Recommend a new image hosting site please!..

[C_Claycomb]

WARNING - Using IMGUR is a risk!

Samon is suggesting it here, and I have been seeing a lot of people stating that they use it and will be using it across other forums I am a member of. One person though pointed out Imgur's Terms and Conditions page:
http://imgur.com/tos

Specifically:

Stuff not to do
If someone else might own the copyright to it, don't upload it. Don't upload gore, "hate speech" (i.e. demeaning race, gender, age, religious or sexual orientation, etc.), or material that is threatening, harassing, defamatory, or that encourages violence or crime. Don't upload illegal content such as child porn or nonconsensual ("revenge") porn. Don't hotlink to adult content or to file-sharing, gambling, torrent, warez, or Imgur rip-off sites. Don't impersonate someone else. Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it.

Hotlinking is exactly what we do when we post those tags to get a picture to load from a web host onto this forum, without this forum having to host it.
[COLOR=#0000ff]http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html[/COLOR]

So, although it certainly works for the moment, there is going to be a huge number of Photobucket users who are likely to start doing it, spiking their bandwidth, and cause a crack down on offenders.

 

[Robson Valley]

Would I be better off, both financially and strategically, to open my own website and stick up hundreds of pictures?

 

[Nice65]

My account is ok, the heavy users are being targeted. The retro delete is a real ballache for bloggers, and Photobucket ought to have dealt with it rather than just drop the bomb.

From the conditions page there would be an argument that they still have your property and the rights to it.

You retain all your rights to any Content you submit, upload or display on or while using Photobucket. This means that you own all the Content you post and are responsible for its settings:

Read more: http://photobucket.com/terms#ixzz4lnwjHpeW

So your rights to your content have been removed, Photobucket have taken control of them. I can see a huge backlash, it's a dirty way to go about business. It is a ransom, completely unannounced, and mind boggling in how unprofessional it was implemented.

 

[Allans865]

I upload photos to the forum directly via Tapatalk.

Didn't like Tapatalk at first, but I'm now used to it, and I browse the forum through it all the time now.

Thanks,
Allan




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[crosslandkelly]

Interesting read here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40492668

 

[Samon]

Is it true imgur are also on the hunt to do the same?? Just transferred my images to them.. now I'm worried I'll have to do it alllll over again.

 

[Robson Valley]

Tombear says Imgur has done the same as Photobucket, it's in the "fine print."

 

[Nice65]

Mine still works ok, I wonder if lower bandwidth users will be exempt. Nothing to stop anyone from having multiple accounts and spreading the pics across them.

 

[Robson Valley]

I don't post one picture a month from PB. Multiple accounts would be the ruin of me = I can't find the pictures in my only account that I do want to post!

 

[Samon]

Damn. I use my picture hosting accounts to show my work, advertise them on other sites for sale and here for swaps etc. Aswell as the odd image becasue some are funny.

Does that mean I can still use imgur under their annoying fine print..? I'm confused and not very able when it comes to figuring stuff out that doesn't involves my ahnds and making a mess lol.

 

[Robson Valley]

Tombear (and "Herself") say no you can't. Imgur has shut off posting pix.

 

[Mesquite]

Looks like having your own personal website is the way to go.

What sort of cost would that entail?

 

[Samon]

testing from imgur

 

[Robson Valley]

I'm wondering the same thing about annual cost.
Right now, I'm dreaming of posting photo galleries that people can look at.
I'm going to ask around and let you all know what a simple website costs over here.

 

[Barney Rubble]

I gave up using Photobucket a while ago now as I kept getting annoying pop-ups which looked quite dodgy, as though they wanted me to click a link and let them download some malware.

I've ended up creating my own blog on Blogger and link to this whenever I do a trip report. I copy the text into the trip report section on here and invite readers to click onto my blog if they'd like to see any of the photos. It works ok and I like the creative process of producing a blog. The best thing for me is the simplicity. It's all powered by Google and I find it very easy to load up photos as they also happen to be stored in the Google cloud (Picasa).

 

[Mesquite]

Looks like I spoke too soon...

Time to go strip my pictures on PhotoFu*&it and close my accounts

Strange as I'm able to post from there still

 

[Bishop]

Looks like having your own personal website is the way to go.

What sort of cost would that entail?

£0 (sort of) - for a true DIY code & host it yourself site but the learning curve is steep. Fine for personal online storage, family+friends file sharing and low traffic blogs then an old laptop (or even a cellphone) can piggyback your home internet connection bringing joy to all the web.

'free web hosting' - there are a couple of outfits that provide this service however the service comes with many caveats. Fun to play with but not reliable enough for serious use.

$6-9/month - gets you a professionally hosted web server that can handle more traffic and comes free with lots of easy to use website building tools, some even throw in a free domain name. The downside is the server is 'virtual' and you actually share the hardware doing the work with a couple thousand other clients. So at times of high demand your site may run a little slow. Mileage varies between providers and individual servers on their farm.

£12+/month - gets you a dedicated server all to yourself to play with

As for the site itself there are lots of turnkey solutions for blogs,galleries and forums that may do what you need but if you want something unique or to add your own flavour and functions then it makes sense to employ web designer/geek. This is where it gets ugly, prices kick off around £300 for something basic like a blog or static company website.

Then there's actually running it... somebody once said running a website is like owing a Grade I listed tourist attraction.
Something always needs doing. Visitors are always trying to steal bits and leaving obscene graffiti

For example Chess.com has over a thousand moderators spread across multiple time zones (& languages) keeping a watchful eye 24/7. Just checking the users Avatars is a full time job.

 

[bearbait]

To echo the above cautionary comments from Bishop I support a Wordpress-based website for an environmental campaigning organisation on our own domain name and hosting. I've disabled all comments to posts/pages to cut down the need to moderate. I've also beefed up the signon security as Wordpress-based sites are a ready target for hackers (our site often has hundreds of sign in attempts in any 24 hour period from all over the world, generally automated attempts as far as I can determine).

If you just had a chunk of your own hosting with your/an ISP just to host some photos for forum posts rather than a whole website you should have less of a maintenance issue.

 

[acheter]

I gave up using Photobucket a while ago now as I kept getting annoying pop-ups which looked quite dodgy.

 

[hog]

Testing for Photobucket.