Photo Bucket

[sssstew]

nooooooooooooo

[The_Hawk]

We really need a bot to look at all the posts with Photobucket links, use the tool to get the pic, then push the pic to a new host, then update the links in all posts.

I'm looking into something like that.

What pricks photobucket are !!!

Yep.

nooooooooooooo

Yep.

[The_Hawk]

Update! A fix to the Photobucket problem was found and I've spent the last little while implementing it and waiting for it to successfully scan the last 12 years worth of posts.

220,000 external image links have been scanned and 140,000 images have been imported and saved locally so this won't be a problem again. 12GB of new images now sit nicely within VWWatercooleds' servers. Any new images that get posted will automatically be copied in so this sort of issue won't effect us again.

For those interested there are some stats!

Of external links:
50% were hosted with Photobucket (hence the huge problem it was for the community).
- 86% of Photobucket images were recovered.
- 14% are lost to the internet

14% were hosted with imageshack
- Only 11% were recovered
- 89% and dead and gone

4% were hosted with Flickr
- 96% of these images survived!
- Only 4% are dead which is pretty amazing.

The remaining 32% are from lots of different places including personal hosting through TPG/iinet/Telstra etc, other forums, manufacturers websites... lots of places.
- This is the worst pile with almost 40,000 dead links, or 53% of all images from other sources now dead.

Unsurprisingly, the hit rate was really low when we were back in 2005 and increases to a 96% of all links working in 2017.

[Sunny43.5]

Well done amazing job you have done for the members and fairly good results on the recovery side , I know when I first started posting Photos Photo Bucket was the one suggested on the forum .

[jets]

I know when I first started posting Photos Photo Bucket was the one suggested on the forum .

I too received an email from Photo Bucket asking for money to upgrade. So who do we use now?

[Water Boy]

Well done Hawk.

THanks Aaron for saving us.

Can you post a how to or suggest how we should post images now?

[The_Hawk]

Can you post a how to or suggest how we should post images now?

I'm working on that and trying to find something I like and which is easy to use. Something that is, sadly, a little harder than you would think. The short answer is that it doesn't matter where you post an image, anything posted today is automatically sucked into the forum and the links updated behind the scenes.

As for a new site to host your images, you may have noticed that I've quietly put some links into the header leading to the "Image Uploader" and "Image Gallery". This is the current attempt at an in house image hosting system (and there have been a few). Feel free to use this to upload your photos with one small caveat; That particular system is going to be replaced at some point in time*. (Note that all images that are posted will be automatically sucked into the forums from there too so no images should ever be lost).

In the end I want a system that is easy to use and preferably one that integrates directly into the forums. I'm working on either modifying somthing off the shelf or getting a coder in to custom write something for me. Until this, this little tool should work well enough.

[DV52]

I'm working on that and trying to find something I like and which is easy to use. Something that is, sadly, a little harder than you would think. The short answer is that it doesn't matter where you post an image, anything posted today is automatically sucked into the forum and the links updated behind the scenes.

As for a new site to host your images, you may have noticed that I've quietly put some links into the header leading to the "Image Uploader" and "Image Gallery". This is the current attempt at an in house image hosting system (and there have been a few). Feel free to use this to upload your photos with one small caveat; That particular system is going to be replaced at some point in time*. (Note that all images that are posted will be automatically sucked into the forums from there too so no images should ever be lost).

In the end I want a system that is easy to use and preferably one that integrates directly into the forums. I'm working on either modifying somthing off the shelf or getting a coder in to custom write something for me. Until this, this little tool should work well enough.

Hawk: First, allow me to add my appreciation for your efforts to those already expressed here - I wish I had your cleaver nous for programming, but alas I'm a Luddite where anything but assembler language is needed!!

Unfortunately, I come (again) asking more questions - I'm really am not stalking you in this venture.

I was able to load an image from my laptop, but I was not able to use the "remote" facility. I thought that I would replicate my previous effort (i.e. transferring a .jpg file from Imgur). This time around, I got no error messages. However, the image loader just reported nothing when I tried and no files were loaded. Here's the URL if you could try for me -please

http://i.imgur.com/me7x6p3.jpg

What am I missing? If I'm making an obvious error, please explain my error in as complex a way as possible - so I don't feel so stupid

And I've done it again - I've forgotten that there is no way of deleting a picture once you leave the Image Loader. Just as a suggestion, is it possible for the forum member who posted the picture to delete it when in the gallery - if the member is logged-in?

Don

[The_Hawk]

i was going to use flickr if you'd recommend it...

Flickr is pretty good, owned by Yahoo and has a long history but the lesson which has been learnt (again) is that any service that is free has the potential to just go pop overnight either completely lost or locked out It's always worth keeping a copy of your own photos on a USB HDD or memory stick regardless of where you store/share them online. For <$100 you can buy a 1TB (even a 2TB these days!) HDD and save off all your photos. Even if you buy another one *every* year and re-copy your library again and again it's a pretty cheap insurance policy (and really after you have two drives I'd just copy the same stuff to both so you have two copies in case one fails).

Another great suggestion is Google Photos which offers unlimited free storage of photos online (at a maximum resolution of 8MP which is more than enough as a free online backup or you can pay for more). I don't know how well you can go sharing them from here though as it's not something I have tried, from what I read you can post a *link* to the photo, but not imbed the image directly, so not at all ideal.

From a forum point of view this recent fix solves the problem by copying in the photos within minutes of them being posted, saving them within the forum. This comes at a cost of storage space and bandwidth... about 300% more storage so far + 25% - 50% more bandwidth, although this is a bit unknown since it's such a recent change.

Hawk: First, allow me to add my appreciation for your efforts to those already expressed here - I wish I had your cleaver nous for programming, but alas I'm a Luddite where anything but assembler language is needed!!

I’m not nearly as clever as I seem, but I appreciate the thanks.

I was able to load an image from my laptop, but I was not able to use the "remote" facility. I thought that I would replicate my previous effort (i.e. transferring a .jpg file from Imgur)

The remote facility seems to be pretty hit and miss, loading from you computer seems to work which will likely be the most common solution. I don’t know what the issue is coming from Imgur, but it’s not something I seem to be able to fix. If you are posting a link from elsewhere, just post that link directly in the forum… within minutes it will automatically grab the photo and update the link anyway.

I've forgotten that there is no way of deleting a picture once you leave the Image Loader. Just as a suggestion, is it possible for the forum member who posted the picture to delete it when in the gallery - if the member is logged-in?

After you upload an image you are given a delete link, but yes, it’s never shown again. This essentially only covers you fixing something you immediately realise was uploaded in error, after that you would have to use the “report” button you get in the gallery view to flag an image for deletion.

As for user level access… there are alternative image hosting software options that would allow this (although not using the same username/password as the forum sadly) which I am looking into. None of them are as simple as photobucket was when it comes to simple uploads and easy to copy links ready to post into forums. I’ll keep looking, but this simple little tool should cover people in the short term (and like I said the forum is automagically capturing all the photos on the fly anyway.

[Water Boy]

Cheers Hawk.