The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

I agree that Photobucket's tactics are morally dubious, but really, these folks aren't philantropists. They have costs to cover, and preferably, profits to make. Sooner or later, the bill is going to arrive for all these 'free' services, in one form or another. Better to pay a modest amount for some server space and bandwidth somewhere, and avoid the hassle.

I wouldn't call $400 PA modest- which is the only option Photobucket are offering. I now need to find a suitable alternative site as you suggest Rob and transfer everything which has effectively halted my building anything new here until that is done.

David.

Is it just me or is anyone else suddenly not able to see images that other users have posted using photobucket? Where the picture should be, I just get a square box saying "please update your account to enable 3rd party hosting."

A modest fee and some warning would have been the proper way to do it.
I've just checked out smugmug
After 14 days free the basic is about £46 per year. As far I can see that one will do me [if I go for it] and other modellers; just storage and the ability to put the photo in a forum
I've also resurected my Photo Trail account and upgraded it by paying £15.88, but storage on it is more limited; about 500 photos or 50 MB
I have 99 small memory photos on it but its using up 6.5MB already

There is a long-ish thread discussing this already
http://www.uamf.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f= ... 50#p327750;

lancfan wrote:I wouldn't call $400 PA modest- which is the only option Photobucket are offering.

True, that's nowhere near modest. Just to avoid shooting myself completely in the foot, I took a quick peek at what my domain registrar (*) offers. You can get an adequate web hosting package for 5 euro per month, or a complete virtual server for 10. That, I would class as a modest amount.

I seem to remember hearing this very forum is hosted for a similar amount, with a US or UK provider, so there are possibilities.

Maybe those of us who use paid for hosting, whether for this purpose or others, could post some recommendations?
(Sadly, that doesn't include me; I have a static IP address and host my own stuff in the attic, and my fallback would be the generous hosting allowance from my ISP)

(*)Transip.nl, should anyone care. They're neither particularly cheap, nor particularly flexible (very much Dutch market focussed), but they work well, and given the small absolute amounts of money involved for domain registration only, I'm not even tempted to move.

fredk wrote:I've just checked out smugmug. After 14 days free the basic is about £46 per year.....
I've also resurected my Photo Trail account and upgraded it by paying £15.88,

Those numbers sound a lot more like it

As Rob knows and has said some ISPs provide free storage; use that.
I've checked my ISP - TalkTalk - and it does not appear they provide free storage

rob_van_riel wrote:Maybe those of us who use paid for hosting, whether for this purpose or others, could post some recommendations?
(Sadly, that doesn't include me; I have a static IP address and host my own stuff in the attic, and my fallback would be the generous hosting allowance from my ISP)

Just remembered did have dealings with hosting providers in the past. Although I handed off control of the site and domain ages ago, to the best of my knowledge it's still doing it's job, hosted with these guys:
https://www.one.com/en/;

It looks like they might do business beyond the Dutch borders too, so perhaps they are a suitable home for some of the Photobucket refugees.

Looks like it's official PB are no longer allowing 3rd party usage i.e. using img tags to embed images in forums for free. Nothing to do with excessive bandwidth usage.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/3 ... party_pgs/;

Quite aside from the Photobucket issue, this would seem to raise an issue with the history of this forum. When an image hosting provider goes down (for whatever reason), a potentially huge number of images vanishes from the forum instantly. Given the subject matter, this is a significant loss. Short of the owner of the posts in question manually editing them to point to new URLs (a terrifying task if ever I saw one), there doesn't appear to be anything that can be done to repair this damage.
Are there any facilities that would allow automated replacements of image URLs to take place? Presumably all posts are stored in a database, so theoretically, it should be possible..

Not being computer literate to any great degree, how long is it until 'Postimage' does the same thing and what happens then?

This we cannot be sure of.
The other photohosting sites will be watching PB and see their own membership grow immensely this weekend.
Whether they say; if PB can get way with $400 so can we, or will they ask for a more modest fee, like the one smugmug wants

rob_van_riel wrote:Quite aside from the Photobucket issue, this would seem to raise an issue with the history of this forum. When an image hosting provider goes down (for whatever reason), a potentially huge number of images vanishes from the forum instantly. Given the subject matter, this is a significant loss. Short of the owner of the posts in question manually editing them to point to new URLs (a terrifying task if ever I saw one), there doesn't appear to be anything that can be done to repair this damage.
Are there any facilities that would allow automated replacements of image URLs to take place? Presumably all posts are stored in a database, so theoretically, it should be possible..

One problem with this forum [not a complaint - just an observation] is that old GBs and such are locked so you can't go back onto your old GB and renew the photo links. Old GBs are a good reference if you need to see how good or bad a certain model is; ie its qualities and faults etcetera

I'm still hopping mad about the way we have been treat by PB but that's business I'm afraid - sucker the punters in with "free" hosting and then when there's enough of them deeply tied up to the facility, hold them to ransom and charge 400 bucks as a release fee

I also fear that it's only a matter of time before other image hosting sites follow suit - I not opposed to the question paying per se (depends how much, of course) and might have even considered paying PB had they gone about this differently and charged less - personally I think $400 is a bit steep.

And yes, potentially this issue will cause serious havoc with photos on the forum as I think PB is by far and away the most popular image host used on here.