CountryPlans Forum

General => General Forum => Topic started by: hpinson on July 02, 2017, 06:46:32 PM

Title: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 02, 2017, 06:46:32 PM
This is an important message regarding the health of this forum. We are very interested in your input.

PhotoBucket, the image sharing service that many of you rely on, has started charging for image linking, and is charging what we consider an exorbitant amount - $399 a year per user.

This policy was implemented by PhotoBucket a few days ago without warning, and as of now, a large number of your existing topics that link to PhotoBucket images have gone "dark".  Your topic text and replies still exist here, but the images are replaced with a link to the PhotoBucket P500 subscription service that allows image linking.

The images you have posted are in a large part the value of this forum. We are by no means the only forum to be affected by this. Many other forums and blogs have suddenly been devalued - consider the time and effort people go through here to document their cabin projects!

We are considering what to do about this.

1. We would like to hear your ideas.

2. If possible, move your images to another reliable hosting service. At this point we cannot recommend you maintain any relationship with PhotoBucket. Imgur, Google Photos, DropBox, FaceBook, and ImageShack have been suggested as commercial alternatives, and may or may not involve a fee.

3. Relink the images stored on your new hosting service in your topics.  We will be providing direction on how to do this shortly, and recognize for some this is a Herculean task.

All that said, there is no guarantee that this will not happen again (as many of us learned from MySpace). These are all commercial image storing services. What is free now, may not be free, or may not even exist, in the future.

Please keep this in mind: we at CountryPlans are constrained by costs of server hosting, and bandwidth. This forum is solely financially supported by one person, John Rabbe, who to date, has wanted to keep the forum entirely free. It is also supported by a few volunteer administrators who are passionate about it and mostly donate their time.  Like many online forums, we are at the edge of what we can support financially. Not allowing direct photo uploads to date has been a financial decision.

Your comments on this will be taken under consideration.

-- Harlow
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Policy Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Tickhill on July 02, 2017, 07:33:17 PM
I personally find this forum extremely informative and without pictures to reinforce ideas/concepts, well it just would not be the same.
I would contribute financially to this forum if the opportunity presented itself, I am sure that I am not by myself.

Tickhill

Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Policy Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: DaveOrr on July 02, 2017, 08:07:52 PM
I have been linking to my Facebook images more and more as Photobucket's service has gotten worse and worse.
I have been downloading my albums off PB and when I'm done I will be deleting my PB account.
Had enough of PB issues.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MushCreek on July 03, 2017, 04:46:29 AM
I closed my PB account yesterday. Luckily, I have all of the photos saved, but all of my threads on various forums are trashed. I don't plan on using another hosting site, free or not. I'm old and cranky, and it would be a ton of work to restore those threads. My build thread here didn't generate all that much interest anyway, as it wasn't your typical small house/cabin build. I used to use the link to my build to interested folks, but no more. Once bitten, twice shy. If you want to look at pics of my build, c'mon over, I'll put the coffee on, and we'll look through my photo albums, like God intended.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 03, 2017, 11:50:14 AM
I would add that Google Photos no longer allows direct linking.  It used to back when it was "picassaweb".  But not any more.  Luckily, the photos that I added this way still show up (although sometimes rotated for some reason).  But google photos is not an alternative to photobucket.

$399/yr?  Wow!!
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: NathanS on July 03, 2017, 12:34:10 PM
Just posting a test image from google photo. I think some users have successfully been posting from there, it is not user friendly, though.

I added this photo to a shared album, and then from that shared album, I right clicked the image and selected copy image address.

Image is loading from Chrome Incognito mode, would like to know if you all can see as well.

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sSiCv22EIk6JrUG1NMd0yAQ9cXu8M7aICSLNRLZDlM0j5vI8g7ift-erzgQoDSJi2ZEdw5H-iPSJCmfQn6ENRxLSOcjQXe-KJSvyQ3szqXDacU_hl00PPJOk5jTRQKFXysLE5AxCXYGQK0qhtwQ22vsc5zCAptBPHzp6-WJqu5BZZXRoLsBsOrcXl7XY5PKyXaommj8iNlygITvDPixCSxHhxL0A_-usm6HwTJcG-xbLyT8FbCrwTAerqxBUvalk9XCDpufchf51qfAtz6ybTJzvy2k9YNuaMdyyCaqE1PfqBptK8qHy0i2mEfHVGFVdMnPjgKIaJoe8di8vXVRCQT997f5hE7zRo-og6uZHlkOMTO6nQSbm6oVt-L8vkAtVp3xjUEmvweG8VeqhoPaFiDuwUshxctZIW2NX0TTDLhtJPySV8PRFVt9sraLDrPcHStQZUNQpK3J5rfy9TEVdEWke_j6KH8J99CpKKO8ErjkV0bAlFp3g-E9NOPA6_WwUA-Wd82FjhuNMhDJR4ZIx737_fcTjWZaSXQTkeOfTR6QpMgTd0Z0MTTLtofYfvaK3730_DXtCLDRfiJ2VqP8lERCQcEwD2rn4pBs5jc20_K4HFQ=w1350-h1012-no)
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 03, 2017, 01:19:14 PM
My understanding is that those links are just temporary and don't last.  I guess we will find out in a couple days ;-)

All my links in my project threads (and yes, will start building this year!  Will probably be hoping for your comments Nathan since I am in NYS, too) are from google photos, so I was doing a lot of research on this.

For example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39508631/how-to-get-direct-permanent-link-to-public-image-on-google-photos
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 03, 2017, 07:10:10 PM
Quote from: NathanS on July 03, 2017, 12:34:10 PM
...would like to know if you all can see as well.

Nope... just a circle with a bar through it.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 03, 2017, 08:11:42 PM
Saw it for awhile, then just the circle with bar through it.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: NathanS on July 03, 2017, 09:35:19 PM
Yeah looks like SouthernTier was spot on, it lasted a few hours and doesn't work anymore. The link to stackoverflow says as much. The Google Archive doesn't seem like a great long term option either.

In some ways all this doesn't surprise me. The internet is not the same place it used to be, everything is being amalgamated and and billions of dollars are being spent on monetizing everything into a perverse customized billboard.

Imgur is a good option for now, wouldn't surprise me if that changes in the future. Otherwise Don P suggested somewhere paying for your own web host, which would be the safest option. This really all does put a new perspective on 'cloud storage.' Definitely need to read the small print.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: UK4X4 on July 05, 2017, 12:52:38 PM
Imgur.........terms

"Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it."

Google I can't get to work
Facebook used to work, but can't get that to work now either

Forums as we know it sadly may have finished.....with no pics the builds and threads we spent 1000's of hours writing and explaining become as useful as Teletext "oracle" or even the older Minitel services

Looks like I might need to dig out my 386 win 3.1 PC and start relearning DOS

Every forum on the planet is affected and as all the other pic hosting people are seemingly all adopting new rules, forums my have become obsolete, unless they can generate enough funds to be able to become independent from 3rd parties, the big companies seem to be channelling us into their platforms in order to "rule" the internet

I'll keep trying to find a hoster that works and report anything I find....I have a website I set up for the wife, I need to see if I can hide some photos on there
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 05, 2017, 01:02:21 PM
I was talking about this with John Rabbe the other day. Similar conclusion.

At this point I am even hesitant to recommend a particular image hosting service. Letting members make there own decision as to image hosting moving forward might be a way of mitigating risk of relying on one particular service.

Maintaining my own small website has allowed inexpensive and so far reliable image hosting for me. Just purchase a cheap hosting plan, create a folder on the web server through the control panel, and dump your images.  If you keep the same name, you just need to change the absolute URL and path.

Some really cheap services, like Dreamhost, disallow hotlinking in their terms of service, but to date have not seemed to enforce if you are not abusing, and I don't think anyone here is.  Not sure about GoDaddy hosting - it costs about $10 a month.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 05, 2017, 02:49:34 PM
Looks like Photobucket forgot to take down this how-to:
https://support.photobucket.com/hc/en-us/articles/200724424-Linking-to-Forums

It obviously wasn't previously contrary to their terms.  Maybe they will say now it only applies to the P500 accounts (doesn't currently)

I guess I can kind of understand PB's or Imgur's policies (but would think they would grandfather existing images in like PicassaWeb did), but I am miffed that Google Photos is doing this, too.  Google Photos is *not* really "free".  Sure I don't pay anything for my web storage (but may have to pay if I go over a limit), but Google makes their money by knowing all about me.  All these photos are automatically copied to their server from my android phone.  I have a gmail account. A Youtube account, etc.  They know what I search for.  I made the decision to let Google know a certain amount about me in exchange for their services.  Obviously, that information is valuable to them.  They already have the photos stored online (this is default for Androids I believe), and there are ways to share them, just not as direct links.  Bandwidth costs my add up if the links are being dumped full-res onto every forum pageview, but again, that's a small price to pay for the information they have about me.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: takemorepills on July 05, 2017, 02:54:53 PM
Very sad development, however the "writing was on the wall" for several years at PB.  PB became severely annoying to deal with when all of the aggressive ad tactics started occurring.

I have over a decade of helpful forum posts, from restoring vintage stereo equipment, engine swaps, vehicle modifications, etc detailed by pics hosted on PB. It will all be lost. Not to mention all of the help others have provided and I have sought on this forum.

My local news websites have just begun to start behaving like PB also. Ads that suddenly overtake the news article and start playing unwanted video at 11pm at night while the wife is trying to sleep.

The internet will destroy itself this way.

Time to renew my library card and become friends with the local officials at the permit offices!
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: archimedes on July 05, 2017, 03:15:37 PM
What a shame that so many of the archived threads have lost their pictures.  It was really nice to be able to refer back to something you saw in a past thread for reference.  Now all gone. >:(
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 05, 2017, 03:58:49 PM
Quote from: archimedes on July 05, 2017, 03:15:37 PM
What a shame that so many of the archived threads have lost their pictures.  It was really nice to be able to refer back to something you saw in a past thread for reference.  Now all gone. >:(
I just fiddled around and saw that if you really want to refer back to something, you still can.  You can't just browse the forum looking at pics, but if you see a post and want to see the picture, right click on the stupid, blurry "upgrade to P500" image, and select "open image in a new tab" or "open link in new tab" (at least on chrome, probably something similar in other browsers.  That will then open up the photobucket page with the image (and all of their ads, etc. which is why they allow that to still work).

And if you right click on the photo on that tab, and select "open image in a new tab", you can still get to the bare image.

Lots of steps, but all the retained knowledge is not lost if someone wants to go back and check on how someone did something.

I guess this is a reason *not* to delete your PB account even if you are rightfully pissed off.   Unless you plan on relinking all your photos (99% chance of *not* happening), probably leaving things as is would be best. 
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Don_P on July 05, 2017, 04:24:50 PM
Basically if a forum cannot host its own photo gallery it's going to lose that content, which I think we've all known all along. What would it cost to do that for this forum? Are we willing to view images as being for the immediate time without thinking you are writing for some future reader?

Although I am keeping my photos on my own website, this is my 4th website for that stuff, so that is not necessarily stable either. One went under, one changed terms, one got hijacked, and I'm on #4.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 05, 2017, 05:33:52 PM
I am playing with some options.  I just created a fake wix free webpage and inserted an image into the existing template.
Below I am linking to that image...   

(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/14092b_5bc59bb7e85f4960bdc59b1d5b70ed77~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_600,h_400,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/14092b_5bc59bb7e85f4960bdc59b1d5b70ed77~mv2.webp)

I wonder how many you can link to and if they would complain at some point?
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 05, 2017, 05:37:55 PM
Quote from: Don_P on July 05, 2017, 04:24:50 PM
What would it cost to do that for this forum?

I wonder the same thing.  Can someone give us an estimate how much per year this would cost, and then maybe we could do a small survey to see who might be willing to donate.  I mean, if there are enough of us, would it be very expensive each?  If it were voluntary donation, the donators can get a special title - and it remains free for the general public. 
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: stricsm on July 05, 2017, 05:55:00 PM
Another forum that I participate in uses postimage.org.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MountainDon on July 05, 2017, 06:30:14 PM
Quote from: Adam Roby on July 05, 2017, 05:37:55 PM
I wonder the same thing.  Can someone give us an estimate how much per year this would cost, and then maybe we could do a small survey to see who might be willing to donate.  I mean, if there are enough of us, would it be very expensive each?  If it were voluntary donation, the donators can get a special title - and it remains free for the general public.

While I am not sure of the cost I can say that the text and code info that tells a single page how to be displayed might only be 200 KB but if there are 10 images on the page each image could be 200 KB or more. That is partly dependent on how the image sizes might be limited. As things were with photobucket, some users stored huge size files on PB which caused a large bandwidth use for PB. The increased bandwidth use id images were stored on the countryplans server could be substantial.  Perhaps Harlow can give us a better idea. That extra bandwidth gets used every time the page is loaded by someone. Exceptions would be images that get loaded to the computer cache; if the info is still cached and that same user re-loads the page the page would use the cache. However, if someone is clicking through a build thread they could use a lot of bandwidth.

Storing and serving images on the countryplans server would only help with future posts unless somebody took the time to download the images from PB, upload them to the CP server and then correct all the links.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: azgreg on July 05, 2017, 06:54:32 PM
Quote from: stricsm on July 05, 2017, 05:55:00 PM
Another forum that I participate in uses postimage.org.

Just signed up and gave them a try.

(https://s20.postimg.org/s2k4mlv8t/rickxr2.jpg) (https://postimg.org/image/yt0lw1ieh/)

So far so good.  :)
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MountainDon on July 05, 2017, 07:21:25 PM
Another thing that would need addressing if we were to have the images uploaded to the countryplans server is the file size. We can set limits to the maximum file size that could be uploaded to help minimize bandwidth use. However, as things sit that would mean users would have to have the skill to resize their camera originals as the present forum software will not downsize images that are uploaded. There are websites that can be used to do that but extra steps make it less user friendly.

azgreg, is that a TD you built?

Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: azgreg on July 05, 2017, 07:45:32 PM
Nope. It belongs to rickxr2 over at TNTTT. I love the shape though.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 06, 2017, 10:29:55 AM
Well, several things.

The owner has specifically said he wants to keep the site free and does not want to accept donations. That may change, but at the moment it has not.

I don't believe there is any mechanism for accepting donations. That mechanism would have to be created, both legally and physically.

The owner is right now at the limit of what he is willing to pay monthly. We are on a quality host, and that is not inexpensive.

We have 50GB of disk space.   File upload size can be limited.  Users would need to know/ learn how to make their (say) 24MG photos MUCH smaller. We could limit uploads to say 3MB and probably go a long time. At some point the disk would fill and we would need to purchase more resources.

We average about 70GB of transfer a month. At this point we have excess bandwidth, and can support modestly sized image uploads. We would have to monitor closely. If we exceed our allocation, then we have no mechanism to pay for that.

I should point out that I am not trying to discourage any of this.  These is just our current situation.

-- Harlow


Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: azgreg on July 06, 2017, 10:40:15 AM
We were discussing Photobucket on another forum and some guys there said they weren't having any issues like this with their free account. I downloaded a pic to my Photobucket page just now.

(https://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm260/azgreg22/framing_zpsk8u7d4uf.jpg) (https://s298.photobucket.com/user/azgreg22/media/framing_zpsk8u7d4uf.jpg.html)

Lets see how long it stays up.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: glenn kangiser on July 06, 2017, 11:18:51 AM
I already lost a lot of my pictures to Yahoo when they did similar years ago.  Even at that time I could not remember which images I had where.

I don't believe it is possible for me to go back and redo even if I had the time. 

That is the reason I will not put anything on the cloud today.  Extortion or blackmail by the internet providers who now have our content.

I have used Facebook recently successfully but I don't even know if those links still work or will keep working in the future.  :(
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 06, 2017, 11:30:28 AM
AZGreg, some PB servers are still serving images. Most are not, and replace your image with an ad that redirects to their new PB500 plan. Change to terms of service are real.

Only hotlinking is affected. That has been disallowed without subscription to their $400 year plan.  Image storage appears to still be available at a much lower price.

The company, from reports, seems to be in disarray right now.  Not sure what is going on, but our recommendation is to get out of PB while you can.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 06, 2017, 11:31:42 AM
Glenn - we are exploring allowing limited size photo uploads - have to see what John and Don have to say about that.

What is your opinion?
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: azgreg on July 06, 2017, 11:55:47 AM
hpinson, all my stuff has been saved and removed from pb except for a few images like the one above. I have all my images on a portable hard drive at home. I'm looking at having my own website though for photo hosting.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 06, 2017, 12:03:16 PM
Nice. That's what I do too.  There's cost, but at least you know it won't disappear.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 06, 2017, 12:57:59 PM
Quote from: azgreg on July 06, 2017, 11:55:47 AM
hpinson, all my stuff has been saved and removed from pb except for a few images like the one above. I have all my images on a portable hard drive at home. I'm looking at having my own website though for photo hosting.
I can understand people wanting to delete their PB accounts, as this was such a bush league move.  They could have at least grandfathered in old photos.

But as I pointed out in my previous post (http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=14736.msg192352#msg192352) the images are still accessible by a right click.  So ideally, if people have some good stuff up there that would help out other owner-builders, it would be great to leave the photos on PB (unless the old posts are going to be edited to point to a new source).  Will still be lousy browsing old threads, but at least the information won't be lost.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 06, 2017, 02:25:17 PM
Good point.

I'm personally hacked off with them for springing this on the world with out any warning, and breaking so many content rich forums... to the point where I would not want to do business with them. The douchebaggary is great here.

But what you describe works well.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: glenn kangiser on July 06, 2017, 03:42:48 PM
Hosting here with small images could be a plan, but I'm afraid it might be a bit more complicated than most would want to deal with.

Possibly we could link an image resizer they could get onto using.... or maybe find some other easy way.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MountainDon on July 06, 2017, 04:19:22 PM
Images don't have to be any larger than 700 or 800 pixels in either width or height and can be limited to under 200 KB and still display fine on most monitors. That's my opinion. It is the resizing that becomes the issue as the SMF software will not resize, though it can be set to limit upload file size and the image dimensions. By limit I mean the software will refuse the upload.

Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MountainDon on July 06, 2017, 04:36:18 PM
Info gleaned from another forum... "If you were a Plus Account subscriber in good standing as of June 1, 2017,
you will continue to have all the privileges you have enjoyed including 3rd Party Hosting until December 31, 2018 as long as you maintain your subscription."
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 06, 2017, 05:17:29 PM
Glenn and Don, I checked our hosting plan.  We have 3TB monthly transfer - anything over that kicks us to the next level plan which is a no-no cost-wise for John.  Unfortunately the host does not charge per-gigabyte overage - you just bump up to the next level of plan cost. We average around a terabyte a month transfer over the last few years, down a bit lately. Our disk size is 50GB.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: glenn kangiser on July 06, 2017, 06:33:11 PM
Seems to me it would be easy to wipe out the 50GB disc in a short period of time, but I'm not sure about small images.  I'm a data hog and have 160GB on my cell phone I have to be careful with.   ???
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 07, 2017, 01:09:52 PM
I never paid much attention to images in forums before.  I don't frequent a lot of them, but I do visit another build-it-yourself forum, but this one is about speaker cabinets, not cabins.  I noticed there that almost all the images are from postimages.org (http://postimages.org). 

After the PB fiasco, I would be hesitant to rely on any third party long term, but this outfit seems like it is a good fit for forum images.  Their terms of conditions (http://postimages.org/terms) specifically allows it.

Here is the interesting thing:  in its terms, it suggests

QuotePlease keep the images embedded into third-party websites wrapped in links back to the corresponding HTML pages at our site when possible. The outgoing link should lead the user directly to our web page without any interstitial pages or interruptions. This allows your users to get access to the full-resolution images, and also helps us pay our bills.

And it seems that's what everyone does at that forum (although I don't think it is a rule).  I can't give a direct link to the forum other than  this: http://greenboy.us/forum/ which only shows the welcome forum (you have to join to see the real content), but here is a link to a PDF of one of the pages (http://trailmap.us/greenboy%E2%84%A2%20enclosures%20-%20View%20topic%20-%201_4_%20round%20over%20corners.pdf).  As you can see, on this PDF (generated from Chrome so it saves the hyperlinks -- go ahead and click on the picture), the image is only a thumbnail, but you can click on it to get the full image.  Just click on the "share" button and select "thumbnail for forums"

Here it is in action (same picture - not mine - as in the PDF):

(https://s8.postimg.org/hkptwwpm9/image.jpg) (https://postimg.org/image/hkptwwpm9/)

This significantly cuts down the bandwidth postimage.org needs to use, lets users see the (not too small) thumbnail, and has a link to the fulls size image.

I know you said at this point you don't want to recommend a service, but if you were to, this seems like the way to go.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 08, 2017, 03:59:23 PM
That would work well. I don't think we would want to require it - i.e. the bandwidth on our end for displaying linked images is adequate.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MountainDon on July 08, 2017, 07:55:36 PM
An interesting observation. If you use a Chrome browser, right click on one of those PB ransom images and select "search Google for image" the results list comes up noting "About 25,270,000,000 results (1.29 seconds)"
  That's a lot of webpages with missing images.  Blogs, personal sites, forums, review sites, food & recipe sitesyou name it and it's there.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 09, 2017, 08:32:37 PM
My account finally quit...  now to go recover... ugh. 
I never did a build thread, but I guess I'll start with my cottage since its recent and work back.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 09, 2017, 08:55:12 PM
Damn...  I thought I could right-click and have it bring me to the image, save it locally, upload to new site, and fix the link.  When I go to photobucket directly, I still see that same "3rd party hosting" error.  There's no way to know what image you had posted where.  Am I missing something?
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 09, 2017, 09:13:11 PM
Here are the steps I did to relink my images to a new site.

1) Create an imgcur account. Create a public folder called forum.
2) Go to your build thread.
3) Locate the first post with bad image, right-click the image and select "Open in new tab".
4) The image may not even show, ignore that and click the "Download" link under OPTIONS.
6) Save the image to a new folder somewhere, maybe give it some meaning so you can recognize it later.
7) Go to your imgcur account, click the "Add Image" button.  Once uploaded, select the new image and on the right-hand side copy the "BBCode (Forums)" link using the "Copy" button.
8) Go back to your post, select "Modify" and replace the photobucket address with the one from imgcur (should be in your clipboard).

(Trying to make this as user friendly as possible)
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 10, 2017, 11:05:03 AM
Thanks Adam.
[cool]
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: SouthernTier on July 10, 2017, 11:16:41 AM
Quote from: Adam Roby on July 09, 2017, 09:13:11 PM
Here are the steps I did to relink my images to a new site.

1) Create an imgcur account. Create a public folder called forum
....

By imgcur do you mean imgur?  If so, UK4x4 in this post (on page 1): http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=14736.msg192342#msg192342 quoted their terms of service that expressly using it for putting images on 3rd party websites.  They apparently haven't blanket enforced it the way photobucket did, but if one is going to go to the work of changing to a new provider, imgur may not be the way to go.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 10, 2017, 11:41:23 AM
It is worrysome. Some big sites like Reddit rely on Imgur as image host. My own observation is that, at least to date, it is very selectively enforced.  That could always change.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: NathanS on July 10, 2017, 12:45:30 PM
Imgur was created for reddit. Strange the terms would prohibit 3rd party hosting now.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: hpinson on July 10, 2017, 03:19:03 PM
Well a few things have been discussed that should be shared:

1. We are not able to directly host images at this time at the Countryplans.com forum.  We don't have the financial resources to support the disk space and bandwidth.

2. For the time being we will not seek donations to help support the forum.  It's a is a good idea, but John is currently not in a position to setup a non-profit infrastructure to accept donations, and wishes to keep the site completely free.

3. We won't recommend a particular image hosting service. In interest of spreading risk - choose an image hosting service that works for you. We hope the community will do their best to help if you have problems posting images using that service.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: John Raabe on July 11, 2017, 05:37:48 PM
This is a good summary of where we are now. Several people have found a service that for now, at least, can host and serve 3rd party images to forum postings.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: DaveOrr on July 11, 2017, 10:28:39 PM
Quote from: azgreg on July 06, 2017, 11:55:47 AM
hpinson, all my stuff has been saved and removed from pb except for a few images like the one above. I have all my images on a portable hard drive at home. I'm looking at having my own website though for photo hosting.

That's what I did for my cabin build.
Costs me a few bucks a year but way less than $400!!!
And I have 2 sites. One for my cabin and a fishing one.

The cabin:  http://www.anglersparadise.ca/ (http://www.anglersparadise.ca/)   :)

Currently working on getting all my pics off PB that I have stored there and will soon be deleting  them and my account once I have downloaded them.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: DaveOrr on July 11, 2017, 10:34:06 PM
Quote from: Adam Roby on July 09, 2017, 08:55:12 PM
Damn...  I thought I could right-click and have it bring me to the image, save it locally, upload to new site, and fix the link.  When I go to photobucket directly, I still see that same "3rd party hosting" error.  There's no way to know what image you had posted where.  Am I missing something?

I had the same issue. Just download the albums and the images will come down, even the ones that show up as speedo's.
The correct image, not the speedo image.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: Adam Roby on July 12, 2017, 09:54:09 PM
Quote from: SouthernTier on July 10, 2017, 11:16:41 AM
By imgcur do you mean imgur?

Indeed, imgur.  The steps were meant more of a "what I did" and the site you choose should loosely follow the same procedure.
I didn't realize they were all limiting the same way as PB.  Might have to find yet another site. 

Quote from: DaveOrr on July 11, 2017, 10:34:06 PM
I had the same issue. Just download the albums and the images will come down, even the ones that show up as speedo's.
The correct image, not the speedo image.

Thanks, trying that now.
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: kevin1234 on August 16, 2018, 06:29:00 AM
thank you for the invite so far this forum is awesome ,you do have an issue with photos not a fan of photobucket
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: HillGirl on March 02, 2019, 10:00:20 PM
This topic explains why I don't see image avatars or posted topic images!

Being able to join the forums is still a very big advantage to me though.  Could you allow link overs FROM your site to the individual's image link?  I remember clicking journal cuts from live journal when members had IP or photos that took.up too much space in a fast moving discussion
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: MountainDon on March 02, 2019, 10:39:31 PM
Quote from: HillGirl on March 02, 2019, 10:00:20 PM
This topic explains why I don't see image avatars or posted topic images!


Well, not really.  Photobucket made a further adjustment to their policy and presently any images that are hosted on PB do appear in forum topics, but with a medium sized "hosted by photobucket" watermark in the lower left of each image. However, if the original poster of the image has closed their PB account or deleted the photos or moved the images without changing the link, then the images are gone.

My PB images show once again wherever on this forum I had posted them. I just checked a few minutes ago and still see the ones I looked for, so if the images do not show it is because of some other reason.   I am not sure what you mean by " Could you allow link overs FROM your site to the individual's image link?  I remember clicking journal cuts from live journal when members had IP or photos that took.up too much space in a fast moving discussion"   Perhaps send me a PM wiyth an expaned explanation?
Title: Re: PhotoBucket Change of Service Terms Affects CountryPlans Forum (July 1, 2017)
Post by: gbleuc on July 12, 2019, 08:14:05 PM
Just to include this in the conversation: If the owner ever decides to accept donations for the site in the future (I get that they don't for now), just an fyi that you don't need to set up as a 501c3 and go through all that hassle. You can use crowdfunding (such as GoFundMe) with very little footwork and post the link here for people to contribute. Although they do take 3%. These are considered by the IRS to be personal gifts which in most circumstances aren't taxed as income, either.

Re linking to images: Also wanted to add another idea to this thread in case it helps someone- You can paste images into a Google doc and include the non-editable ("View-only") Google doc link in your post on CP. Personally I think it's less of a pain than dealing with Google images :) You can also add images to Google sheets, which is probably what I'll end up doing, because you can have several sheets in one file which users can then toggle through. If you delete or "Hide" the remaining columns or rows you're not using, it's very clean-looking. They are both very reliable. Not sure if there's hindrances in the user agreement. Another method in case.