So, going by your analogy, who in their right mind has there only copies of their photos on a photo hosting site? To be lost when they fold up shop or charge too much?
No matter about my use of photobucket or any other site, every photo I have is on my hard drive and backed up several other places.
The real loss is wasted time…
Sheldon
I have done the same, so all it takes is time to post the photos to the forums again.
Perhaps the real question is “Do we need to spend the money to restore photos to old posts?”. I’m not seeing any requests to re-post photos from old threads. That would seem to make paying Photobucket to restore the images a waste of both time and money.
Dave
Sheldon,
I pay around $ 120 per year to an internet host for unlimited bandwidth and all kinds of bells and whistles. I host three sites there including my train site. There are reliable hosts that charge much less than mine does, I had to go with the premium package to get certain advanced options that most users wouldn’t need.
Hosting pictures on your own site would certainly be more work than PB, but not an insurmountable project once you have figured out how you are going to deal with the FTP software/code on your site.
I like the way MRH handles this with free server space on their site to host pics posted in their forums.
My PB pictures are still visible in posts - they haven’t cut me off yet. I’m wondering if they aren’t changing their mind and are leaving stuff up so they won’t be known as the company that broke forums across the web (a little late for that).
Guy
That’s contrary to the experience on the Trains and Classic Trains forums, and of course to the somewhat different situation at RyPN restoring lost photos in their articles section. The difference there is that the original posters were willing to go through and edit all the post links to new and better servers; one poster changing something like 734 separate links (and of course uploading each linked image to hosting first). I will go on record as saying I’d like to see every one of those photobucket images eradicated from posts here, to the point where we might begin to forget there was ever so wrongheaded an exercise. (If unwilling to repost all the images, at least link to a placeholder that indicates why the images are actually missing … I’ll bet there are some pretty good memes out there that get the message across.)
Yes, paying Photobucket anything for anything that will appear in posts here, considering the alternatives, is a waste of everything but the time spent doing the one-time – what was the phrase from ‘Word Processor of the Gods’ – deletion from our lives.
I’m not sensing the same desire to replace the lost images here. Has anybody gone to that trouble? I’ve thought about doing it but I’m not sure that the time and effort required would be worth it.
Dave
Yeah, I have Dave. While the two threads were neither earthshattering or ground breaking, I am conceited enough that I thought that they were worth the time replacing the images, besides I also considered that they contained good content (really Good Stuff) from other contributors.
I’ve also replaced my photo on a thread that was referenced recently.
Time is definitely an issue, but what I found a little tricky was, which photo did I originally use?[*-)]
While I’m merely repeating the obvious, “Photobucketitus” has made a lot of past threads, where members have taken their time to be helpful, virtually useless.
As this is a family show, I’ll leave my comment at that.
GRRRRR, the Bear.[:(!][:(!]
Being an old man, I don’t know much about photobucket but, this reminds me of the Union Pacific’s licensing debacle of the mid 1990s. They also got hit with such a “dirty blizzard” that they dropped the whole mess and simply gave the licenses away.
Gotta agree with you there, Sheldon. I always have backups for my photos, and I would never rely on an online storage site.
Rich
Wierd, because Doctor Wayne wrote this yesterday:
Doctor Wayne either figured out how to get to a real person or is also AI. Really the only two options I could see here.
On another forum I post on, for a totally different subject matter (GRAVELY garden tractors), users cannot edit posts after about 1 hour.
And I have a seven year, 62 page running instructional thread, the 2nd most viewed thread in that section of that forum.
So replacing all my photo links would require administrator help, would take dozens of hours, and the loss of that info would be a loss to that community.
Sheldon
I’m glade 98% of the photos I’v posted on other forums are from my picture files. They are still up. I do not like to depend on others (PB) to control what I do and can’t do. Still wish this Forum would let me upload pictures directly from my picture files and not have to link from another location, (a $middle man$). Tired of looking at that PB black speedometer. I have a very small amount of pictures on Flicker.
Your Fios terms of service prohibit running a server on a residential account.
From Verizon Online Terms of Service
" You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server."
Anyone interested can find the whole document here:
http://www.verizon.com/about/sites/default/files/Internet-ToS-09122017-ENGLISH.pdf
And there you have it, even more expense and more stuff I know too little about.
I’m a professional at what I do, and I am willing to pay professionals for what they do…
Sheldon
Ok, it has been mentoned about the cost of installing servers was X, I hope you relize that those servers were opsolete, probubly on day one. A modern server over lets say 20 years would be 2,129,088 times capasity of one back then and that is not even considering other factors. I hope you don’t think Photobucket still owns their own servers, they may but I doubt it. You also may not know that they disrupted e-bay sites, amazon sites and millions more or that they have another free site (or more) in their family.
Well, I’m certainly not “artificial”, and it’s probably best that I don’t address the “intelligent” part at all.
I was seriously considering abandonning photobucket when my “grandfathered” status expires, but, in my opinion, their $99.00/year option wouldn’t be all that out-of-line, considering the ease of use.
If I did opt out, I wouldn’t likely bother going to another provider…I enjoy sharing photos because it’s probably the best way to provide answers to questions, but it takes a lot of time, too.
As for rebuilding threads, I’ve done it extensively on Big Blue when our “Gallery” (an in-forum hosting site for photos posted within the forum) was removed. Photos posted there now can be from a site such as photobucket or Flickr, etc., or they can be added as attachments, although that requires the user to first re-size the photos - not that difficult.
We also lost a lot of photos there when some technical difficulties arose - don’t know the cause or details, but there were several threads there where the photos disappeared, but their identification remained visible. The one I remember best was a real-time exchange between a veteran modeller (the late biL Marsland, also a member here) and a relatively new, but very accomplished and committed member at Big Blue.
The latter built a large outbuilding for his layout and proceeded to duplicate scenes in his area - photos of the prototype locales and photos of the modelled version were stunningly similar. However, he needed a backdrop, and while a commercially-made photo backdrop, even as large as might have been required, was a possibility, biL suggested that it be painted.
The ensuing back-and-forth was possibly the best example I’ve seen
Photobucket made thousands of enemies when they changed their policy so I imagine their quest to bring people back is falling on deaf ears.
Buzz off PB.
It costs me $60 a year for my web hosting. But my provider has a plan for $30/yr that would easily fit most people’s photo posting. At one point I actually was running two different web sites on mine which is why I even upgraded from their most basic plan which is only $12/yr. Now I only have my one site, so I suppose I could back it down.
Depending on what size photos you post, even the $12/yr plan might be sufficient.
Domain names are about $10-$15 per year to register.
I use an old version of Dreamweaver to maintain my site, so there is the content on my provider’s server, a complete coppy of it on my local machine, which is backed up to my server, and all my pictures are also in the picture folder on my server which is replicated across at least 3 physical drives in the server plus backed up to an outside backup provider. Even if my web provider goes belly-up tomorrow (but I’ve been using them for at least 15 years now), my entire site won;t go away, and when I would re-establish it with another provider, all my broken images would be restored because the domain name is MINE.
–Randy
Sheldon,
We are getting a bit off topic and I’m not going to argue your contribution to the work back then. But today’s backbone providers and major companies are extremely sensitive to operating cost. They will upgrade networking equipment and servers if it delivers better efficiency. And the total estimated power draw hasn’t increased that much with the exception of a few outliers which are now stablizing. Now that company growth has moderated. Intel makes most of their money selling chips that consume a lot less power to companies even though they aren’t really faster.
And setting up your own server is a trivial task for a computer engineer like me. Install Windows. Set up port forwarding on the router. Install is and then choose among the home brews for image web servers. The hardest part is getting the site certificate and dns. Like I said it’s a half days work.
$100 a year might be alright for a business, but I’m moving everything to Imgur since it’s free and fast. Most of my major photos are moved now.
Don, I said in that post that I realize that improved hardware has offset increases in power needs - but it all had to be built in the first place, and it requires maintenance.
And if I wanted a web site I would pay someone like you, not struggle through it on my own.
I have a great IT guy.
But I don’t need or want that in my life. I have no desire to put my life, or my business on the web.
My business would not benefit from a web page, and I will repeat, I have no interest in having a personal site.
So, even at $400, it sounds like I am both TIME and money ahead with Photobucket…my time being much more important…
Sheldon