For some strange reason I thought I had managed to escape the photobucket debarcle that arose earlier this year. This was on account of the fact that I already had a premium account with said organisation. This was a fair price (£36 /year ) if I recall and I could upload my images and use third party hosting.
However earlier this week I received this email
Hi ,
This message is to inform you that we discontinued the Plus 20
plan in June of this year. We have grandfathered your expired plan for several
months as a convenience.
In order to keep your
account current and all of your content available, we are asking that you
migrate over to one of our current Plus plan offerings: Plans
Failure to do so within 30 days will result in your billing to
be suspended, and your account will be reverted to a free account.
If you have any questions about your account or which of our current
offerings is right for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Thanks,
Sebastian,your personal account manager
This effectively means they are going to switch off all my images on the Shed Wars blog this December. Unless I pay them $399/year
It gets worse....I now have to do two things
1) retrieve all the photos uploaded on photobucket
2) find another site that offers a third party hosting service for a considerably lower fee
I'll deal with point 2 in time but my priority is to retrieve the photos currently stored on photobucket pronto. By my estimate there are over 5000 and these all have to be downloaded individually (Photobucket in their wisdom have disabled the download album function)
I spent a considerable part of yesterday retrieving around 1000 (these are now saved on my hard drive) - I just have to keep going. This blog has been a big part of my hobby in the last six years and I'll be buggered if this is going to beat me.
So what does this mean - well until they switch me off I'll carry on as normal (a bit like a duck serene on the topside whilst my little legs paddle furiously under the surface) - but it is likely that the blog will need to be rested/updated in the very near future.
The pain of re-attaching all the photos of the past fills me with dread
Thanks Photobucket !
wow - that's a really silly thing for them to do as the marginal cost of hosting your picture is close to zero. I just use blogger / google to host my pictures. I know that gives them a co-right to use them but I'm not all that concerned about.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the transition
Yes, this little decision affected another service that I manage on behalf of a local conservation organisation. A real pain to resolve... Luckily my gaming blog photos are uploaded directly to blogger so aren't affected. Can you not use the built in photo storage that Blogger offers?
ReplyDeleteJust one of the ways that modern technology affects us. Obviously they've decided that money can be made this way. Personally I put all my photos on CD and then upload directly to my blog when I need them. No middle men involved. Any pics I want to keep I get printed out and put into an old fashioned album. Instant easy access.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the work on the photo recapture. It is a shame that greed makes the rounds so frequently. I am sure your followers will be patient, there are a lot of reasons where one needs to be less blog active, at times.
ReplyDeleteOh darn, I hope you'll be able to retrieve all the pictures you want and that you somehow manay to reupload them to your blog.
ReplyDeleteYour blog has been an amazing inspiration for many of us gamers!
That sucks! Just like a big corporation to decide their CEO needs another mansion this year and those who use their service will have to pay for it. I'm glad you did at least get warning. I back up and store images on a flash drive. If need be I got back through my blog posts to retrieve photos.
ReplyDeleteFor around a $100 a year you can get your own site and do as you like with it.
ReplyDeleteWhy don‘t you simply upload your pictures on Google for free? It‘s not as if you‘d need to protect your privacy as you display them anyway. Just a thought though.
ReplyDelete+1 for "Why don‘t you simply upload your pictures on Google for free?"
ReplyDeleteBummer, is this a bit like the other party amending your contract mid - term? Anyway, the costs they suggest don't jive with hobby output for the ordinary gamer, unless you were on a subscription based viewing of some sort.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Drive sounds like a good place to store your Photo's. Last time I looked at the rules, blogging photo's all contribute to your space allowance of 15GB if they are over a certain size, you can quickly eat up that space. I think as long as the pictures are less than 700 pixels wide (you would need to check that),then each such photo is hosted freely and does not clock up against your allowance.
You have a lot of work ahead of you if you re-integrate the pictures back into your posts and it is a good example of why consumers should appreciate their bloggers efforts, because the work that goes into all this free sharing marlarky is significant and judging by the number of comments left on a typical blog versus viewings is largely under-appreciated.
Good luck with whatever you choose.
Very annoying..........it has crossed my mind that the more I put into my blog the more it means ? At the moment I go with google which costs next to nothing. But I do feel I could be held to ransom at some point 😢
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain mate - they screwed up my VBCW blog and umpteen threads.
ReplyDeleteDownload an image ripper, that will save you all that time doing it one at a time....
ReplyDeleteAnother +1 for Google Photos. Take pleasure in telling Photobucket where to go.
ReplyDeleteGood luck, sounds like a nightmare.
ReplyDeleteBugger...I lost lots of photos from older posts on my blog but haven't the enthusiasm to go back and try to rectify it. Yours are worth saving but its a huge job...
ReplyDeleteAnd another +1 for Google. Tell PB where to go! I don't envy you the effort to download, upload and reinstate everything though. Best of luck with it!
ReplyDeleteWow, what a pain, good luck with retrieving your photos, sounds like a good job of shooting themselves in the foot!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain