ATTN ALL USERS: IMPENDING PHOTOBUCKET FAIL
Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 4:20 pm
Gents/ladies,
Story is circulating that Photobucket is about to go the way of imageshack - ie, sink under, causing obvious holes in every forum world wide. In a last ditch bid to raise cash, Photobucket have changed their terms and conditions to essentially not allow hotlinking on their free accounts. No drama you say, I might upgrade my account to the non free one that will allow hotlinking again, AND ill get rid of those stupid ads at the same time that were making it impossible to use. Except, there is one problem. In their infinite wisdom [read, desperation], Photobucket management have made the decision to not allow hotlinking on all but the most expensive package, for a cool $400 per year
Taken straight from the new terms and conditions page:
Where am I going with this? This image host fail doesn't just affect your build thread and how popular you feel as a result of people commenting how cool your car is - it affects everything posted here, from Technical discussion threads to general questions.
Why is this such a big problem? Say for example you decide what you really want to do is do a brake upgrade - for whatever reason, the old Hoppers style VT front doesnt cut it. You remember seeing on the forum plenty of times about the Magna disc with Volvo 4pots, perfect ill do that you say to yourself - so you search the forum, find the relevant threads, sweet as a how to. Start scanning through the how to, and get to the bit where it says the hat height on the magna disc is 3mm shorter than the Gemini, so i made a spacer to fit between disc and hub - see image. Where the f*#k is the image?! See the point now? Rinse and repeat for anything and everything, from diff conversions to which gearbox crossmember to use with what, comparisions between factory parts etc - EVERYTHING.
What I suggest you do is back up all your images before Photobucket goes down and out for good. Once its gone [and, lets face it, it will be gone sooner rather than later as i dont think anyone will part with the frankly ludicrous $400p/a], the photos will also be gone with it. To post pictures you can either use the inbuilt forum uploader - it will just require users be logged in to view, or one of the other image hosts readily available. As far as Im aware of, http://www.flickr.com is one of the better ones OR http://www.smugmug.com. Note that Photobucket being the clunky POS to use that it is, you will have to manually download the photos one by one. Unless you register with smugmug, in which case you can use the following link http://www.smugglr.com/ to transfer your photos over. Also keep in mind that although smugglr will allow you to transfer your photos over from photobucket to smugmug, it will not a. allow you to do so once photobucket has locked your account to non-hotlink [thanks, assholes] and or b. your links will still be broken.
What we would like you to do is, in the event you are one of the affected users, and you have taken the step to registering or starting a different image host, is take the time to update and or replace your img links in your relevant threads. This is f*#cking arduous i know - for example, my build thread is over 13 pages long and has well over 200 images - but would be much appreciated, particularly in regards to anything you may have posted in the technical section.
Will advise more once I know more
Cheers
N-
KNOWN FIXES AS OF 15/09/17
As of the date above, the following work with photobucket images. We [and be we, i mean Merve....nudge nudge mate] are working on a fix to back up older images on ozgem the same way. You can use the following to view photobucket images:
Post extension editing [as taken from another forum I use - thanks gamma]
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... jjgj?hl=en
Firefox Plug In that does the above - note i have not tested this one yet as my firefox at work is f*#cked, but reports are it works as intended
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... ucket-fix/
Story is circulating that Photobucket is about to go the way of imageshack - ie, sink under, causing obvious holes in every forum world wide. In a last ditch bid to raise cash, Photobucket have changed their terms and conditions to essentially not allow hotlinking on their free accounts. No drama you say, I might upgrade my account to the non free one that will allow hotlinking again, AND ill get rid of those stupid ads at the same time that were making it impossible to use. Except, there is one problem. In their infinite wisdom [read, desperation], Photobucket management have made the decision to not allow hotlinking on all but the most expensive package, for a cool $400 per year
Taken straight from the new terms and conditions page:
Slowly but surely, more and more free acounts are being affected by this; you may have noticed this begining to happen if you use other forums. Basically, Photobucket is switching accounts off account-by-account; unless you of course pay the $400 year ransom fee to keep your thread links live. This means anyone that is using Photobucket as an image host for their build threads will eventually have their image links broken, replaced by the good old HOTLINKING NOT ALLOWED image. So what you say, I use Facebook now, its so much cooler and I get likes and stuff there, forums are so early 2000s - as most of the people on these FB groups will repeatedly let you know. Except of course, Facebook is a social media tool and absolutely f*#cking useless as a resource, which strangely enough is why everyone still searches here when ever they need real info.Types of Accounts, Pricing and Limits
Visiting : There is no cost to visit the Site or to register as a Member.
Free account : Each individual Member gets one free account that provides 2 GB of free storage or space available for your original photo files, or videos under 10min. The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting. If a free account Member exceeds their Content Limit, their account will be immediately suspended and they will need to become a “Paying Member” (defined below) in order to continue accessing their account. You can upgrade to a Plus account at any time.
Ad-free Account : The Ad-free Account offers Members the ability to use the Site without seeing any third party banner advertisements when logged into your Ad-free Account (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements). This account level is available for $2.49 / month, payable by the Member on a monthly recurring basis.
Plus Account : The Plus Account offers several paid options that may give the Paying Member more storage, bandwidth, 3rd party image hosting, image linking and/or other services as outlined below. Once and during such period of time in which you subscribe to and pay for a Plus Account, we will consider you a "Paying Member." Please note that all Plus Account subscriptions are billed annually at the commencement of the service. Photobucket may also offer a monthly billing option for its Plus Accounts (see terms and restrictions, below).
Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:
o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.
o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.
o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.
Read more: http://photobucket.com/terms#ixzz4lkEH6qXO
Where am I going with this? This image host fail doesn't just affect your build thread and how popular you feel as a result of people commenting how cool your car is - it affects everything posted here, from Technical discussion threads to general questions.
Why is this such a big problem? Say for example you decide what you really want to do is do a brake upgrade - for whatever reason, the old Hoppers style VT front doesnt cut it. You remember seeing on the forum plenty of times about the Magna disc with Volvo 4pots, perfect ill do that you say to yourself - so you search the forum, find the relevant threads, sweet as a how to. Start scanning through the how to, and get to the bit where it says the hat height on the magna disc is 3mm shorter than the Gemini, so i made a spacer to fit between disc and hub - see image. Where the f*#k is the image?! See the point now? Rinse and repeat for anything and everything, from diff conversions to which gearbox crossmember to use with what, comparisions between factory parts etc - EVERYTHING.
What I suggest you do is back up all your images before Photobucket goes down and out for good. Once its gone [and, lets face it, it will be gone sooner rather than later as i dont think anyone will part with the frankly ludicrous $400p/a], the photos will also be gone with it. To post pictures you can either use the inbuilt forum uploader - it will just require users be logged in to view, or one of the other image hosts readily available. As far as Im aware of, http://www.flickr.com is one of the better ones OR http://www.smugmug.com. Note that Photobucket being the clunky POS to use that it is, you will have to manually download the photos one by one. Unless you register with smugmug, in which case you can use the following link http://www.smugglr.com/ to transfer your photos over. Also keep in mind that although smugglr will allow you to transfer your photos over from photobucket to smugmug, it will not a. allow you to do so once photobucket has locked your account to non-hotlink [thanks, assholes] and or b. your links will still be broken.
What we would like you to do is, in the event you are one of the affected users, and you have taken the step to registering or starting a different image host, is take the time to update and or replace your img links in your relevant threads. This is f*#cking arduous i know - for example, my build thread is over 13 pages long and has well over 200 images - but would be much appreciated, particularly in regards to anything you may have posted in the technical section.
Will advise more once I know more
Cheers
N-
KNOWN FIXES AS OF 15/09/17
As of the date above, the following work with photobucket images. We [and be we, i mean Merve....nudge nudge mate] are working on a fix to back up older images on ozgem the same way. You can use the following to view photobucket images:
Post extension editing [as taken from another forum I use - thanks gamma]
Google Chrome plug in that does the above to make images viewableI don't know how many people saw the posts originally, but a reminder that editing your old photobucket links to have "~original" after the .jpg makes them work.
Photobucket are still c*#nts, but it will make threads readable again.
I believe the Chrome plugin basically does the same thing, but only for the viewer. If anyone has seen a script for vBulletin that can do it to everything, or a script for scraping the images and hosting them on site (like LS tech did to their forum), they would probably be handy!
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... jjgj?hl=en
Firefox Plug In that does the above - note i have not tested this one yet as my firefox at work is f*#cked, but reports are it works as intended
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... ucket-fix/
