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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2015 19:28:40 GMT
I decided to pay the Image Shack ransom one day before receiving that message, one reason being that the dollar plummeted that day in regards to the euro.
Unfortunately, if I want my pictures to remain visible, I will also have to pay the Photobucket ransom soon, and it is considerably higher than what is requested by Image Shack.
To be fair, how could we have ever expected all of our pictures to be hosted free anywhere? These are not philanthropic associations.
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Post by Kimby on Oct 17, 2015 19:35:29 GMT
To be fair, they shouldn't have told us they were hosting our images for free, then pulled the rug out from underneath us with so little notice.
And, the $3.99 monthly fee is a doubling of the fee for Premium accounts, too.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2015 20:15:13 GMT
Yes, it was definitely nasty to tell people about the fee so late. But I confess that I had already paid for the service last year when I exceeded the free limit, so I was not really surprised.
Both Image Shack and Photobucket (and a lot of other photo hosts) always said that their image hosting was free, but I suppose that their mission was more successful than they had ever imagined. Digital cameras, selfies, porn... They themselves are not getting a free ride from the internet, so they are now passing along the cost to us. We are already paying a small fee for email, just by subscribing to a service provider, but I am quite sure that we are not far from the time that our service providers will tell us that we are reaching our email limits and must pay more for continued service.
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Post by Kimby on Oct 18, 2015 23:41:46 GMT
The latest from ImageShack:
Dear ImageShack users, on September 29th '15, ImageShack has suffered a very large service outage. We wanted to take time to explain what happened, and how it affected your accounts as well as Image delivery.
During a routine maintenance, a small mistake crept up into one of our management tools that caused all our of servers to wipe out their operating systems as well as most of the image storage systems. You may want to ask, how can something small cause such a large issue? Don't we have backups. And Yes, indeed, we do have at least 3 copies as backups of all your images.
ImageShack has been around since 2004, during that time we have grown to store billions of images, and used hundreds of servers to deliver those images to the internet. We always relied on automated systems that allowed us to keep our team relatively small, so that we could pass to cost savings to you, our users. Unfortunately, with system automation comes a risk of a mistake such as described above.
The good news, we were able to restore most of the images, and continue to deliver them to you pages. The bad news is that we lost about 4% of all images, across all accounts (paid and free). This means that if you have a page with 100 images embedded, there perhaps would be between 3 to 5 images missing. We sincerely apologize for this loss.
We have decided to take some serious steps regarding ImageShack as a service. We want to absolutely guarantee that your images will be delivered to your pages. We do not resize images, we do not impose bandwidth limits like other image hosting sites do. We do not put claim to your images, and we do limit ads next to your images, so that anyone who sees your images have the best experience possible. For us to be able to promise that - our business requires a transition to pay model only.
So, what are the steps we are taking? We will be focusing on users that ImageShack matters to the most - Those users are the users who have paid accounts. If you are a user with free account, and do not plan to upgrade, you have until January 31st, 2016 to download your images. After that date, only paid accounts are going to continue to exist at ImageShack.
We are doing this so that we can put time an effort towards our "premium" users who depend on ImageShack for their businesses and other important functions. We want to give 300% more quality and performance to those users, they have certainly paid and earned the right to have it.
If you have had a paid account before, or have a free account today, please consider upgrading to paid. Our plans start at $3.99/mo. However, until January 31st 2016, we will be offering a huge discount of $18.99/year only, as our thanks to all users who are patient enough to stay with us through this transition!
Sincerely,
ImageShack Team.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 19, 2015 0:48:23 GMT
Well if that doesn't give me confidence, I don't know what does!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2015 5:04:38 GMT
They must have had a firestorm from the users for them to cut the yearly rate in half... and to delay the cutoff date.
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Post by Kimby on Oct 31, 2015 11:31:50 GMT
Today's ImageShack advisory: (get ready for some broken links in forum threads!) Dear ImageShack Users, This is a reminder email - if you are free ImageShack account user, your images will no longer work on websites other than imageshack.com. This change is going to be implemented this weekend. In order for your images to work, if you have a free account, it must be brought to "paid" status. We understand that some of you are not interested in upgrading your accounts, in which case you can bulk download your images by using our Skypath desktop application that can be downloaded for Mac or Windows here: imageshack.us/pages/skypathFor those people who are still considering to upgrade, we are now offering deeply discounted yearly subscription of only $18.99/year, thats less than $2/month. To take advantage of this offer, and to bring your free ImageShack account to "paid" status, please follow this link (while being logged in to your account): imageshack.com/my/images?sub=1We are not planning to remove or delete any images from your imageshack.com account, even if your account remains free until January 31st, of 2016, so you have ample time to download your images. Thank you, ImageShack Team
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Post by cheerypeabrain on May 3, 2017 16:02:37 GMT
I haven't posted many pics for a while mostly because I'm still looking for a secure free picture hosting site (on photobucket still atm) .....considering a few but wondered if people had found a good one in the few months since this this thread was last used....?
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Post by bixaorellana on May 3, 2017 16:37:16 GMT
Well, I keep using Flickr. Even though the process of getting the url to post here is fiddly, Flickr is good because of its quality of reproduction and its method of displaying your pictures so you can easily find them.
I used to try out different sites so I could report on them here. If you look around the forum you will see hunks of my pictures missing, so I'm no longer willing to try sites out and take the risk.
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Post by amboseli on May 3, 2017 17:52:30 GMT
Flickr for me, too.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on May 3, 2017 18:02:21 GMT
Thank you both. I will look into it
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 14, 2017 19:54:19 GMT
I am nervous about suggesting a hosting site, but since the Photobucket disaster we are scrambling to find a site that specifically allows posting to forums, etc. In the very brief time I've used this one, it has been satisfactory. I like the easy way you can make albums and how you can load pictures directly into those albums. postimages.org/
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Post by bjd on Jul 15, 2017 6:02:28 GMT
Am I the only one getting a gray Photobucket background instead of the AnyPort screen background? plus a lot of missing photos, replaced by the same photobucket thing? Telling me to update my photobucket account, which I don't even have.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 15, 2017 10:10:48 GMT
Some of the skins are still working (mine is) and some apparently are not. A lot of images have disappeared, but the principal appearance of the Photobucket message is where smileys were used. A new set of smileys has been installed thanks to the dedication and hard work of Bixa, but the ones in older messages are gone for good.
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Post by bjd on Jul 15, 2017 11:45:57 GMT
Still this distracting gray skin with photobucket messages all over. And the smileys or lack of them doesn't seem to be the problem. A lot of photographs have disappeared. The PB message is telling me to update my account but I don't even have a photobucket account (they don't accept pictures from Linux).
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 15, 2017 13:45:23 GMT
bjd, Photobucket recently changed &/or started enforcing rules about posting images hosted with it on 3rd-party sites such as forums. Rather viciously, it immediately removed access to those images. Many of the elements on anyport were hosted on Photobucket, which is why your avatar and your skin background are missing. The message about updating the account on your new, unwanted skin background is directed at anyport, not at you. You can give yourself an avatar, including the "this space intentionally left blank" one you had before, by going to Profile and clicking on "Edit Profile". Which skin are you using? I will try to find the background for it and replace it. In the meantime, you may want to temporarily change the skin you're using by going to Profile / Edit Profile / Settings. Note that skins are now known as "forum themes" . Cross-posting this to Tech support & advice thread.
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Post by bjd on Jul 15, 2017 15:24:34 GMT
Thanks, Bixa. I just gave myself an avatar but in fact I have not been able to see any avatars when I am under Linux, like on my home computer.
The forum theme I had was the greenish one with the hill, perhaps it's the standard AnyPort one?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 15, 2017 15:34:12 GMT
I am using "transportation" which still displays properly.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 15, 2017 17:18:34 GMT
bjd, I think your skin must be the Any Port in a Storm one. At any rate, after many unsuccessful attempts to get the background image correctly placed, I gave up and replaced it with a solid color which I hope will be acceptable to everyone. Also not successful were the many attempts to get rid of the #$@%^&*! gray Photobucket square covering up the logo on this skin. Still working on that. If anyone wishes to report messed-up skins, etc., please do so in the tech thread -- easier to keep up with there. Thanks.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 15, 2017 17:24:23 GMT
Here is a list of image hosters suggested by Proboards back in August of 2016. Note they are suggestions, not necessarily recommendations. I think the caveat is important since one on the list was ImageShack. I know nothing at all about any of these, nor if they are free or not. Fokti gives a "free trial" and Village.Photos says "register for free", so everyone will have to look and make up his/her mind about each of these: imgbb.com/nickpic.host/village.photos/www.fotki.com/
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jul 16, 2017 8:51:41 GMT
I'm getting along OK with Flickr now that Bixa has explained how to post images here. I'm annoyed with pb tho. Feels like I'm being held to ransom. Is everybody who uses the free version affected?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 16, 2017 14:16:24 GMT
I'm annoyed with pb tho. Feels like I'm being held to ransom. Is everybody who uses the free version affected? Apparently so, Cheery. There are outcries and fury all over the internet about it. I believe even people who had "lesser" (lesser than the 400 smackaroos a year one) subscriptions are affected.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 17, 2017 18:16:09 GMT
Important notice: A new feature has been added to anyport. In Reply (not in Quick Reply) you will see a box reading "Add image to post" in the upper right-hand corner. If you click on it, it will open a pop-up allowing you to upload an image to anyport directly from your computer. Caveats:This is not the magic solution we might have hoped. For one thing, it's slow. For another, your pictures will display fairly small -- 640 px wide. Once the pictures are posted, each one can be clicked on and a larger size viewed, but . There is a feature to resize the pictures, but be aware it's only resizing the click-on version -- the pictures that show up in your anyport post will still only be 640 wide. I have tested it both before and after registering with the site. Interestingly, when I registered the test pictures from before registering showed up in my account. Here is the site, if you wish to read terms of service, or to register: imgbb.com/cross-posted to the tech thread
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Post by Kimby on Jul 18, 2017 13:51:38 GMT
This is a long-awaited feature. Thanks, Bixa! However, it doesn't seem to be available on iPhone, which is where the photos I want to post reside....
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 18, 2017 15:10:35 GMT
Are you looking in Reply and not in Quick Reply, Kimby?
You may want to also store your pictures somewhere else in any event, as insurance.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 28, 2017 3:35:14 GMT
Important notice: A new feature has been added to anyport. In Reply (not in Quick Reply) you will see a box reading "Add image to post" in the upper right-hand corner. If you click on it, it will open a pop-up allowing you to upload an image to anyport directly from your computer. Caveats:This is not the magic solution we might have hoped. For one thing, it's slow. For another, your pictures will display fairly small -- 640 px wide. Once the pictures are posted, each one can be clicked on and a larger size viewed, but . There is a feature to resize the pictures, but be aware it's only resizing the click-on version -- the pictures that show up in your anyport post will still only be 640 wide. I have tested it both before and after registering with the site. Interestingly, when I registered the test pictures from before registering showed up in my account. Here is the site, if you wish to read terms of service, or to register: imgbb.com/cross-posted to the tech thread YAAAAAY ~ Now this feature is available in Quick Reply as well. It's at the bottom left under the message box, after Post Quick Reply and Spell Check.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2017 17:01:19 GMT
I am looking for the photo host site that K2 recommended recently (not in this thread but somewhere else that I can't recall).
I may have to appeal to some of the more tech savvy members for a step by step tutorial, folks like Bixa, K2, Mark and some other prolific pic posters for assistance.
I have not posted pics in a very long time, and I do have a bunch that I took that are hopefully post worthy but am flummoxed.
As an aside, it is so dismaying to look at past threads that had such great pictures from an array of members that were Photobucket and are no longer visible. Are they gone forever? What a shame. A slew of HW's are among these and it saddens me so that they are "gone".
Thanks good people.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 23, 2017 17:04:11 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2017 17:12:24 GMT
Thanks Kerouac. I will check them out.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 23, 2017 17:26:30 GMT
Casimira, try signing up with Postimage and playing with it a little bit. It's pretty straight-forward and easy to use. That way, if anything about it is problematic or confusing to you, you can ask specific questions about it. I think you'll like it! As an aside, it is so dismaying to look at past threads that had such great pictures from an array of members that were Photobucket and are no longer visible. Are they gone forever? At the moment I am trying to mark the threads with missing pictures with the "enable falling" symbol, which will appear to the left of the thread title in the board's thread list. There are several reasons for this: to push those bad threads way down the list; so members will know that the thread lacks its pictures; so that the thread makers can more easily find their damaged threads; and also if people post in the thread to point out that it lacks pictures, it will keep the thread from bouncing to the top. There is a way for those threads to be renovated, but it will be up to the authors of the threads to do the work. I have figured out a way for them to recover the missing pictures in the event they don't have them to hand in their computers, but still have to work up the tutorial to explain it. I don't know how far I'll get with marking threads with "enable falling", as it's an extremely time-consuming endeavor. pee ess ~ It's my personal wish that more members will comment and engage more all over the whole forum, as that is encouraging to those who post and keeps the forum more alive.
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