PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

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Simon Jones
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PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by Simon Jones » Sat Jul 01, 2017 9:15 pm

Just spotted this which was mentioned on another forum: https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photob ... edded-web/

A lot of us use PB to host pictures for this forum and it could have a big impact on things if they are no longer accessible.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by the1andonly » Sat Jul 01, 2017 10:27 pm

from that link
While other free services remain, it seems fairly likely that others will follow suit and start charging for hosting files too.

I've always found broken pictures a pain
one we will see more often.
Is it worth asking where do we go from here? as like simon i use pb.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by sotal » Sun Jul 02, 2017 11:08 am

I've been using imgbb, mainly due to the fact that I don't have to login upload images.

I wouldn't trust it to stay though.

The other option is to self host them on the forum server but then storage space and bandwidth have to be considered. I have found that restricting image size or automatically resizing images helps with self hosting and the bandwidth / storage space wasn't that bad.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by cmm303 » Sun Jul 02, 2017 11:36 am

I used PB purely because it was the suggested repository for this forum and covered in the guidance, and works!
I have always presumed that the forum required photos to be stored externally because of the significant impact on storage requirements.
the1andonly wrote:from that link
While other free services remain, it seems fairly likely that others will follow suit and start charging for hosting files too.

I've always found broken pictures a pain
one we will see more often.
Is it worth asking where do we go from here? as like simon i use pb.
Agreed, forum photos becoming broken, especially in high volumes, would devalue the historical info we have on hand and I suppose the only way to assure the service is for photos to be stored under the control of the forum. It might also make uploading and publishing photos much much easier.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by g8dhe » Sun Jul 02, 2017 2:33 pm

Its often the bandwidth that costs much more than the storage, actual storage is quite cheap, but the cost of the bandwidth when serving pictures is about 100-1000 times more expensive! This text on two lines is only 274 Bytes, but the same text as a picture is 29,255Bytes.

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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by Ian » Sun Jul 02, 2017 6:17 pm

Forums do not (usually) host their own photos because, as Geoff says, the bandwidth used in distribution. But there are security issues as well. I have copied this from a discussion on the ycombinator board (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669626)

Photobucket are within their rights to do this but it is really sad that so much of the message board culture is inaccessible because popular free image hosts tend to go away after a few years. I would lay money that 90% of posts over 10 years old have broken images.
The moral of the story is for forums to host images themselves, but nobody wants to do that because:
a) uploading files is annoying to implement and exposes the forum to security issues
b) storing the files can take a huge amount of disk space
c) serving the files can take a huge amount of bandwidth
d) the first message board to allow uploading files would just become a huge dumping ground of images for other boards to link to, necessitating implementing a referer block just like Photobucket
Personally I think that the message board developers have really dropped the ball by refusing to implement a really bullet-proof solution into their software by default. It is a hard problem but the only real solution is to host the images yourself. Third-parties are always going to let you down eventually because their goals do not align with yours.


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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by cmm303 » Wed Jul 12, 2017 9:41 pm

I've just received an email from PB about disabling the ability to publish photos on 3rd party sites.
Ian wrote:Forums do not (usually) host their own photos because, as Geoff says, the bandwidth used in distribution. But there are security issues as well. I have copied this from a discussion on the ycombinator board (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669626)

Photobucket are within their rights to do this but it is really sad that so much of the message board culture is inaccessible because popular free image hosts tend to go away after a few years. I would lay money that 90% of posts over 10 years old have broken images.
The moral of the story is for forums to host images themselves, but nobody wants to do that because:
a) uploading files is annoying to implement and exposes the forum to security issues
b) storing the files can take a huge amount of disk space
c) serving the files can take a huge amount of bandwidth
d) the first message board to allow uploading files would just become a huge dumping ground of images for other boards to link to, necessitating implementing a referer block just like Photobucket
Personally I think that the message board developers have really dropped the ball by refusing to implement a really bullet-proof solution into their software by default. It is a hard problem but the only real solution is to host the images yourself. Third-parties are always going to let you down eventually because their goals do not align with yours.


There may be trouble ahead!
Does this mean use personal cloud space? Almost certainly a cheaper option than the $399 upgrade required by PB and probably free for many. However we've seen the difficulty in, for example, working out how to publish from Google.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by Katka » Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:59 am

Does this mean use personal cloud space? Almost certainly a cheaper option than the $399 upgrade required by PB and probably free for many. However we've seen the difficulty in, for example, working out how to publish from Google.
and also risks loss of the Forum long-term memory if/when Users leave it. It seems the best solution might be for the Forum to host the images, but it comes with costs, which would not be welcomed, but the alternative might be worse.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by dvisor » Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:38 pm

Does this mean use personal cloud space? Almost certainly a cheaper option than the $399 upgrade required by PB and probably free for many. However we've seen the difficulty in, for example, working out how to publish from Google.
For now, I'm using dropbox on other forums I post on. Seems to be easier than using Google Drive - all you have to do is take the shared link from dropbox, and replace the trailing "dl=0" with "raw=1". eg

Code: Select all

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmw9229m1hnimtm/6TL0008602.jpg?dl=0
becomes

Code: Select all

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmw9229m1hnimtm/6TL0008602.jpg?raw=1
Like this...

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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by cmm303 » Sat Jul 15, 2017 3:00 pm

dvisor wrote:
Does this mean use personal cloud space? Almost certainly a cheaper option than the $399 upgrade required by PB and probably free for many. However we've seen the difficulty in, for example, working out how to publish from Google.
For now, I'm using dropbox on other forums I post on. Seems to be easier than using Google Drive - all you have to do is take the shared link from dropbox, and replace the trailing "dl=0" with "raw=1". eg

Code: Select all

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmw9229m1hnimtm/6TL0008602.jpg?dl=0
becomes

Code: Select all

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmw9229m1hnimtm/6TL0008602.jpg?raw=1
Like this...

Image
LIke what? No photo displayed for me! :lol:

[Edit] Picture suddenly appeared after posting this reply! :oops:
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by cmm303 » Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:52 am

It has started.
I see Simon's photos on a 2014 cruise control thread are now replaced with the Upgrade for 3rd Party Hosting shield. :twisted:
Checked a couple of mine and still ok, huh :lol:

Been thinking, apologies in advance if this is stupid.
Given that it is expensive on several fronts to host pics with the forum server, what about paying the fees to a 3rd party. e.g. What if there was a forum $399 account with Photobucket. I appreciate there are still control issues, limiting its use, preventing abuse etc etc. Maybe it is something that could be made invisible to us users by the forum software, if not immediately then as an improvement for the future.

Or perhaps there is another photo host that the forum software could automatically integrate with more easily?
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by g8dhe » Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:29 am

There are still lots of potential hosts, but what are they going to do in the future ?
I tend to use http://imgur.com/ for quick images on IRC, but nothing to say that they won't turn round in 6 months or longer and start charging for 3rd party access. Google photo's have already made it very difficult, if not impossible, to share via 3rd party sites.
However anything serious or long term I host myself, but that isn't an option for everyone.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by cmm303 » Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:37 am

I fully agree with you Geoff.
Which is why I was wondering about a forum "paid-for" account instead of flitting from one freebie to another as they flex their muscles and change their rules.
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by Muzorewa » Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:22 pm

Mine appear to be ok for the moment but I have been paying PhotoBucket $2.99/month, which I don't object to, because you lot were exceeding my quota looking at my tour photos. I'm not sure for the future what my $2.99 will get as I would definitely object to that fee being increased tenfold.

Changing to a different host would be very time-consuming as I'd have to paste replacement links for each image, and some tour reports have more than 500 photos in them :(
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Re: PhotoBucket to charge $399 a year

Post by sotal » Tue Jul 18, 2017 6:41 pm

I've been in this situation in the past with image hosting and the self host route really wasn't that expensive.

Someone like 1and1 will give you unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage space for £6.99 a month.

You can even get 100GB of storage space and unlimited traffic for £4.99 which I'm sure would be plenty of space.

If you are worried about hacking, then you can just create an image upload site on a separate domain using relatively cheap hosting. Then it would just be a case of recommending that people use that site for image hosting.

Just an idea
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