Photobucket - Please Read

[Forever Sunshine]

Jul 8, 2017 18:58:33 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

Jul 8, 2017 18:55:45 GMT -8 Forever Sunshine said:

  I'll have to check into it. I'm sure the other sites will follow suit. Unless they realize the mass exodus from Photobucket and decide not to. Who knows? lol I just don't want to go through this ever again. Too much time spent designing and loading and making it purdy for members and then this. I'm just getting too old for this! hahaha We really need to be able to just upload from our computers and be done with it.

Actually, that's what you do when you're using ProBoards' storage. You upload them from your computer and use their link.

I've learned the HARD way. The very HARD way.

And I'm a perfectionist so this kills me. All my hard work and then this debacle.

  Ahhhh yes, that is the answer then! I agree. Thousands of hours spent making all this and for what? Ruined because of Photobucket. UGH! They need a good Gibbs smack for sure.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Jul 8, 2017 19:01:00 GMT -8 Forever Sunshine said:

img src="http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/artists/vishenka/d_sunny.gif"]  Ahhhh yes, that is the answer then! I agree. Thousands of hours spent making all this and for what? Ruined because of Photobucket. UGH! They need a good Gibbs smack for sure.

Yes, it took an anvil to fall on me before realizing what a gift ProBoards' gives us by allowing us to store our board images on their service.

For me, from this point forward, the choice is obvious. I will not rely on a third party again. I won't go through this nightmare again. 

But I am backing the images on a very trustworthy site and I do have all of my images on my own external hard drive, as well.

[Forever Sunshine]

Jul 8, 2017 19:05:14 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

Jul 8, 2017 19:01:00 GMT -8 Forever Sunshine said:

img src="http://www.kolobok.us/smiles/artists/vishenka/d_sunny.gif"]  Ahhhh yes, that is the answer then! I agree. Thousands of hours spent making all this and for what? Ruined because of Photobucket. UGH! They need a good Gibbs smack for sure.

Yes, it took an anvil to fall on me before realizing what a gift ProBoards' gives us by allowing us to store our board images on their service.

For me, from this point forward, the choice is obvious. I will not rely on a third party again. I won't go through this nightmare again. 

But I am backing the images on a very trustworthy site and I do have all of my images on my own external hard drive, as well.

  Well, thanks for throwing the anvil my way! hahaha I will definitely utilize their service for this. I am not going through this again.

[Derek‽]

Jul 8, 2017 18:00:14 GMT -8 Willow said:

IMO, there needs to be "pay as much as you use" model as far as hosting images goes. Something reasonable for people who use a small amount of both storage and bandwidth and the more you use of each, the more you pay.  I hate to say it but it needs to be "metered" as that would seem to be fairest way to keep prices down for light users and the best way to make high users pay for their share.

That exists. Both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure offer usage-based file hosting. The cost is low and likely wouldn't exceed $5 (not by much, anyway) per month for most PB forums. But it can all be a bit more complicated than using a basic image host, especially for novices.

The monthly cost is based on four factors: storage, bandwidth, file access operations, and region.

Storage is pretty straightforward: how much hard drive space are you taking up in a given month? Amazon charges about $0.03 per GB per month.

Bandwidth should also be obvious. Amazon charges about $0.09 per GB per month.

File access operations are a bit trickier simply because you're being charged for things most people might otherwise take for granted. You get charged every time a file is requested (as in loaded, like on a page; so yes, you have to pay both per request and for how much bandwidth gets used during that request). You get charged every time you upload a new file. You're charged for moving files between directories. File deletion is free. These are all considered requests and, in the interest of bringing them to parity with ProBoards' ad-free pricing for familiarity and convenience, cost roughly $0.04 per 50,000 requests. Keep in mind that, unlike ad-free pageviews, each individual image on the page equals its own request. So, 20 unique images on a page generate 20 requests each and every time someone loads the page.

(Setting long-term cache control headers can help cut down on requests and bandwidth costs, provided your members and visitors allow their browsers to cache images and other files you may host and link to.)

Finally, the region(s) you deploy to affect the actual fees charged. You get the option of choosing where in the world you'd like your files hosted, but the basic laws of supply and demand, as well as operational costs, mean some regions are more expensive than others. The cheapest storage option would be a bad choice if it's on the opposite side of the planet from where most of a forum's members and visitors are located. Not only will it slow the loading time of pages, it can also cause your file access costs to rise as requests from outside the hosted region cost more than requests from within.

Oh, plus there's a $0.50/month charge for hosting a domain name with Amazon's web hosting package.

Have your eyes glazed over yet? It's not too bad once you get a grasp on it. Figuring out which package you actually want/need is probably the hardest part. Anyone can sign up, but these are really CDN services intended to be used by larger sites (yes, medium-large sites use third-party hosting for linked files all the time), so there's a general expectation that the parties signing up know what they're doing. This is also why the costs are so shockingly low, as they expect to make their money off of major sites with high-volume storage and bandwidth needs. They welcome the little guy, though, and it's a marvelous deal.

I imagine most PB forums are low traffic to the point that they would qualify for Amazon's free tier, which is, well, free. Only for the first year, though.

[leif]

Keep in mind, Amazon's S3 can COST A LOT! The bandwidth charge is expensive, It seems cheap at first. But, you see for every 100 GB I host, it costs 100x.03 for the storage which is $3. It will cost $9 for EACH time each image is viewed once. THis isn't normal for me. For every 100GB, I usually experience around 2TB in traffic. $180 in cost a month on top of that 3, so 183.

S3 is avoided by image hosts because the bandwidth is robbery.

Google also countered it, stating there's no such thing as a real "bandwidht limit"

[Derek‽]

The usage patterns of a middleman host and a run-of-the-mill community operator are apples and oranges. Forum admins reading this thread because they were left in the lurch by Photobucket aren't going to incur the costs a file hosting service would. Not even close. It's a matter of volume.

[txgirl]

I have hundreds of graphics, siggies, avatars, etc. posted on Photobucket. Any suggestions on how to move so many to another website?

[m2marsh]

Jul 10, 2017 15:09:06 GMT -8 txgirl said:

I have hundreds of graphics, siggies, avatars, etc. posted on Photobucket. Any suggestions on how to move so many to another website?

I don't think there's any magic way. You just download each album from Photobucket to your computer. And then upload again to your new site of choice. If you read above one of our fellow members leif has provided some sort of a script that might grab things from Photobucket in a more efficient manner.

[Jaguar]

Jul 10, 2017 15:13:53 GMT -8 m2marsh said:

Jul 10, 2017 15:09:06 GMT -8 txgirl said:

I have hundreds of graphics, siggies, avatars, etc. posted on Photobucket. Any suggestions on how to move so many to another website?

I don't think there's any magic way. You just download each album from Photobucket to your computer. And then upload again to your new site of choice. If you read above one of our fellow members leif has provided some sort of a script that might grab things from Photobucket in a more efficient manner.

That's the wrong Leif, here he is - leif

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

TBH, I'm not sure leif , is taking any more requests. I think that was for a limited time since he was being so gracious to help out in a pinch.

Additionally, any type of .gif images will most likely have to be downloaded to your computer. I've heard there are problems removing animated images in bulk.

[Stinky666]

Jul 10, 2017 16:08:52 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

TBH, I'm not sure leif , is taking any more requests. I think that was for a limited time since he was being so gracious to help out in a pinch.

Additionally, any type of .gif images will most likely have to be downloaded to your computer. I've heard there are problems removing animated images in bulk.

That's where I come in! I am good at enforcing things or making people do things...




Oh.. oops, wrong person...

[leif]

Luv is right. I have gotten several requests. I amazed at how many requests. However, after today's massive amount of requests, I have officially ended my free transfer service. Someone took a lot of time from me by wanting me to recreate her 600 albums and over 15k images.

Sorry everyone!

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

You were a good guy to do what you did, leif . No apology is necessary.

You were extremely gracious to do that very large request. That was A LOT!

[leif]

I'm still working on it.

I also figured out how to get GIFs.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Jul 10, 2017 20:29:03 GMT -8 leif said:

I also figured out how to get GIFs.

I kinda figured you would! That's definitely a plus.