photobucket forcing me to upgrade

[Jeep Driver]

Anything you put on "the cloud" is ultimately at the mercy of whoever owns the cloud server(s). Photobucket is "the cloud." Dropbox is "the cloud." Google Docs is "the cloud." They can change their price structure and/or terms of service tomorrow. The very best control, which most of us can't afford and probably don't have the technical resources to do anyway, is to have your own server hosting your own domain. I know one guy in town who does that -- but he's an IT professional for a large hospital, and he has a bank of servers in a rack in his basement. Aside from the servers, the big roadblock to hosting your own site is that you need a fast connection. I have the fastest DSL connection available in my corner of the universe, and it's nowhere near fast enough to handle having my own server connected to the Internet.

 

Next best is to register your own domain name and rent hosting from a company that's in the business of hosting. Their prices may increase a bit with each renewal, but probably never on the order of magnitude of what Photobucket did. (Going from zero to $399 is, mathematically, an infinite increase. Not 10%, not 100%, not even 400% -- it's "infinite.") They have their business plan figured out so their fees cover their costs plus profit. Photobucket was trying to make their income with ads, but they got greedy to the point that users were almost forced to run ad blockers, which obviously reduced the effectiveness of the ads.

 

A friend pointed out that with a hundred million users, most of them subscribed to the free service, if Photobucket had decided to charge just $10 a year their income would increased by about $1 BILLION dollars a year. Most of us would have paid $10/year. $400/year -- not a chance.

 

 

 

Tech is changing at neck breaking speed, if not the tech, the way tech is being used. 

 

My brother is a corporate snob who deals a lot with millennials, he tells me that that many are using the 'personal cloud' as a means to work around everyone else' 'terms of service'. 

 

I have two millennial daughters myself. They way we do things is not the way they do things. They will dictate the way things are done, they already are. 

 

Cable TV, for example, will, has, will go, the way of the floppy disc, betamax, VHS, CDs, DVDs, etc..... you just haven't caught on yet. :P

 

 

BTW, we cut the cable nearly 4 years ago now, could not imagine paying more than $100 per month for that garbage now. I do pay attention to what they are doing, in some ways they are pretty smart. 

[Pete M]

 

 

 

 

While I have your attention.........   jeepcomancheclub.com is available, and other variations, such as, comancheclub.club and so forth. Don't know if you care or not. 

 

 

it's not the site that matters, it's the folks on the site.   :thumbsup:   if someone else wants to make their own site for MJs, they will do so regardless of how many site names I own.  plus I'm just about penniless so it's a moot point anyhow. 

[Eagle]

 

Anything you put on "the cloud" is ultimately at the mercy of whoever owns the cloud server(s). Photobucket is "the cloud." Dropbox is "the cloud." Google Docs is "the cloud." They can change their price structure and/or terms of service tomorrow. The very best control, which most of us can't afford and probably don't have the technical resources to do anyway, is to have your own server hosting your own domain. I know one guy in town who does that -- but he's an IT professional for a large hospital, and he has a bank of servers in a rack in his basement. Aside from the servers, the big roadblock to hosting your own site is that you need a fast connection. I have the fastest DSL connection available in my corner of the universe, and it's nowhere near fast enough to handle having my own server connected to the Internet.

 

Next best is to register your own domain name and rent hosting from a company that's in the business of hosting. Their prices may increase a bit with each renewal, but probably never on the order of magnitude of what Photobucket did. (Going from zero to $399 is, mathematically, an infinite increase. Not 10%, not 100%, not even 400% -- it's "infinite.") They have their business plan figured out so their fees cover their costs plus profit. Photobucket was trying to make their income with ads, but they got greedy to the point that users were almost forced to run ad blockers, which obviously reduced the effectiveness of the ads.

 

A friend pointed out that with a hundred million users, most of them subscribed to the free service, if Photobucket had decided to charge just $10 a year their income would increased by about $1 BILLION dollars a year. Most of us would have paid $10/year. $400/year -- not a chance.

 

 

 

Tech is changing at neck breaking speed, if not the tech, the way tech is being used. 

 

My brother is a corporate snob who deals a lot with millennials, he tells me that that many are using the 'personal cloud' as a means to work around everyone else' 'terms of service'. 

 

I have two millennial daughters myself. They way we do things is not the way they do things. They will dictate the way things are done, they already are. 

 

Cable TV, for example, will, has, will go, the way of the floppy disc, betamax, VHS, CDs, DVDs, etc..... you just haven't caught on yet. :P

 

 

I know, I'm a Luddite. Can't help it, it's just the way my brain is wired. I've never been at the bleeding edge of any technological advances -- I'm always trailing at the end of the pack, dragged kicking and screaming into last year's (or the year before that) technology.

 

I still don't trust the cloud, and I prefer to own the license to my software, not rent it. I bought a license for Microsoft Office 2016, rather than paying every month to "rent" Office 365.

[kryptronic]

There are technical solutions to this issue on CC with PhotoBucket. I have expertise in this area and own a company that has a data center and servers. The forum can be fixed and all those pics can be viewed. It would take a little magic, but it's technically feasible. I reached out to Alexia via PM about a week ago on this and have not gotten a response. I would like to help. Somebody in charge reach out to me when you're tired of looking at bandwidth exceeded messages.

[Incommando]

 

it seems as photobucket has come out with a new plan.

 

P500

 

which includes third party hosting.

 

 

 

when you link enough photos to forums it will lock your photos out.

view any of my threads to see the error message

 

at this point i have too many photos uploaded to this site that i am committed.

and have to purchase it to continue my build threads  :fs1:

 

not impressed with how they did this with a new policy update

 

any thoughts and anyone else affected?

 

So how much did the bastids charge you to continue using their site?

 

$399.99 is what they want

[DirtyComanche]

Anyone who has a "Plus" account (it's like $2.99 a month) and still has working pictures, be aware that will end at the end of 2018.  They're trying not to scare off the current paying customers, but if I was you I would start migrating now, as starting in 2019 they will want $400...  The longer you wait the harder it is.  I'm trying to fix some of my threads and it's a lot of work.