[DaveC113]

With no notice whatsoever photobucket now wants $400 paid yearly for 3rd party photo hosting. This means all pics I've posted are not available anymore as I don't want to pay their ridiculous fees. This is very frustrating as I've posted several years of RMAF coverage, replacing links in these threads would be hours of work. I feel like I've been conned and taken advantage of as either alternative is unacceptable, I won't pay them and I don't have time to do the work to replace my photos here and elsewhere. In the past you could pay a few bucks a month for extra bandwidth now it's $400/year!

I feel bad for others who have/had photobucket accounts. I'll be deleting my account as soon as I find an alternative.    Suggestions Welcome!

[jtwrace]

Your own NAS which you control is obviously the best.  If you're set on a hosting service I highly recommend http://mylio.com/

[DaveC113]

Thanks Jason.

Photobucket is the Martin Shkreli of photo hosting now...

[Johnny2Bad]

imgur dotcom

The best host if you want to embed images in a forum. There are paid options (the $25/yr account is a nice option, check it out if you want) but not needed; their free account is fine. You will never "lose" an image in a post no matter how old it is. Easy code generation feature to embed in a post.

Some people complain that the free account limits image resolution, but for web posts just resize in one of your image programs to 800x600 and upload that. It's "big enough" but won't cause a thread to resize too wide for most browsers. Here at AudioCircle you could go a bit larger, maybe 1200x800. I keep my albums and images "private" in the preferences.

Photobucket was never a good option even in the past, because if you didn't login at least once every six months they gave you the "image not found" banner.

I'll give an example: (I clicked "BBCode", one of your options when you select an image, and simply copied and pasted into this post): This is a 800x600 image I uploaded to imgur more than seven years ago. If you were to search this post sometime in the future this image will still be there.

[Mike B.]

I closed out my Photobucket account. The popups were bad enough. Now this deal. Opened a new one at Imgur

[JerryM]

Amazon Prime Photo is a sweet deal if you're a Prime member.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201480950

[Doublej]

What about Google photos, Flickr or Faceobok?

[richidoo]

Amazon Prime Photo is a sweet deal if you're a Prime member.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201480950

Cool! I didn't know about that. Will give it a try. Thanks Jerry
Rich

[Bob in St. Louis]

I started a thread/poll on a BBQ forum (VERY heavy use of pics there) and the clear winner of the poll is "imgur" for photohosting, buy a large margin.
As far as I'm concerned, Photobucket ruined internet forums and can crash and burn. I've had several threads spread across the internet that the community thought was a valuable "resource" (I use that word with the greatest of modesty). But the level of extortion they're asking is unreasonable. I pay less for full coverage car insurance than that.
Every forum I'm on has threads based on "Picture of the day", or "post a pic of ____", or other photo thread. All gone.
All the speaker build threads I've had are gone, not the least of which was the one with my daughter when she built her speakers.

So when I say Photobucket can rot in Hell, I mean that will a great level of sincerity.   
I've got 3600 photos there and to be honest, it's going to be a long time before I feel like migrating those photos anywhere else.
Not sure how long it'll be before I sign up somewhere and start all over again. 

[JerryM]

Bob, you cannot lose all those pictures; you just can't. In the long run, you'll regret like hell that you let them all go.

Pay the 400 bucks and take them all back; it's chump-change. Seriously.

Jerry

Edit: Dude, even your pictures from the river in October of '13 are gone. You can't just walk away from all of those pics, Bob.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Bob, you cannot lose all those pictures; you just can't. In the long run, you'll regret like hell that you let them all go.

Pay the 400 bucks and take them all back; it's chump-change. Seriously.

Jerry

We're on different levels of income Jerry.
To be honest, I have an abnormally strong sense of honor and strength in relationships, and for a company to do this to an eleven year customer without warning, I find the equivalent of a stab in the back.
I understand that bandwidth and harddrives cost money, I really do. But not only do I feel a dollar a day for the rest of my life to store and host images is way too high, I feel the way they did it was pretty crappy as well. To do it in this manner feels like extortion to me. Plain and simple. It'll be a cold day in hell before I give any more money to Photobucket, or the other site they own (I think it's "Tinypic", or something like that).
 
Seems to me that for the price they're asking, I could install my own server and host my own photos for cheaper than what they're asking. I could be wrong on that though.

[DaveC113]

The damage PB is doing to the internet with their extortion is going to be massive. $400 is not reasonable when in the past you had to pay a few bucks a month for more bandwidth if needed.

I did some research and found a site that would download your PB pics and somehow redirect the URL request to their hosting site, which would automatically fix the problem. The guy was charging $11/month but PB has blocked them multiple times so they had to give up. This is all for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else. Not allowing automated transfer of their hosting just reinforces my feeling they are extortionists. I hope they go under, they aren't getting my money. Hopefully someone will set up a transfer from PB using a VPN or something that can't be blocked. 

[mav52]

Yep my photobucket account is heading to the cancel bin as soon as I delete all my pics.  Not going to pay that outrageous fee to have 3rd pty

[JohnR]

AudioCircle has its own image hosting (and has almost since the beginning).

[DaveC113]

AudioCircle has its own image hosting (and has almost since the beginning).

They say hindsight is 20/20...    

I certainly didn't see something like this coming. Fees, sure, but $400 and no monthly option? That's a lot of cash!

[JohnR]

Seems to me that for the price they're asking, I could install my own server and host my own photos for cheaper than what they're asking. I could be wrong on that though.

You can now rent a small VPS for as little as $5/month, which would easily host a personal image gallery.

https://www.linode.com/pricing

However, you would need to know how to set the whole thing up. And also backups, security etc.

BTW, according to the photobucket website, "Plus" accounts (as of June 1) have until end of 2018 before 3rd party hosting is turned off.

[WireNut]

With no notice whatsoever photobucket now wants $400 paid yearly for 3rd party photo hosting. This means all pics I've posted are not available anymore as I don't want to pay their ridiculous fees. This is very frustrating as I've posted several years of RMAF coverage, replacing links in these threads would be hours of work. I feel like I've been conned and taken advantage of as either alternative is unacceptable, I won't pay them and I don't have time to do the work to replace my photos here and elsewhere. In the past you could pay a few bucks a month for extra bandwidth now it's $400/year!

I feel bad for others who have/had photobucket accounts. I'll be deleting my account as soon as I find an alternative.    Suggestions Welcome!

Hi Dave,

Wouldn't you know that I just signed on to photobucket today (7-14-17) after coming across your build of the ACF-2 octal preamp.
I created a photobucket account just today hoping to see the photo's of your build, but had know luck.
Thankfully I didn't sign up for the $400.00 option. Crazy.

Anyway, I've been thinking about building the ACF-2 Octal buffer and was hoping to see your photo's.
I plan on only building the ACF-2 Octal buffer and was hoping to get build info on the project.

 

[JakeJ]

BStL,

Do you have all 3600+ original photos saved (HDD or silver discs)?  At least then you could restore some of the more important ones.  Just a thought.

Yeah, I know, ton of work and many hours.  Same goes for anyone else that a significant quantity of images on Photobucket.

JohnR,

I've always felt somewhat guilty of uploading a lot of images to AC.  Is there a limit?  Not to mention uplaoding images to AC's servers and posting them on other sites.

[Bob in St. Louis]

OHHH yea, I've got all my pics on my personal HDD safe at home, PLUS... I've got a backup HDD in a safe place.

Years ago, I put all of my proverbial eggs (photographs) in one basket. The first forum I joined was the Decware site. I put all my photos on there. One day, Steve decided to wipe out all the galleries and start over. So every photo, every thread was destroyed. I learned my lesson not to rely "one man" to store/host my photos. That's when I chose Photobucket to host.
Well, we see how that turned out.   

The problem with using AudioCircle to host, is that I'm not just one forum, I'm on several. So JohnR would be paying bandwidth for my whims on where I post photos. And..... there's that whole issue with my eggs in one basket again. 

[DaveC113]

Hi Dave,

Wouldn't you know that I just signed on to photobucket today (7-14-17) after coming across your build of the ACF-2 octal preamp.
I created a photobucket account just today hoping to see the photo's of your build, but had know luck.
Thankfully I didn't sign up for the $400.00 option. Crazy.

Anyway, I've been thinking about building the ACF-2 Octal buffer and was hoping to see your photo's.
I plan on only building the ACF-2 Octal buffer and was hoping to get build info on the project.

 

I can send you a direct link to my PB folder, but I guess I need to try to repair that thread as it's mostly pics. And all the RMAF threads, ugh...

If you have any questions feel free to pm me or email me. There are some parts upgrades that are worth it... Clarity TC caps for the last stage of the power supply filter, AmTrans or Riken gridstoppers, Mills cathode resistors, Jupiter copper output caps, Furutech FT-903(R) RCA jacks, Furutech NCF IEC. Also, a 3P3T switch can be rigged to switch heater between 6 and 12 volts if you want to use 6 or 12SN7.

I'm using Morten's Tortuga LDR before the buffer, which sounds great too. IMO it sounds a lot better with the buffer, I tried it both ways.