Photobucket Oh No (New TOS)

For years, hotlinking has meant "using the link for an image you don't own to display it on a third site" -- the URL itself is irrelevant.

The problem with Photobucket applying it to the content they host is simply that for years they have operated as an image host, meaning that when you link from your account, you aren't "hotlinking" by the conventional definition. While in the strictest, technical sense they haven't changed the definition of hotlinking, the assumption has been for over a decade that the images hosted on your behalf are yours and linking to them is not considered hotlinking as that space has been allocated for you.

I genuinely have no idea. I'd normally suggest tinypic but they are loaded with ads and are a subsidiary of photobucket. I am blessed to be able to afford my own website host to host my content, but other than that I cannot think of any free host that allows you to link use images on forums.

From my understanding they want you to keep the images wrapped in anchor tags, like

<a href="link back to postimage"><img src="your image"></a>

and same for UBBC. Obviously this will not work for themes or avatars or anything you'd like to link elsewhere like an affiliate banner or your signature image, etc.

Yeah, I would say so. There's no way to use it for anything you want to display either linked to another site or need to display without links without breaking their terms, but posts and stuff should be fine.

There are plenty of methods to obtain a website host. The most common way is generally to go through the domain name registrar you use -- namecheap, for instance, offers hosting packages as well as domain services (as does godaddy, and I'm sure many others). There are also dedicated hosting companies, like bigwetfish or hostgator, though you'd still need to buy a domain name.

You may want to monitor your analytics for a while, perhaps install statcounter as well, to find out how much bandwidth your images use to determine which hosting package is right for you, your forum, and your wallet.

I've been using a combination of hostgator and namecheap for several years now and have been very satisfied with their uptime and customer service, but your mileage may vary for your needs (this is, of course, not including any forum images. All my forum images are hosted through PB's upload system -- which is honestly excellent -- with the exception of my affiliate image).