Photobucket block image links unannounced! Alternatives?

[John Webb]

I regret that Photobucket have, without warning, instituted blocks on their 'free' and lower subscription accounts which prevent users from providing linked images. The result is that numerous images, particularly on my St Albans South threads, can no longer be seen.

I'd be grateful if people could give me their recommendations for other ways of storing and linking pictures.

[John Hinson]

With any free service, you have to accept they have no obligations and therefore can provide an unreliable service, put prices on or pull the plug at any time. A paid-for service is never guaranteed, of course, but is more likely to be consistently reliable because you have a contract with them. It should also be advert-free,

I would suggest you plonk the words "free web hosting" or "cheap web hosting" (according to your choice) into a search engine and see what comes up. Straightforward web hosting is all you need - just upload the pictures the the server and link to them. You don't need any fancy "Photo" sites.

John

[baconandeggs]

I would suggest you plonk the words "free web hosting" or "cheap web hosting" (according to your choice) into a search engine and see what comes up. Straightforward web hosting is all you need - just upload the pictures the the server and link to them. You don't need any fancy "Photo" sites.

John

I concur with what John has written. Have a look at

http://valleysignals.org.nz/neo/rail/20 ... -5903a.jpg

The image should load quickly without any of the rubbish usually associated with commercial sites. How I do this is very simple. Have a look at

http://valleysignals.org.nz/neo/rail/

Here you will see a very simple folder/file structure. I set it up a number of years ago when yahoo groups began self-destructing (neo) and I wanted a way of sharing photos. I pay for web hosting and a domain name but it is not particularly expensive. An advantage of having my own domain name is that I have my own email that is independent of an ISP or the likes of gmail.

Now the sponsor's message ....... the prime reason for paying for web hosting is my web site valleysignals.org.nz . The site is in limbo and not much has been done on it in recent years. About six months ago I decided to branch out and add pages about astro but that work has ground to a halt as well. If you enjoy studying manual block signalling (where skills are rapidly disappearing) then you may also enjoy learning astro (cellnav in US) where the art and skill has been destroyed by gps.

The three volume Admiralty Manual of Navigation is a better bedtime read than a railway rule book

[Danny252]

flickr appears to be quite popular among other users on this site, but I'm not sure if direct linking of images is possible/easy.

[John Hinson]

flickr appears to be quite popular among other users on this site, but I'm not sure if direct linking of images is possible/easy.

It would seem so, reading the guidelines at https://www.flickr.com/help/guidelines :

Flickr makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to other web sites. Pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr. This provides a way to get more information about the content and the photographer.

John

[John Hinson]

I'm glad this forum hasn't fallen to the levels of hysteria over this that I have read on other forums.

Although I don't use Photobucket myself it took me less than a minute to find the simple solution. Simply go to your image in Photobucket and copy the code shown as "Direct" and paste that into whatever you are writing about on this forum. It will display as a link rather than an image but one click is all that is needed to view the picture.

Example: http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii11 ... CT5047.jpg

And you can put as many links as you like in one post, here's another:
http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/shu ... box&page=1

John

[Chris Osment]

.... Simply go to your image in Photobucket and copy the code shown as "Direct" and paste that into whatever you are writing about on this forum. It will display as a link rather than an image but one click is all that is needed to view the picture.....

Err....sorry John, but that does not seem to work - I get a 'you need to update your account for 3rd-party hosting' message. I'd tried similar myself recently in a 'test page', and although it seemed to work at first, I soon started getting 'please upgrade' messages from Photobucket.

[John Hinson]

Hmm, interesting. The second one seems to work OK?

If what you say is correct, then there is a bug on their web site because they want people to go to their site. They do say they are in the process of upgrading the web site. However, using their search engine that first picture does appear to have vanished.

Let's see if this one sticks:
http://i938.photobucket.com/albums/ad22 ... yland3.jpg
or, copied from the URL itself:
http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/Joh ... uth&page=1

John

Update - it would appear the latter type of link above works fine.

[John Hinson]

Here are some other options to choose from:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-free-ima ... es-1357014

John

[John Webb]

Thanks for that - although the PhotoBucket description seems a little out of date!

Been too busy with other things to sort out the potential replacement for PhotoBucket.

[Keith]

I seem to have been hit by this problem - including the avatar. Trying the links provided by John H brings the photographs up initially, but they start to disappear behind advertising after a few seconds. Clearly I shall have to study thebalance.com and then spend ages transferring photographs.

[JRB]

That's outsourcing.