Photobucket is now evil; need new image hosting with app

[pinkymadigan 3013]

So, Photobucket just broke every picture I've ever loaded here. I can recover them and load them here, passing the cost on to Reaper, but I'd rather not, as generally I share my photos here, and at least one other site, so I like to have a central repository. 

 

Photobucket used to also have good mobile uploading, but they broke that previously too. I had a look at Imgur, I know that's popular, but the App seemed to stall on me after my first swipe and I didn't see a way to continue, let alone upload with it. Anyone have any recommendations? I can live with ads (as you can tell by me putting up with Photobucket for so long).

Edited June 30, 2017 by pinkymadigan

[Orlando_the_Technicoloured 2431]

I too am now photbucket-less so I can't give a recommendation,

 

but I can provide a link with a reasonably up to date list of alternative free sites for you to play about with

 

https://www.lifewire.com/free-image-hosting-sites-3486329

[Unruly 16109]

I use Imgur. I also convinced @OneBoot to use it as well after her previous image hosting site pulled something similar. I've found it to be pretty decent.

[aku-chan 14101]

I can sympathize, I used to use a hosting site (can't remember the name of it) that had a bad crash and wiped out all my piccys (about 4 years worth).

 

I use Imgur now, and it works well for me, but I don't use the app.

[Pingo 95183]

Phew.

 

Photobucket borked all my images too.

 

They sent me an email saying "Your account has been restricted for excessive usage and 3rd party hosting. In order to restore ..." they demand a ransom of $400 per year.

 

As for their claim of excessive usage, I do not think I ever reached so much as a whole number of the % of space they claimed was allotted me.  That is to say, my photos never even reached 1% of the space they claimed was mine.

 

As for third party hosting, that is what Photobucket was advertised as for.  I was never interested in its aggressively and obtrusively advertised printed albums, its video pop-under ads, its relentless hucksterism, etc.  I wished a central place to park my small number of images that I could refer to from anywhere on the Internet.  That's what they sold themselves as, and that's how I have been using their service for at least six years.

 

Barstids.

 

I feel really sorry for people who had actually significant photo albums parked on Photobucket.

 

I suppose it might have stung less if they had given any advance warning.

[Thes Hunter 42137]

Google stopped allowing me to share my photos here about s year ago. I have yet to find an alternative solution.

 

 

I may be able to use my iCloud storage.... I will have to say investigate this further.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Thes Hunter

[Doug Sundseth 35157]

I think the "excessive usage" they're referring to is the number of times the images have been downloaded, probably as a result of threads here being opened. I suspect it's a bandwidth issue, not a storage space issue.

 

Be less popular. 

[Pingo 95183]

On 7/2/2017 at 9:19 AM, Doug Sundseth said:

I think the "excessive usage" they're referring to is the number of times the images have been downloaded, probably as a result of threads here being opened. I suspect it's a bandwidth issue, not a storage space issue.

 

Be less popular. 

 

 

Almost all of my images here are uploaded onto Reaper's servers.  The only ones I didn't were the NSFW ones (pretty rare) and a few images on forums which did not allow image uploading (pre-software upgrade; it might be different now).

 

So my spider centaurs (aw, dang) and the picture of the Walgreens kiosk loaded with minis-scale antique car models and ...

 

awwwww, my Adepticon photos ...  

 

Furthermore, I always severely reduced the size of my photos before even uploading them onto Photobucket.

 

The only way my several scores of 400 to 700-pixel wide images were blowing bandwidth is if they were being hotlinked to without permission on something huge like Pinterest, and maybe not even then ...

 

And I just realized the NSFW ones can't  have been opened here because I didn't embed them, I always put links to them out of respect for Reaper's policies. Anyone clicking on them was sent straight to Photobucket, just the way Photobucket likes it.

 

I didn't embed the Adepticon photos either because there were so many.  All linked back to Photobucket.

 

Looks like they shut me down because of that embedded picture of the Walgreens kiosk, the pix I showed elsewhere of my husband's decorated cakes, and the thumbnails of my book cover art I used in my signature on another forum.

 

Elf them.

[Gadgetman! 9010]

I upload my pictures here, but if I had to keep pictures somewhere else, I'd use my LiveJournal album, or possibly even ftp them over to one of my hosted websites and link them there....

( 25GB, unlimited traffic, and so on, for about $2/month)

And since I control the site, I can set up a redirect to a 'trolling' picture if I spot hotlinking....

Edited July 2, 2017 by Gadgetman!

[Pingo 95183]

I've thought about hosting images on my own websites (thinking harder now).

 

The only thing that's been stopping me is the hope of preserving some semblance of anonymity on the web.

[Gadgetman! 9010]

So?

A lot of hosting services also offers anonymisation...

[TheAuldGrump 18406]

Wow, I had almost forgotten that I even have a Photobucket account - I used to use it when I was selling painted miniatures online. (My minis have ether a TAG and the year, or D13 and the year - where the D13 can be read as either D13 or DB.)

 

Only five photos left - but I think that is because I took the images down as I sold the models.

 

At some point, I switched over to Flickr, but that is long after I stopped painting for commission.

 

The Auld Grump

[ub3r_n3rd 151943]

I just use bookface and have my artist page for my pics. It works well and I can follow/talk to many other artists from around the world. 

[Pezler the Polychromatic 34519]

My Photobucket updates rightly go straight into the Spam folder all on their own. I have not bothered to correct this.

[OneBoot 64178]

On 6/30/2017 at 6:18 PM, Unruly said:

I use Imgur. I also convinced @OneBoot to use it as well after her previous image hosting site pulled something similar. I've found it to be pretty decent.

 

Yeah, I switched to Imgur after Google acquired Picasa then killed it. Still grumpy about that. 

 

I've found Imgur to be a decent replacement; it does all the things Picasa did, plus a few other things. You just have to ignore all of their "social media" stuff, and lock down your account to be all private, if you just want to use it for picture hosting (which is what I've done).

 

They do have an app, and I use it frequently, it works great for when I need to transfer pictures from my phone to my computer or the forums. Just keep in mind that you may have to give it permission again to access pictures on your phone from time to time, otherwise the app stops working (I had that happen once, after they did a major update I think).

 

So yes, overall I would recommend Imgur. Just make sure when you upload pictures from your phone to Imgur to change the viewing audience from "Public" to "Only Me" or else any schmoe on Imgur can see and make snarky comments on your pictures. I found this out the hard way. 

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D