Photo Bucket

[Sunny43.5]

Warning to all , I used to use Photo Bucket as it was free to upload photos to and then to this Forum , I posted a few weeks ago that my photos no longer were showing up on the Forum . Seems they do not want you to share photos to third party sites like ours , if you want to upgrade it will set you back and eye watering $400 to upgrade NOT this little black duck !

[The_Hawk]

I'm working on a solution so this doesn't happen again (basically a system that automatically creates a copy of posted images).

I'm also looking to see if there is any way to fix the current issues, although that isn't looking so great yet. For Chrome users there is this which is currently working, although for how long is anyone's guess.

Photobucket Hotlink Fix - Chrome Web Store

[Sunny43.5]

Thanks for the info seems like a greedy grab for money in my opinion , shame as I had quite a few photos that other Forum members have used for reference in the past .

[sssstew]

got worried so went and checked my photo thread and luckily it seems ok at the moment, sssstew's 3rd Polo GTI

[Sunny43.5]

If you go to their site there is an article about photos being used on 3 rd party sites and the mongrels want money to repost them .

[Guest001]

Put them on Google Drive and allow those who have the link to view them

[The_Hawk]

got worried so went and checked my photo thread and luckily it seems ok at the moment, sssstew's 3rd Polo GTI

Maybe if you're looking at your own photos it works?? I'm getting the error message (unless I'm running that plugin I linked earlier).


The fix I talked about earlier to ensure that all images are copied locally to ensure this can't happen in future is working away nicely, sadly the stats say that nearly 60% of all photo's posted before 2011 are now dead links... and that doesn't include photobucket at all since I'm currently skipping all those until a workaround can be found allowing me to get all those photos back... *fingers crossed*

[tigger73]

The fix I talked about earlier to ensure that all images are copied locally to ensure this can't happen in future is working away nicely, sadly the stats say that nearly 60% of all photo's posted before 2011 are now dead links... and that doesn't include photobucket at all since I'm currently skipping all those until a workaround can be found allowing me to get all those photos back... *fingers crossed*

Nice work! Hopefully an end to dead pictures forever. Though now we just need to get everyone back on the forums to post them...

[JustCruisn]

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.

[GeorgeMK1]

This happened to me too mate! 4 build threads all gone, and I certainly won't be re-uploading each and every picture too

What pricks photobucket are !!!

[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?