Trojan Boat Forum

All, Photobucket pulled the ability to link photos to third party sites, for example, this one. They sent me an email two days ago to upgrade to their "Plus 500" plan for $399 a year. I thought it might have been spam, but I had the same message when I logged into my account directly. I had been a member for 10 years and yanked my account this morning. I will get all my photo links re-established within the next week. Hopefully not to many other members are affected.

What do others use for photo linking on their threads?

I down load them from my PC/laptop rarely used photobucket . Sadly this is going ruin many threads here and on other sites .

Strange... I have not received and am not seeing any such message when I log in to photobucket, at least not yet...

I ignored the first email. When it arrived the next day is when I logged into my account directly. The message only popped up when I was in the Desktop version of the site. Along with a Change in Terms of Service notice. I have received the same email each day since Sunday.

Here is the text version of the email...

Some features on your account will be disabled.

WE NOTICED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN USING
PHOTOBUCKET FOR 3RD PARTY HOSTING*

PLEASE UPGRADE TO A PLUS 500 PLAN.

Our Terms of Service does not allow 3rd party hosting with your current account level.

*What is 3rd Party Hosting?
Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting.

Why Photobucket?
Photobucket is the global destination for linking and 3rd party hosting. In Photobucket’s 14-year history, the Company amassed over 100 million registered users, over 15 billion images stored, 2 million daily uploads and 10 billion photos accessed monthly.
Easy to Use – Upload a photo from any device and copy the embed code with one click to host a photo with no development or technical knowledge required.

Competitive, fixed pricing Offers the only unlimited 3rd party hosting plan (Commercial and Personal Use)

Are my pictures still safe?
Yes! All your photos are still available by logging into your Photobucket Account. Photobucket has only restricted the ability to view your photos on 3rd party sites.

Can I download my Photos?
Absolutely, at any time. It is an easy four step process:
Step 1. Login to your Photobucket Account
Step 2. Navigate to your library page
Step 3. View a photo and click the download button
Step 4. The picture will be saved to your computer

While I understand the need to make a profit , going from free to $500 is nuts . There won't be many takers . if they did 10 bucks I bet they would have a lot of folks willing to pay and they would make a profit . There are others that offer the same services . I don't see this as working out for them as they are doing it now .

Had I been doing this for business, sure I would paid the $399. As a personal user, probably $50. Above that and it's just not worth it.

That's a bummer.

For any new photos, try using IMGUR. They are free and work well. I post all of mine through that.

I got the same notice, and will be moving my photos to keep my threads alive.

It's a bit of a surprise, they must be wanting to get out of the business...cause nobody going to pay that price to host a few photos.

My son is a geek, I'll find out what the alternatives are and report back.

Thanks Barrie. You are definitely in the same "boat" as me.

lol, I have a lot to lose, the last 3 years of my life is on this forum and photo bucket.
I'm way behind on updates for my project

captainmaniac wrote:Strange... I have not received and am not seeing any such message when I log in to photobucket, at least not yet...

ZAP!! Looks like I am gone now.

I received the same message today as well. That's allot of years worth of photos down the tubes.

I don't believe they are gone , You just can't put them on a 3rd party site free any more . But I would down load any that are there before they charge for that

From what I can tell the pictures and links are still there but the pictures that show up on forums are gone. Definitely annoying

Yes, the pictures are still there. AND THEY STILL PROMOTE EMBEDDING LINKS IN TO WEB PAGES OR OTHER!!! Which they now refuse to support!

Think they have messed with their processing of links to point them all to the 'Please Upgrade' graphic.

Might be possible to change the URL in existing posts to point to a URL that will still show the picture, but a TON of work to find and fix all links in all posts on the site...

I doubt bitching at them will do any good, but gonna try anyways. If they get enough complaints, they may reverse course.