Photobucket has stopped providing free 3rd party image hosting!!!

For several years I have used Photobucket to provide third party image hosting for pictures I post on this forum and other forums.  In other words, when I wanted a picture to appear in a posting, I uploaded the picture to Photobucket, and then inserted Photobucket's IMG code for that picture into the posting.  When the posting is viewed, the picture appears where the IMG code is located. 

Today I went to respond to a thread I had posted in earlier, and discovered that instead of a picture, my prior posting contained a notice from Facebook stating "Please update your account to enable third party hosting."  I went to Photobucket, and discovered that as of June 29, unless you pay $399.99 per year, you don't get third party image hosting from Photobucket.  WTF!!!  I am definitely not going to pay that kind of money for third party image hosting.  This means that all of the posts which I have made over the years no longer contain pictures, and in order to post pictures in the future, I need to find a new webpage which provides third party image hosting.

What webpages are other people using which provide third party image hosting?

Hey Pete,
That's certainly a kick in the _____!!! Flickr is a pretty decent photo sharing site a'la photobucket. It allows you to create an account so you can manage the photos in folders, it also has a pretty decent mobile app as well...

Further if it's just a simple share IMGUR is a great site for simple upload and share, although I don't think it's great for managing photos for pulling at a later time and adding to multiple sites, more just a one time upload, share, and forget about it.

I am in the same boat. I did not know this until I read your post and I am not happy about it.

At one point I was a premium user because I had a couple very popular picture intensive project threads on another forum. I assume those are all broken now. Great.

I have used deviantart.com for my pics.  It's not as convenient an interface as many, but it's adequate, even with their free accounts.

Jim

Wow...what a bummer. 

I used to use Picasa but then Google took it over and without the ".jpg" extensions, I can't seem to use it. 

Then I went with imgur but now can't seem to link it very well from the mobile app.

So to make a long story short, I use tapatalk when i am on mobile and Imgur as a desktop application for sharing. 

I am not sure at all though if what I am doing is optimal.  I doubt it.  I am very curious to hear other people's perspective on this.

It sucks.  I just switched to Flickr and canceled my photobucket.

That is unfortunate - so many blogs, forums, etc have been built/contributed to, relying on image hosting that people have thought could be a permanent solution.  I've never used photobucket, but know many have - and many more will lose out when they go to detailed posts with broken image links that will now be lost to time.

I've been using Google picasaweb/photos for a number of years now, and always wonder when the magic that holds together the random links and points them at the photos that I've shared in this manor will go away.  Hey, with Google, ya never know!

I used to use Picasa but then Google took it over and without the ".jpg" extensions, I can't seem to use it. 

Even with Google Photos, and the right incantations through their sharing mechanism, it is still very possible to create publicly viewable links that work just fine with forum img tags.  Hint:  for the .jpg issue, you should/may be able to append "?.jpg" to the image path, both tricking the forum software into accepting and building the proper img tag, while also working with the way Google resolves their image links.

Like Kardinal, I will often use tapatalk if I'm posting from mobile.  I will continue to use Google Photos as long as they maintain support for their links to our shared images.

-Sam

Youtube has an option for a slideshow. I don't know how flexible it is but you can stop the slideshow and view individual slides one at a time by scrolling through.



This is a project I uploaded to Youtube.

I use google photos. Unlimited storage, great tools to manage photos. You can choose photos and albums to make publicly share-able via a link as well.

I really like it as a tool to manage and share my photos. Here is a review of the service:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15762170/google-photos-how-to-master

https://www.theverge.com/a/sundars-google/google-photos-google-io-2015

I felt like that was only a matter of time with photobucket.  Not sure why I got that feeling, but I stopped using it long ago as a result.

Imgur is a great image hosting site, but no one knows how long that site will be free.

Seems like there's another site that hosts images for free, but.... the Name escapes me at the moment... dang, What was the name of that site... it had the linKs easily generated when I needed to embed the imAges in forum posts too...
Dang, well, I guess I'll remember it eventually...

 

Ha.....well done.

I use Flickr, for web sharing but normally use the tapatalk app when posting photos here. Sometimes I'll even write a post via website on my computer, then edit in tapatalk to add photos that are on my phone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Some words of wisdom from my brother-in-law the computer geek and internet prowler:

"The photo message on Facebook is a Photobucket image replacing your photo link with their image.  I don't think Facebook cares.  See here: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photobucket-now-charges-399-for-third-party-hosted-images/  I think Photobucket is hurting from bandwidth expenses and this is their 'solution', which may be fatal to them.

I found this site that lists 10 alternatives.   https://www.lifewire.com/free-image-hosting-sites-3486329 You would need to read the terms of each.  For example Image Shack's free account does not allow external links after the 30 day trial expires, and they conveniently did not mention the cost of the premium account.  Walk away.

While researching Google Photos, I discovered that photos from my Google Fi phone are already it their system.  I did not know they were uploading my photos automatically.  I don't want them doing that, so will need to figure out how to make them stop.  I would only want to upload photos if I select them to be uploads.  If you have any kind of Google account active on your phone it may be happening to you also.  Worth checking."

Here's a post I made back in 2011 (holy crap, were does the time go!?) that talks about using the NWKA Gallery to host images and insert them into posts. This may be helpful to those who will be changing the way they do things with pictures. Like I've mentioned in the post, feel free to use it as a test bed for embedding images.

http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=7004.0

At this point I am not going to do squat with regards to all my blocked PhotoBucket pictures I've used in Forums over the MANY MANY years.  Don't care.  Not worth my time to reupload most of it.

Maybe PB will see everyone ditching them for other free or cheap alternatives and in a final "Hail Mary" attempt to stay afloat they will come up with a better way to keep customers.  Maybe that will result in them just turning our pictures back on and all will be back to normal. 

If not, I will just move on with old/new pictures uploaded from my computer to wherever, as needed.