mk1-forum.net

Until recently members of forums could include in their forum post a link to an image held on Photobucket's free service. I've just discovered that Photobucket have changed their policy and now require an annual payment if an image is linked to a third party site, such as the mk1-forum. The minimum charge is USD$400 p.a.

See here - http://photobucket.com/p500/

It appears Photobucket are over-writing the images with a warning sign. If you search through some old posts on here that have links to PB photos you'll see what I mean.

As a result of this change any and all images on this forum that are hosted on Photobucket will eventually become unviewable unless the user signs up to a paid plan. This would appear to have significant ramifications on the integrity and possibly usefulness of historical posts that include PB hosted images.

Thanks Doug.

I use Photobucket (though only through laziness to find an alternative) and I have been growing increasing frustrated with it, though, what do we want for free? I've noticed over the past year or so a pop up within it that says 'go ad free for $2.49 a month' (I'm guessing that's USD).

I wouldn't mind if I was making money from the photos or some sort of return, but like most of the guys here, I'm not and only an enthusiast.

I did ask a while back and still open for ideas on alternatives. One that was mentions was flikr, though on going to sign up, it wanted a phone number, which is getting as invasive as the faceless Facebook.

I know some of our forums, like MKI can host our photos, but apart from putting an unfair burden on the finances of the forum, I also sit across a few forums, and so I don't think I'm able to use those photos to these other platforms.

I did use Photoshack ages ago, but it didn't have any facilities for organising and filing photos, so was one big mess.

Any other options out there?

I've just signed up to Flickr and it never requested a phone number................

This will happen more & more as the likes of FB & Google hoover up the vast majority of advertising on huge areas of the entire web other smaller firms need to find different ways of monetising their offers that were previously paid for by advertising.

It is getting harder & harder to compete against FB & it is inevitable that a lot of forums like this one & facilities that people think of as free will inevitably wither away & eventually die.

I'll give Photobucket 6 months. The only thing they were ever any use for was 3rd party hosting & no one who used their site will pay a few hundred pounds a year for that privilege.

Sad but true.

At the moment my pictures are not affected, yet. A year after signing up for Photobucket I used up the "free" 2Mb of space so paid for some space for a small fee (considerable less than what is being asked now). I checked out the new terms and conditions and the plan that I have is not listed. However when they last changed the terms and conditions what I signed up for did not change, nor did my fee, so hopefully this time I will get lucky again. My next payment is due next April so that may be crunch time. If I do loose what I have there will be a lot of empty spaces on forums as it will be impossible to reload all the pictures that I have linked to another site.
It appears to me Photobucket is using a kind of "legal" RansomeWare obviously hoping that people will sign up so their pictures can be viewed again. I wonder if anyone will bring a legal challenge to what they have done?

I have tried flikr, and it does work, but is not as easy as photobucket to use. Also you always have to leave a link to you photos so it makes it easy for others to find all your pictures and nick them for their own use (Mini and British Lifestyle).

In the mean time I will plod on with photobucket.

Photobucket is using a kind of "legal" RansomeWare obviously hoping that people will sign up so their pictures can be viewed again.

This is EXACTLY what they are doing!

I have now signed up with flickr, but unfortunately I have no chance to change all the links in any historical posts, It really is bad what they have done and I don't expect many people to take them up at $399 per year.
Flickr may go the same way in the future but it really is a blow to forums as many historical how to guides are linked to photobucket pictures and these are effectively now useless,

surfblue63 wrote:I have tried flikr, and it does work, but is not as easy as photobucket to use. Also you always have to leave a link to you photos so it makes it easy for others to find all your pictures and nick them for their own use (Mini and British Lifestyle).

In the mean time I will plod on with photobucket.

I find photobucket much easier to steal your photos from! Right click on your photo, click "open image in a new tab" or equivalent Then it shows the user who uploaded the photo. Click on that... Tada!:
http://s710.photobucket.com/user/surfbl ... t=2&page=1 Flickr isn't too bad for me. You can do a couple of things if you want to protect your other images though:
Upload images as "private" and they will only be visible if you share them. You can also remove the linking from the image

Image as you copy the code. If you click on my name you can see all public photos I've uploaded:
IMG_3058 by timmy.beazley, on Flickr

Same image with linking removed:

That Boye guy keeps popping up in photos.

I have also just signed up with IMGUR and this appears better than Flickr it has an easy BBCode link very similar to photobucket

I'm sure I'm missing the point here but what's wrong with just using the image hosting on the forum, is it because of the size/quality restriction?

I guess not many of you guys who use Photobucket are photographers and use Photoshop Elements editor (or similar editing software) to resize and then save to your PC ?

I either do that or send the pics taken on my iPhone to myself as an email - low resolution - and then drag across from email to the forum.

Have to say though that Photobucket appear to be taking the piss and are going to lose loads of people. But then do they care if you aren't paying for their service

I'm sure I'm missing the point here but what's wrong with just using the image hosting on the forum, is it because of the size/quality restriction?

The biggest drawback with using the hosting on this site only is that it is finite, we are restricted to a total of 30Gb, 12.82 of which is already full. The 30Gb we have currently costs me (and the handful of people who contribute, to which I am most grateful) £57.40 a month. While using the forum's web space to host images is an option, images do gobble up large amounts of disk space & I would not be prepared to continue increasing the amount I pay to keep the forum going indefinitely.

Personally I have never used 3rd party image hosts, I just use the bit of web space that I am given with my ISP account. Once you get the hang of this it is easy to use & is to all intents & purposes free.

Ah, I see, well taking advantage of the space one's ISP provides seems the way forward, I'll look into ours.

Thanks again Mark, I'm sure if you brought the donation thread back to the top then people, including myself, would be happy to make another wee donation towards continuing this great site in the manner to which we're all accustomed

Ive just posted a couple of pic s using photobucket and although it's now pretty slow cos of all the bloody adware(!) it does work OK.

I think photobucket has just done a 'ratner' to their business......


Idiots

With respect, how on earth does it cost £57 a month for 30Gb? There appears to be lots of hosting packages out there that offer far more for far less.

As for this Photobucket thing, again there are other providers. But it's a real shame because I've just been onto Daz's Mk2 thread to reference something (on the other forum) and the photos have gone. Its a massive resource for so many of us that makes these forums so valuable.... and its just been pulled. I think this may now be the time to charge a small fee if that's what it takes to provide the storage to protect this resource.

Yeah i would be happy to pay a month/annual subscription/donation to use the forum and hosting service, that way as BLT says the pictures would always remain with the forum

Ahh, so am I to presume that posting up pics directly onto the forum uses up some of this 30gb space but using a hosting site such as Photobucket or Flickr doesn't ?

I'd also like to add Callum that your thread has been inspirational and extremely helpful too. Your car looks superb. In fact I'd like to thank all those who have been kind enough to post photos and descriptions of their projects. To be honest I'd be stuck without it. So for me, whatever it takes to keep that going is well worth it.