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Suggestions for replacing Photobucket?

Started by 1995hoo, July 06, 2017, 09:24:51 PM

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1995hoo

I got two e-mails from Photobucket today saying they are restricting my account because I use it to post photos here and apparently that's a violation of their terms of service, although I've been using them for over ten years to post photos online. If I want to continue using their service for that purpose, they want me to "upgrade" my account for $400 a year.

That's not happening. Anyone got any recommendations for a free service that allows embedding on a site like this one? Even better if they have an iOS app that allows for direct uploads from an iPhone or iPad.

Thanks in advance.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.


formulanone

#1
$400!?! You can host your own website with very few restrictions for about $100-150/year.

Flickr gives you 1TB for free. They allow embedding, although you have to use the desktop version to post with BB Code. Flickr isn't crazy about those who de-link the photos purely for image storage. And I hear they have some decent administrators (can't say I've run into that problem, though).

It works on an iPad, but the code snippets don't appear in the iPhone app. The app is nice to maintain and browse your photos, or save/share, but it's not good at allowing direct linking an image to this forum. I think I've only directly uploaded a pic or two to Flickr...just to see how it worked. Flickr occasionally goes down at unexpected moments, but "bad panda" outages usually don't last too long.

Tagging photos, putting them in albums are great reasons to join, though it can get a bit time-consuming if you're fiddling with all the features. You can make it as simple or complicated as you want.

I also like Google Photos, which does allow you to auto-upload your entire (or selected items) photo library, if you wish. The catch is they reduce the image size to vaguely 800-1200 pixels wide if you want unlimited storage. It's not really as user-friendly as Flickr, tagging and ordering is clunky, and the image URL is unwieldy.

But as Photo iCloud storage tops out at 5GB, Google picks up the slack, so can I periodically save them from my phone onto physical backup methods.

Max Rockatansky

I'm going to second Flickr.  I noticed a lot of my older stuff on this site is actually showing as locked out due to Photobucket apparently going rogue.  I might go ahead and replace the pics with my Flickr album copies at some point, so much for my Southwest thread staying viable.

jakeroot

I've used Imgur for a long time. They don't have the friendliest browsing interface (it can be hard to find a user's previous uploads), but they have a very quick drag/drop upload interface online and a mobile app for mobile uploads (iOS/Android). There's no storage limit that I know of. After you upload a photo, you can easily hit the (BB) code and copy the correct link to paste it here.

MNHighwayMan

I'm going to second people's suggestions of either Imgur or Flickr. I've been using the former for posting images here, but I think Flickr is probably the overall better choice, what with more features. I have an account there but I have yet to use it–one of these days I might get around to moving to it.

1995hoo

Thanks. Got some work to do this weekend that will actually cause me to turn on my PC, so maybe I'll experiment with those. Gonna take a good long time, if ever, before I move everything, much less fix any links (I have a feeling most of my posts here will just remain busted), but at least I can set something up for new pictures.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

hotdogPi

I tried Imgur first. I didn't like it because you had to remove an album from public view if you wanted to add photos or edit any descriptions, and doing this resets the view count. There was also the issue of downvotes (my score was surprisingly positive, although less than 10).

I then tried Flickr today and liked it much better. My website link to the left (where my avatar is) is my Flickr account.
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

WillWeaverRVA

Flickr and Imgur are probably the easiest alternatives.
Will Weaver
WillWeaverRVA Photography | Twitter

"But how will the oxen know where to drown if we renumber the Oregon Trail?" - NE2

jakeroot

The only two problems I have with Flickr:

1) Getting an image link requires an awful lot of steps, and the links themselves are gigantic.
2) After viewing an image, going back resets you to the top of the page, and you lose track of where you were.
2.5) Pages have two "sections" that load separately. Just have one in-between length that loads all at once. I get tired of scrolling just to get to the page numbers.

briantroutman

I've been using Flickr for many years. The general consensus is that Flickr's acquisition by Yahoo a dozen years ago killed whatever spirit of innovation the startup originally had. In my opinion, Flickr's web interface is outdated and clunky, and the few times I've tried Flickr's then-current iOS apps, they've been nearly worthless.

That said, I continue to use Flickr for its free 1TB of storage and hosting. There's a Flickr export feature built into the Photos app on the Mac that makes archiving large batches of photos easy. And while getting a sharable (or embeddable) link takes more effort than it should, it's not too terribly difficult, and I've found the hosting to be reasonably fast and reliable.

But the recent sale of Flickr (and other Yahoo properties) to Verizon poses some nagging doubt about the service's future. I'm not optimistic.

Duke87

General, broad bit of wisdom here: any internet-based service is inherently perishable. There is nowhere you can upload pictures to and safely assume will still be there for years to come. The "safest" option is to purchase your own web hosting, but even that depends on your hosting service not itself going belly up (see: Geocities).

My advice on how to handle this: organize your photos on your own hard drive (and keep backups, of course), and forget about trying to maintain albums on any internet-based service. Then when you feel the need to share a photo on a forum, upload it to whatever free site is currently available that allows hotlinking (e.g. Imgur), post it in the thread, and leave it at that. Don't even bother trying to keep photos organized on Imgur or save the links. If you want to share the same photo again, just reupload it.

After some time the current free site du jour will change their policies or vanish off the face of the web and all of the images linked to it in old threads will break. Accept this, it is inevitable. Don't make threads with the intent of them being image galleries to be preserved for all time, because you can't actually do that unless you own your own server. The only storage you can truly rely on is storage you directly physically control.
If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: Duke87 on July 10, 2017, 07:42:08 PM
General, broad bit of wisdom here: any internet-based service is inherently perishable. There is nowhere you can upload pictures to and safely assume will still be there for years to come. The "safest" option is to purchase your own web hosting, but even that depends on your hosting service not itself going belly up (see: Geocities).

My advice on how to handle this: organize your photos on your own hard drive (and keep backups, of course), and forget about trying to maintain albums on any internet-based service. Then when you feel the need to share a photo on a forum, upload it to whatever free site is currently available that allows hotlinking (e.g. Imgur), post it in the thread, and leave it at that. Don't even bother trying to keep photos organized on Imgur or save the links. If you want to share the same photo again, just reupload it.

After some time the current free site du jour will change their policies or vanish off the face of the web and all of the images linked to it in old threads will break. Accept this, it is inevitable. Don't make threads with the intent of them being image galleries to be preserved for all time, because you can't actually do that unless you own your own server. The only storage you can truly rely on is storage you directly physically control.

Flickr is my third back up.  I use my data hard drive on my computer and flash disks as my primary storage method.  If one goes down the other two can restore the third if need be.  I got pretty paranoid about something like that happening after almost losing a bunch of my photos a couple years ago.  I was able recreate the albums via Facebook copies which at the time where closer to the actual file size but it really made it apparent I needed better backup options. I'd like scan my old physical copies of family photos into the three digital media back ups I use, the trouble is most are in Florida and in physical album books.

epzik8

I post mine on Imgur and link them here.
From the land of red, white, yellow and black.
____________________________

My clinched highways: http://tm.teresco.org/user/?u=epzik8
My clinched counties: http://mob-rule.com/user-gifs/USA/epzik8.gif



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