Photobucket hosting ban!!

[petecossie]

I imagine I'm not the only one to suffer with this. They have send out an e-mail (I got mine yesterday) to say that terms and conditions have changed and that free 3rd party hosting not allowed unless you change to I believe a monthly subscription. Seems a bit like blackmail to me.

I've deleted a large number of pictures from my bucket to see if that makes any difference to whether I still have the "temporary ban".

I've used Photobucket for years and it has been getting more & more difficult to use with the constant pop up ads. Maybe a good chance to move somewhere else.

So folks which is the best FREE image hosting site?

Looks like a lot of photos on this forum might unfortunately eventually disappear as people say sod it, they are not getting money from me.
They certainly won't get any from myself.

 

[mwpe]

I gave up using Photobucket years ago, it is not a safe site. You don't need a hosting site to post on here.

 

[GazHyde]

If you Google "photobucket 3rd party hosting" you will see an endless list of forums with the same question asked. In my opinion none of them are any good, they will change their terms and conditions on a whim, and one of the things in that T&C is that they reserve the right to change them on a whim.

Here at Zorg we are setup to encourage images to be uploaded on to our server, either as a thread attachment or in to the media section where appropriate. I maintain that if it's something that you are posting here it should be uploaded here. In fact we have just over 52,000 images attached directly (around 9GB of disk space once they are compressed and resized). No idea on how many others are hosted elsewhere and linked to on here though.

So, the best is technically here! Images uploaded to the media gallery can be hot linked out to other sites as well, in fact I do that quite a lot. Obviously we aren't going to host your holiday photos, just your Zed images.

For personal use, whichever service you choose just make sure you read their T&Cs carefully, and expect the free services to change them whenever they want to whatever they want!

/rant over

 

[Pingu]

If you Google "photobucket 3rd party hosting" you will see an endless list of forums with the same question asked. In my opinion none of them are any good, they will change their terms and conditions on a whim, and one of the things in that T&C is that they reserve the right to change them on a whim.

Here at Zorg we are setup to encourage images to be uploaded on to our server, either as a thread attachment or in to the media section where appropriate. I maintain that if it's something that you are posting here it should be uploaded here. In fact we have just over 52,000 images attached directly (around 9GB of disk space once they are compressed and resized). No idea on how many others are hosted elsewhere and linked to on here though.

So, the best is technically here! Images uploaded to the media gallery can be hot linked out to other sites as well, in fact I do that quite a lot. Obviously we aren't going to host your holiday photos, just your Zed images.

For personal use, whichever service you choose just make sure you read their T&Cs carefully, and expect the free services to change them whenever they want to whatever they want!

/rant over

The same could apply to you. If you were offered £10M to sell the rights to the site, the new owners could "do a photobucket" and the hot-linking to other sites would be lost.

The ONLY solution is to host them yourself. I pay about £40 per year. You could do it for free in other places, but any free site could "do a photobucket". Worse than the photobucket model is the facebook model where you give them the rights to the image, even after you have deleted it. So a beautiful photo of your Z, taken by you, can be the next mega poster on bedroom walls and you will get none of the dosh.

 

[t-tony]

A similar thing did happen to @Antm72 if I remember right. An eBay add?

Tony.

 

[GazHyde]

The same could apply to you.

There is no perfect solution to this, irrespective of where you host images on any hosted internet service. All I'm saying is, is that if you post images here the best solution is to upload them here (with the side effect of being able to hotlink elsewhere).

Self hosting is great, but beyond a lot of people technically. I have my personal stuff spread across 3 separate cloud providers for redundancy.

As for the £10mil... I'll settle for £5mil

 

[5harp3y]

@GazHyde

can we get the forum to accept my photos (10mb+) or is there a cap for a reason?

 

[GazHyde]

@GazHyde

can we get the forum to accept my photos (10mb+) or is there a cap for a reason?

There is a limit set, but I can raise it. One they are resized and compressed on upload they are less then .5mb on average.

I'll try and remember for when I'm home.

 

[Antm72]

A similar thing did happen to @Antm72 if I remember right. An eBay add?

Tony.

My old zed was used in an eBay add for a suspension kit the images on photo bucket are public but can not be used in retail by a business .
When I contacted them it was removed .

 

[5harp3y]

There is a limit set, but I can raise it. One they are resized and compressed on upload they are less then .5mb on average.

I'll try and remember for when I'm home.

thanks dude

 

[Dino D]

Google drive/picasa is pretty cheap I believe.

 

[GazHyde]

Aaaargh, first one I've noticed in someones signature...

 

[gookah]

I use Flickr, but pay a subscription.

 

[Mnbrennan]

All mine are gone

 

[Cheddars]

Some of mine have gone on my progress blog, but not all. Kinda sucks as it's ruined it

 

[t-tony]

I opened an account for the Z4Forum, but still couldn't get the hang of posting pictures. This what I really like about this site, it's made for those of us with less IT nouse.

Tony.

 

[Brian H]

I have a whole load of photos on Photobucket 1000+ Zed related (sad I know), this sucks. Photobucket has been becoming more difficult to use over the last 6 - 12 months but to have to retrospectively go back and re enter photo links to another hosting site is a task in itself! I see mine are still showing at the moment but who knows for how long, I used to pay a subscription to PB so I am hoping there is a bug in their script that keeps my 3rd party hosting online.

With regard to privacy on PB, unless you make your albums private they are free to use by anyone, on a non commercial basis, I sadly made most of my albums private because of this!

 

[Althulas]

I used TinyPic easy to use and a easy app to use on your phone but seems a no brainier to use the site here from now on.

 

[Redline]

I have a whole load of photos on Photobucket 1000+ Zed related (sad I know), this sucks. Photobucket has been becoming more difficult to use over the last 6 - 12 months but to have to retrospectively go back and re enter photo links to another hosting site is a task in itself! I see mine are still showing at the moment but who knows for how long, I used to pay a subscription to PB so I am hoping there is a bug in their script that keeps my 3rd party hosting online.

With regard to privacy on PB, unless you make your albums private they are free to use by anyone, on a non commercial basis, I sadly made most of my albums private because of this!

I've always used Flickr because of the copyright restrictions they impose. I regularly see great images posted directly to FB, but you're simply handing over any rights to them in doing so. It's worth paying a little to have the storage and protection.
Google has a feature that searches the web for your images. You can see if it has been used without permission.

 

[Redline]

It looks like you're ok with using photobucket until you actually go into your account there. As soon as the system sees any direct activity from you they throw new terms at you and, I suspect, suspend use of any of your images in a linked way.
Have updated my signature image to one I just uploaded in Media on here as Gz suggested.