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Photobucket took my site hostage

Discussion in 'Non-Vegas Chat' started by Grid, Jul 13, 2017.

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  1. Grid

    Grid Well-Known Member

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    Over 6 years worth of trip reports. Thousands of pictures and well over 100 pages of text. Countless man hours spent building my blog with content wasted.

    Photobucket is now holding my website hostage to the tune of $800.00 a year. What a kick in my face, looks like millions of users are pissed as well.

    I had so many pictures embedded that I actually had 2 photobucket accounts. So I would have to pay their "embed" fee of $399 twice to get my website back to normal.

    I started using Imgur early this year, but everything prior to 2017 is now worthless without pictures. I'm going to see if they fall under the pressure to back off on this, like Netflix, before freaking out. Way to much work for me to figure out what picture went where to start all over again with a new hosting site. I might end up walking away from the blog game.

    Sorry for the rant.
     
    • Wow! Wow! x 1
  2. Richard Alpert

    Richard Alpert LOST

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    Sorry to hear about that, Grid!
    I'm a big fan of your blog!
    Hopefully Photobucket will come to their senses soon!

    RICHARD
     
  3. RibbonCat

    RibbonCat Low-Roller

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    The rant is warranted. Hopefully they fix this for you and the hundreds or thousands of others they've done this to.
     
  4. Grid

    Grid Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Rich! I love sharing my adventures, even the shitty ones, with people online. I use my site as my own sort of diary as well. I'll get board in the shitter, crack out my tablet and read a trip from years ago. So much is lost to time when you rely on your own memory. I liked having my archive.

    They say you cant put a price on memories. But I can, and its not $800 a year for the rest of my life LOL

    More like 10's of millions of people! I'm sure some of the bigger bloggers and such will pay up to keep their links alive. And that would do in the little guys like me, since their plan might actually draw revenue from those people.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/photobucket-just-killed-a-chunk-of-internet-history
     
  5. Sonya

    Sonya Queen of VMB

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    Seems like a terrible idea for a business like Photobucket, but money talks I guess. I join the masses in hoping they come to their senses.
     
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  6. saintpauljeff

    saintpauljeff VIP Whale

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    It's funny that they chose this moment to realize that maybe allowing the service for free wasn't such a good idea. We'll soon seen how catastrophic this strategy is...
     
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  7. makikiboy

    makikiboy VIP Whale

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    This is one of the things I was afraid about by using the "cloud". Guess that's why I just keep my photos on a separate external drive and a backup drive.

    But I see this the same way that I see some drugs nowadays. In the beginning they make them affordable but once you get hooked on using them, Bam, they raise the prices for them so now you have to pay high prices to keep using them.
     
  8. Sonya

    Sonya Queen of VMB

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    Well, including links to their website on every photo posted on blogs, boards, etc, worked for awhile to get them market-share. Now it seems like time to cash in.

    FWIW, you can get a domain and server space on many services for under $40 a year if you want to host your own photos. You also could upload them as attachments here, but maybe that's blatant self-promotion. ;)
     
  9. nostresshere

    nostresshere Mr. Anti Debit Card

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    There are programs that will scan a site an download the whole thing for you. You still loose the URL of course, but you can get your stuff.
     
  10. Grid

    Grid Well-Known Member

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    I hear ya! I still have all of my pictures, both on my PC and on stupid Photobucket. But i would have to piece together my entire site pic by pic to get it back to normally. And that is a ton of work to string together. Like a giant jigsaw puzzle :cry:
     
  11. Grid

    Grid Well-Known Member

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    It took me 2 weeks, but the Grid Report is back and better than ever. I actually went in and coded it this time, so it should work well if you want to read something on your phone or tablet while taking a shit.

    More pictures, more sections and more of my stupidness. Thanks for hanging in there to those that read it!
     
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  12. Richard Alpert

    Richard Alpert LOST

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    Yes! The fortnight of prairie-dogging it is over! :thumbsup:
    Time to grab the iPad and enter the office!

    Thanks for the news, Grid! :D

    RICHARD
     
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  13. todd7764

    todd7764 Low-Roller

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    This sucks- love your site. Good luck in finding a solution.
     
  14. Grid

    Grid Well-Known Member

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    It reads much better in the nude FYI

    It is back up and running now. Took some effort, and plenty of help from a bunch of fans. But we are back!
     
  15. hawki39

    hawki39 Low-Roller

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    Photobucket changed their pricing, I decided that I didn't want to pay their fees....but I still have 99% of the photos that are on their site. Screw them.
     
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  16. Grid

    Grid Well-Known Member

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    That is where they got greedy. If they wanted $24.99 a year to embed and drop the advertising from their buckets, I bet most users would have bit. But $400, when Imgur, Flickr and a dozen other well known sites are free? Come On Man!
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
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