The Historic District

It seems Photobucket changed it's terms of service recently in regards to 3rd party hosting. On my journal blog I discovered I had used the "direct link" for all my pictures which has locked them. Using the "html" link still allows them to post. (For now)

*EDIT*
I just checked my journal site and the pictures that I posted using the straight HTML code are now blocked.
Here is a copy and paste from the new terms of service showing the only plan which allows 3rd party hosting:

o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.


To unlock the "direct link" feature means you must get the most expensive plus service which is hundreds of dollars a year. There is a work around. Here is an excerpt from my journal which I hope can help:

I get such enjoyment in posting my journal entries and pictures. It is a form of therapy for me in these horrible times. I did discover a “work-a-round” for posting pictures when the Photobucket was shaky using my Google Photos. I’ll share that technique here.

On the Google photo you want to post click on the “share” icon. That is the three dots connected with two lines.
On the window that pops up click on the “get link” button and copy that link.
Go to the website: https://ctrlq.org/google/photos/
Paste the picture link into the box and click on the “generate code” button.
Like magic you will get the code to post that allows pictures to show on any 3rd party site.

Hope this helps some.

"www.imgur.com" is another free hosting site like photobucket...faster to use, fewer ads....

I've been uploading to, and sharing images from photobucket for over 10 years. So, I'm just a little annoyed by this change.

I think one of the following things will happen:
1. Hopefully, photobucket realizes that this will put them out of business, and comes up with a more satisfactory solution.
2. Everyone will switch to other free photo sharing sites, and photobucket will go out of business.
3. The other free photo sharing sites will follow photobucket's lead, and also start charging to share images.

With #3 in mind, I'm just going to wait and see what happens, for now.

But, I should point out that this site has a gallery feature. In the past, I've continued to use photobucket, because it was easier. But, from now on, if I want to post pictures here, I'll use this site's gallery.

If you post your photos here then they will always be available to the site, no matter what.... You can put them in the gallery, or just add them as attachments to posts directly

Flickr still seems to operate as it always did. Photobucket has been slowly going downhill for several years - more and more pop up ads and the site is slow as molasses. This latest bit seems like a desperate attempt to stay afloat. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up getting swallowed up by someone else or folding altogether in the near future.

I agree that they've been going downhill. I originally took up with them because ImageShack had downage a bit too often (still does). The pricing for that unlimited linkage package is outrageous! I could buy a domain name and get more data storage on a shared server for less per year--from a reputable company even, not some fly by night run out of a garage.

I'm still debating what to do with all my "other" hobby images that got affected by this unannounced change. I still haven't gotten any e-mail notice from photobucket about this. You'd think they'd at least do that much!

I need to make a decision about what host to swap to, though. We'd be talking about putting a site together again, but I don't know if I'm ready for that yet.

Hot-linking is unwanted because it generates traffic, possibly lots of it, without forcing the viewers to look at ads. So from Photobucket's point of view it makes perfect sense to kill the direct embedding. Except that's the main reason why quite a few people even started using their serviced so I suspect they'll royally annoy many of their customers!

They already made a change a few years ago that re-directed anyone who opened a direct image link in the browser to the main album page with all the ads instead of displaying the actual JPEG file. That was the point where I pretty much stopped using their site for anything.

For my blogs, I save a copy of every post and every posted pic to dated files on my hard drive (& flash drive). Should anything happen to the blog or the pics, I have a copy...all is not lost.