (depending on how much disk space is taken up) every image on this forum that is hosted on photobucket. Do you have the capability to do a site-wide replacement of text? As in, replace an image URL across the whole forum? Like any trace of and replace it with ? If so that would be good. What my goal is, is to get all the images, select only ones that are hosted on photobucket and check the total file size. If they are transferable via some means, I can give them to you and they would be in folders based on their domain name, so you (and any other admins you have) could go thread to thread and, after uploading the images to your site in their original folders, you could easily and quickly make a tweak to the image link and point it to your server and it would work again without needing photobucket.

If what I am doing works as I expect, you would have all the images you need in order to keep your same network54 service here and just fix the images since you would have all the original images. All you would need is a place to upload all the images and their containing folders and post by post do a quick modification.I may even be able to write you a simple Windows based program where when you edit the post so you see the image link, then highlight the text link to the image and press copy, it would detect photobucket in the name and process the link to the new format to where ever you upload the images and copy that new modified link to the clipboard and then automatically press Ctrl V to paste it over the original you had copied, thus speeding up the time required to do the work.

If you are interested in any of what I am doing please let me know and I will provide contact details.

Unresolved image reference ↗

03 Aug 2017

My email: silentbutdescriptive@gmail.com

So far it is looking good. I already have approximately 55 forum pages worth of message's photobucket images (2 and a quarter thousand images at this moment) and my system I have set up is continuing to work to try and retrieve the images.

A few people have deleted their images from photobucket in response to PB's decision to charge and those images will be lost, fortunately most people have not deleted them.

03 Aug 2017

Sounds like you have been working hard. Thanks for your efforts.

I am putting together a method to handle future postings, but have no good ideas about the past.

Joe

05 Aug 2017

I responded to the email with a more detailed easy way to fix it. It would take time though of going through threads and editing any posts where you see the dreadded photo*ucket square "pay us or gtfo" image and then using the simple process of highlight and paste and it would fix it. If you have multiple admins on the site that would help speed up the process. One start from page 1, one start from page 303 and maybe one starting in the middle and going in a direction.