PHOTOBUCKET JUST HALTED FREE 3rd PARTY SHARING!

Vanity ^ | 6/30/2917 | Dick Bachert

[Dick Bachert]

Need suggestions for another site offering FREE third party image sharing. Photobucket just informed me that they will continue to offer that for the modest sum of 400 bucks per year. Adios, PHOTOBUCKET! Thanks.

[Boomer]

What a pain. I haven’t gotten the notice yet but like many things; it can take days for everyone to be notified if they have a lot of people. I guess downloading everything on Photobucket is the thing to do now.

[LucyT]

get adblock.com and you won’t see ads.

works for me.

[Cementjungle]

Forgive a stupid question, but what is third party sharing?

I think they're referring to linking a photo in a web page, like in a post on FreeRebublic.

[Does so]

Bfl

[Viking2002]

I don’t do Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or any of that mindless social shit. I’m not so vain that I want everyone to know my personal business. I come to FR to learn something new, and vent. That’s about it.

[BlueLancer]

That’s what I was afraid of ... thanks.

[TXnMA]

Get your own web domain, find an ISP and host them there, yourself. That's what I do.

Use FTP for uploading the photos into a web-aaccessible directory. Then anyone can use their browser to view them. Or, of course, you can use the <IMG> HTML tag to imbed them in FR comments...

Works great for me; in fact, that is my web domain's sole function -- sharing graphics & data with colleagues...

[Boomer]

Something doesn't sound right about this whole thing.

www.photobucket.com/P500

I haven't seen anything about this and I use photobucket exclusively. Maybe I'm just not using enough to warrant having to pay for it.

Okay, if you go to Photobucket, log in, and click on "Plans" at the upper right hand corner you will see the various plans. The free one is allowed up to 2GB, the $6 a month allows 52GB, the $10 a month allows 102GB, and the 502GB of picture, video, and .gif storage is $40 a month. I have roughly a thousand pictures and .gifs on Photobucket but because I have been religious about resizing the pics before uploading them; it hasn't been an issue for me yet but I am bumping right up against the 2GB limit for the free service so I am going to delete stuff I haven't used in years.

Here's what you do: Download everything and resize the pictures then upload them at 35k size or so instead of 5 or 10 MB size you're probably using now. A ten MB picture would be equal to 100 pictures that have been downsized to 35k or so and on a webpage it generally looks the same or good enough. Host all videos on YouTube or some other video hosting site. The most important thing to do is get in the habit of resizing your pics down to a 600x800 pixel size so it is both forum, email, and photobucket friendly. I must warn you it will take a while to download your pics and stuff if you are over 500 GB. That's a lot!

Here's a free picture resizing program that will resize batches of pics at one time instead of one at a time. There are other handy free apps there too like renaming camera pics to the date and time. I know this will be a little difficult at first for some people stuck in their way of doing things but in no time you will be running your railroad the right way.

http://www.mihov.com/sw/en/ir.php

You do have one other option on resizing the pics and keeping the pics posted where they are using the same URL. Do it within Photobucket. Warning to the wise though; it will take a lot of time. Then when you save it; save it using the same URL as the original.

It would be handy if we could post a small-size picture here without a 3rd party or even have the forum software resize the picture automagically but I think that would take some serious and expensive programming. It would also mean making the storage capacity that much bigger which I think is already an issue.

By the way 3rd party in this context means you, the forum, and wherever it is you store the picture for hosting. To the hosting site like Photobucket; this forum would be the 3rd party.

[Boomer]

Correction: I'm using .2 of 2GB so even with a thousand pictures I still have 1.8 GB (or 9,000 pictures) to go before they will want money from me to host pics on places like FR. I'll never get there. I'd have to live another 100 years at the rate I'm posting. I've been using Photobucket and, like I said, resizing the pics for forum and email use, for at least 12 years and I'm only at .2GB. Of course the number of pictures hosted will be different everyone. I post fewer and fewer pics as the years roll by.

I misspoke before about using Photobucket exclusively. I keep family and vacation pictures at another hosting site. I just prefer the other format.

[Does so]

Yeah, I cancelled my account right away too. I'm goin to try this

I have hundreds on PhotoBucket: "They never disappear". :-/.

Looks like PhotoBucket is trying a new form of RansomWare!

[FatherofFive]

To the hosting site like Photobucket; this forum would be the 3rd party.

That is the issue. I started photobucket for the one reason of posting pics here. If that doesn't work anymore, I need to find a new site.

[ptsal]

Really useful information.

May I suggestion ALSO posting it on the FR section labeled “HTMLSandbox”.

Ciao.
ptsal

[Tunehead54]

4 REFERENCE

[Boomer]

That is the issue. I started photobucket for the one reason of posting pics here. If that doesn't work anymore, I need to find a new site.

Photobucket works fine. Any site is going to start charging for too much storage at some point so changing one way about how we put pics on a hosting site will fix everything but it has to be right from the beginning.

Resize the pictures to a size that will load quick on any webpage. If not; a person opening that page may need to wait while that one picture on the entire page downloads.

There's simply no reason to put a picture on Photobucket that's over 100kb; most should be less than half that. People don't realize just how big a 10MB picture really is. It would take 100 - 100kb pictures to equal one 10MB picture and there isn't enough clarity in the picture on a forum like this to tell the difference between the two. It's just wasteful. If a person is careful; they can put 40,000 pictures on Photobucket before they reach the 2GB threshold of them charging money at the time of this writing.

Regardless of what hosting site one uses; they need to use the simple practice of resizing the pictures before putting them up on the hosting site for use on this or any forum or to send by email.

For those of us who have been doing this for at least a couple decades; hard drive space and online storage space was precious and not to be taken for granted. Those good online practices are still needed today unless someone doesn't mind paying $400 a year to a company to host those pictures.

[Yaelle]

Imgur.com

[Yaelle]

Tinypic is such a blinking mess.

Imgur is fine for hosting pics for FR

[Yaelle]

Your site not bad. Imgur just as fast.

[Dick Bachert]

Boomer, Good info BUT it doesn’t solve the problem of losing the 3rd party posting thing.

[Dick Bachert]

EVERY image I’ve ever loaded to Photobucket is on my HD and backed up on a second, external HD and flash drives. All I’ll lose is the time to reload them to another site. Except for the few PERSONAL images — which shall begin deleting — the Bucket can keep them for all I care.

[TBP]

But you can still get a free membership, just with storage limits?