Breaking News.

I propose that the good members of DakkaDakka knock their heads together and initiates an image salvage operation to save the very best Photobucket-hosted pictures from inactive members. The works of old masters are in danger of being lost forever, courtesy of Photobucket! See more here for Chaos Dwarf Online's unfolding initiative on the issue:

Chaos Dwarfs Online wrote:

We risk an almost complete breakdown of continuity in images

With the recent Photobucket troublewe'll have to ask ourselves what legends of old should be targeted for photo backup? This is a disaster to continuity and it seems we have scarce time to act before the old photos go completely unavailable. As of now, it is possible to right-click pictures under lockdown, choose view image in new tab and copy it from there.

Remember that Imageshack has already robbed us of archive material, and the Photobucket strike is much larger in scope. We risk losing almost everything old which new members have stumbled upon through the years, taking inspiration from old masters.

I know I'll not have much time to contribute with in the coming weeks. I must fix some Golden Hat entries today and maybe tomorrow, but I could help some after that, within limitations. If many of us could help some, it would add up. This is not drudgery which anyone wish to do during the summer, but it is now or never, unless Photobucket come to their senses and change direction completely.

Volunteers?

Can we please gather links to the logs and work of inactive members which we'd particularly like to see saved from the looming disaster? Then we could chew through the threads one at a time and avoid redundant double-work by advancing which thread/member we each pick. An all-out manual trawl of the whole log section could maybe be possible, but it would be true slave labour. Realistically, we should target worthy pictures in particular.

If we can establish a link list, then some volunteers could possibly wade through it to save backup copies on their own computer, to be transferred to some free and currently stable photohosting site such as Imgur. From there, we could re-upload some stuff in big chunks with lots of photos.

Please remember that artwork should be saved along with miniature photos.

_____________________________

Let's take tjub as an example. His stuff is particularly easy to find and save for backup, since he has both a compilation of picture links in his market thread and moreover an index in his monster of an army log. On the other hand, there is a lot of stuff to wade through! But it can be done.

We might wish to target long-since inactive members first and foremost, but this wrecking ball strikes at everyone's Photobucket album, active or inactive.

Also, I suppose it could be good if we tried to name the image file after its creator (e.g. "Snotling 01" or "Snotling Ballista 02"), just so it's tagged straight away.

I personally use photobucket for my own meagre log, but the thought of losing so many old classics on Dakka is a real concern. Obviously a money issue on their part, time to get moving images over to a more friendly, and reliable, service. But a lot of images no longer stored on computer may be lost, a real headscratcher.

Screw Photobucket. This utterly blows.

The logical place to move the photos to is Dakka's own gallery system, if they're wargaming related.

Argh, this affects all the pics in one of my favorite P&M blogs here (nerdfest's):

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/7800/356350.page

Hopefully everyone can save their images...

 Ketara wrote:
The logical place to move the photos to is Dakka's own gallery system, if they're wargaming related.

I always found the images from Dakka to be too small.

In good news, this will finally get me to move all of my images off of Photobucket and stop going to that absolute disastrous hive of malware and spam. I haven't been able to upload new images there in like a year without having to tiptoe through clickbait and notifications of content that has been blocked by my security.

 LunarSol wrote:
In good news, this will finally get me to move all of my images off of Photobucket and stop going to that absolute disastrous hive of malware and spam. I haven't been able to upload new images there in like a year without having to tiptoe through clickbait and notifications of content that has been blocked by my security.

Yeah. Photobucket killed themselves.

My imgur links from years ago seem to still work. Why bother with a bad image hosting site?

When I started Photobucket was easier to use and more reliable than the alternatives (especially if you had a range of images, rather than just wargaming)

but its been going down hill for ages and my reluctance to have to learn how to use an alternative made me put up with it

but I guess I've got to now

Yep, had an account with Photobucket since 2004 (way predates Imgur etc.).

Both accounts closed today.

May photobucket rot in hell with the fax machines and photocopiers. Always hated having to visit it. Shame about the lost images though...

ListenToMeWarriors wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
The logical place to move the photos to is Dakka's own gallery system, if they're wargaming related.

I always found the images from Dakka to be too small.

That's entirely down to the size of the images people choose to upload.

Are we taking odds on Photobucket evaporating over the next week?

Oh wow, just logged in... I can't even download my photos? I click on one and the preview turns into that image in the OP. Seriously? This is a spectacularly douchey move...

 Elbows wrote:
Are we taking odds on Photobucket evaporating over the next week?

I'd say they'll last longer then that, but this'll defiantly be a major nail in the coffin of an already declining site.

Well there was nothing I can't replace so I deleted my account. Good riddance, Photobucket.

 zedmeister wrote:
May photobucket rot in hell with the fax machines and photocopiers. Always hated having to visit it. Shame about the lost images though...

Id hope not

we still use those at the office.

but yeah gak move.

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:When I started Photobucket was easier to use and more reliable than the alternatives (especially if you had a range of images, rather than just wargaming)

but its been going down hill for ages and my reluctance to have to learn how to use an alternative made me put up with it

but I guess I've got to now

Same as me. I don't know any alternatives. Do you or anyone else recommend other good free sites?

Imgur is the best now.

I think Flickr may be where I end up (I've tried playing around with google but can't seem to get it to cough up a forum friendly link)

but here's a recent list for you to play around with

https://www.lifewire.com/free-image-hosting-sites-3486329

Also, if you have a blog - you can use IMG tags to place blog pictures on any forum normally.

Davor wrote:

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:When I started Photobucket was easier to use and more reliable than the alternatives (especially if you had a range of images, rather than just wargaming)

but its been going down hill for ages and my reluctance to have to learn how to use an alternative made me put up with it

but I guess I've got to now

Same as me. I don't know any alternatives. Do you or anyone else recommend other good free sites?

Imgur.com or Dakka's gallery, although I find Dakka's hosting compresses the images to a point that really affects the quality of the image. That said, I still use it. Other options are Google Photos, or MS OneDrive.

This is really awful!

I've been using photobucket to host most of my images for years now, and although I at least was able to download all of them (I've heard of other photobucket users being locked out of their accounts), even once I find a new place to host them it will take forever to go back through every single post (here on dakka and over on the ammobunker) and relink the images.

I stopped hosting my images on Dakka because of the heavy compression artifacts and the slow uploading process, especially to get custom links to full size inline images. Is there any way to batch post images to Dakka without manually entering info for each one (picking adjusted or unadjusted, clicking copyright info, etc)?

I'm fairly active and still post my projects so will eventually fix my old threads (if I can ever find the free time). But there are so many wonderful threads that aren't really active and will undoubtedly never be fixed. Such a loss of cultural patrimony for the community!

In my dreams some benevolent computer genius writes some sort of magic widget or macro that makes it easy to automatically replace links to photobucket in old forum threads ...

Back when I first started using photobucket it was pretty nice and easy to use. At some point down the line they revamped the site and its only gone downhill from there. Unnecessary changes, clunky editing of images, slower website it took way too long to accomplish anything, less user friendly ...a lot of stuff made the website just a pain to use. They've shot themselves in their own foot with unneeded changes.

This is certainly tragic for all those old logs..

Same thing could happen when myspace eventually gets shut down (not sure how it's still around I don't know a soul who uses it anymore), all my old photos of me as a teen could potentially vanish for eternity...I might want to go and save those.

 Ketara wrote:
The logical place to move the photos to is Dakka's own gallery system, if they're wargaming related.

Unfortunately, Dakka's gallery is only good for images posted on Dakka, and frankly, it's not even that good for those. The zoom function in lieu of just being able to see something blown up properly is horrible to use.

I'm in the process of backing up 5 years of wordpress blogging on Photobucket, and 5 years worth of my Dakka Plog. Hosting the images for Wordpress on wordpress itself, and the ones that are for forums including Dakka on Imgur, which seems to be the best of few choices.

Damn. Just seen this on a few forums I frequent. I don't have an issue with my Dakka gallery, although I don't need super HD images... I'll need though to work out what I have to back up from Photobucket and what I don't already have on my hard drives. Then have to re host and update the forum posts most important to me. What a drag. Have been hating PB recently anyway so no loss not using and will be deleting t he account as soon as I can...

Attention

Saving your own pictures is quite straightforward and should probably be possible even after the changes have been fully implemented. However, saving others' of long since inactive members is a window that will soon close. If you know of anything specatcular and old you'd rather not be unable to see in the future, then head to that log and grab it.

There is one saving grace before Photobucket goes utterly dark. You can apparently download others' albums, if their privacy lets you see the album:



So some speed is won that way.

I just realized that I for a long time saved links to outstanding works of various kinds much more often than actual pictures. This might turn into a headache...

 Azazelx wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
The logical place to move the photos to is Dakka's own gallery system, if they're wargaming related.

Unfortunately, Dakka's gallery is only good for images posted on Dakka, and frankly, it's not even that good for those. The zoom function in lieu of just being able to see something blown up properly is horrible to use.

Agree totally with Azazelx here, Imgur it is then.

Their iOS apps have been sooo bad for the last couple of years - I'm glad this has happened. It's forced me to switch image hosting providers and it will also hopefully spell the end of this rancid company.

 Azazelx wrote:

Unfortunately, Dakka's gallery is only good for images posted on Dakka, and frankly, it's not even that good for those. The zoom function in lieu of just being able to see something blown up properly is horrible to use.
.

I just right click -open img in new tab - when I want to see a large image at full size.

Gah! It would have been nice if they has at least given some warning if such a major change.

Years worth of my battle reports and articles rendered useless overnight. I'd even just posted a new batrep!

I see they want $400USD to re-enable hosting. That's laughable.

Clearly they saw the ransomware attack over the last week and thought 'hey, that looks like a good business model'

I've now backed up all my images on my hard-drives and will re-host as required... Account closed and feedback why I've done this provided to Photobucket...

Now to work out what needs to be fixed in the various forums and which are worth fixing... Glad I have all my wargame related images here on Dakka (and backed up on my HDs as well.)

I honestly never understood why people used photobucket, especially instead of using Dakka's gallery. Photohub always was a sub-par hosting service.

It's free and was easy to link pictures too.

Fortunately my artwork hasn't been hit by this but I'm moving on anyway. That site is nothing but a trial to use now and discourages me from posting my hobbies more than anything else does.

Pjotobucket has been awful to use in the last months so I was about to switch anyway. Their upload speeds have been downright abysmal and half the time, it's not even possible to log in.

I have a hard time seeing many people pay for that horrible hosting service.

Maybe they're about to shut the whole thing down anyway and this is a last ditch effort to squeeze some extra cash out of a few people?

Wierdly enough, my linked photobucket pics still work

Thanks for the update here. I haven't regularly used the site in years since they increased the ads on free accounts to the point where my (admittedly budget) laptop would choke on the amount of ads popping up after 15-30 seconds of waiting for the site to finish loading. I downloaded the two albums that had pics worth keeping and deleted the account. They gutted the last tiny bit of reason for existing they had by taking away the ability to link pics to other sites.

 Breotan wrote:
I honestly never understood why people used photobucket, especially instead of using Dakka's gallery. Photohub always was a sub-par hosting service.

Because many of us host photos for things and usage other than wargaming content for exclusive use on Dakka. If you read through this thread, you'll see that there are legitimate issues that some people have with hosting their pics here. For others, Dakka is perfect for their needs, and that's completely fine. You see, we don't all have the same requirements for our pics. I think you've had a slight Freudian slip there with Photohub, by the way.

Additionally, many of us have Photobucket accounts that predate their slow decline (and many of the other current options), let alone their current, public seppuku.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zywus wrote:

Wierdly enough, my linked photobucket pics still work

I'm finding that what you (or I) see isn't necessarily what others see. I found out about it when I posted an update a couple of days ago and some readers could see them while others could not. I can still see most of my own stuff here on Dakka, but not all of it. The same is true for my Wordpress blog (one reason people don't host all of their pics here on Dakka's gallery).

Actually I can see Photobuckets sanity in all this.

Instead of just closing their doors and getting a massive storm of raging users causing a huge issue over it they are basically making their service unusable and impractical.

When you add the fees to the very laggy, very ad spamy site that they are currently running it basically presents a service that no one really wants to use and where there are multiple, free or very cheap, alternatives.

As a result of this everyone get annoyed; everyone jumps ship - and photobucket can kick the bucket a few weeks/months from now without as big a backlash.



The story is the same everywhere from casual to serious users - the interface, the laggyness, the ads and the general performance are such that most were hanging on, but were not really happy. They used it because it already had a huge archive of images on there. So now most are simply using this as a good excuse to finally clean house and move on.

 Azazelx wrote:

Because many of us host photos for things and usage other than wargaming content for exclusive use on Dakka.

Just for clarity here - wargaming photos hosted in the Dakka galley don't have to be for exclusive use on Dakka - they can be shared wherever you like.

But yes, if you're also hosting non-miniatures-related photos and want everything in one place, another alternative would be required. Photobucket was good for that.

I have about 5 years or so of content and there is little to no chance I will go back and fix it. I wouldn't even know what goes with what in the battles anymore.

I am gutted and unsure how I want to proceed.

 insaniak wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

Because many of us host photos for things and usage other than wargaming content for exclusive use on Dakka.

Just for clarity here - wargaming photos hosted in the Dakka galley don't have to be for exclusive use on Dakka - they can be shared wherever you like.

But yes, if you're also hosting non-miniatures-related photos and want everything in one place, another alternative would be required. Photobucket was good for that.

Thanks for clarifying. I was under the impression that wargaming photos hosted on Dakka could not be linked elsewhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
I have about 5 years or so of content and there is little to no chance I will go back and fix it. I wouldn't even know what goes with what in the battles anymore.
I am gutted and unsure how I want to proceed.

I went back and repaired the first two of my Wordpress blog's posts. Turns out it was 2009. It's going to be a painful process repairing it all, but I'm feeling bloody-minded enough to to do.

If you do choose to go back and repair the damage, you can use your text as a guide, and also right-click the broken images to see a URL with the photo name/number (DSCN1042.JPG, etc) to also use as a guide. As noted earlier on page 1, you can download/retrieve your images a gallery folder at a time as well. So it's doable if you decide to. It's not going to be fun, but I've got almost a decade of work that I'm not willing to let those fethers wipe out as part of their sudden turn to ransomware.

Photobucket has basically committed virtual suicide unless they reverse their policy. For many years they had bandwidth limits and near the end of the month you could no longer host links...that model encouraged many of us to subscribe, but even with a basic subscription you can no longer host images unless you want to pay the high fees.

CB

Photobucket has been a genuinely awful service for a while now. Every time I went to the site I was bombarded with re-directs to questionable at best sites.

The last time I logged into Photobucket a webpage automatically opened to a website selling "real Brazillian virgin hair." After that I submitted a complaint and never went to Photobucket again.

A bit of a shame though... I had a substantial amount of project material uploaded... looks like it will not be recoverable.

Use Adblock and Adblock plus, folks. When Photobucket demands you shut down Adblock, you make Adblock make an exception to "this domain", while Adblock Plus remains active. It works.

ALWAYS use Adblock.

Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Use Adblock and Adblock plus, folks. When Photobucket demands you shut down Adblock, you make Adblock make an exception to "this domain", while Adblock Plus remains active. It works.

ALWAYS use Adblock.

Now try that on a mobile app. Yeah. Doesn't work.

 Cothonian wrote:
Photobucket has been a genuinely awful service for a while now. Every time I went to the site I was bombarded with re-directs to questionable at best sites.

The last time I logged into Photobucket a webpage automatically opened to a website selling "real Brazillian virgin hair." After that I submitted a complaint and never went to Photobucket again.

A bit of a shame though... I had a substantial amount of project material uploaded... looks like it will not be recoverable.

It's recoverable. Go to your account and download your folders. Pic on P1 of this thread.

Photobucket'ed pics aren't even displayed when you go for a close-up shot in Google image search.

For general photo storage (ie. albums you email your friends the links to), which photo services do you recommend? I'm thinking Flickr or Google Photos, but haven't used them yet.

https://www.lifewire.com/where-can-i-post-photos-on-web-3482595

CDO is well into manually salvaging massive amounts of surviving pictures from olden days. Lots more to do, of course. An organized volunteer effort will carry you far.

This is doable if a few members voluntarily sacrifice some days or a week of sparetime. Such a brief but intensive salvage sweep of old worthy pictures can save years and years of accumulated forum content!

Please think of the very best logs you have, and consider saving their images if their owners are inactive at the moment.

Worst of all? This Photobucket mess strikes in the middle of summer! Wanted to spend these hours outside. But long-term it will be worth it. (This message is less relevant for DakkaDakka than for other hobby forums.)

PS. Tech-savvy admins of this forum might wish to contact The Red Devil on Lustria Online right away. He might have found a loop-hole to automatically download Photobucket images and transform them into attachments. DS.

 Easy E wrote:
I have about 5 years or so of content and there is little to no chance I will go back and fix it. I wouldn't even know what goes with what in the battles anymore.
I am gutted and unsure how I want to proceed.

I went back and repaired the first two of my Wordpress blog's posts. Turns out it was 2009. It's going to be a painful process repairing it all, but I'm feeling bloody-minded enough to to do.

If you do choose to go back and repair the damage, you can use your text as a guide, and also right-click the broken images to see a URL with the photo name/number (DSCN1042.JPG, etc) to also use as a guide. As noted earlier on page 1, you can download/retrieve your images a gallery folder at a time as well. So it's doable if you decide to. It's not going to be fun, but I've got almost a decade of work that I'm not willing to let those fethers wipe out as part of their sudden turn to ransomware.

ced1106 wrote:
Photobucket'ed pics aren't even displayed when you go for a close-up shot in Google image search.

For general photo storage (ie. albums you email your friends the links to), which photo services do you recommend? I'm thinking Flickr or Google Photos, but haven't used them yet.

https://www.lifewire.com/where-can-i-post-photos-on-web-3482595

I thought Flickr was not very link friendly?

I'm hearing OK things about Imgur though...

 Alpharius wrote:

ced1106 wrote:
Photobucket'ed pics aren't even displayed when you go for a close-up shot in Google image search.

For general photo storage (ie. albums you email your friends the links to), which photo services do you recommend? I'm thinking Flickr or Google Photos, but haven't used them yet.

https://www.lifewire.com/where-can-i-post-photos-on-web-3482595

I thought Flickr was not very link friendly?

I'm hearing OK things about Imgur though...

Imgur is hands down the best image hosting site I've run into, outside of maybe Instagram, but I don't do Instagram. Quick uploads, easy album organization, able to add descriptions on each image, and a bunch of different hosting options, sizes, links, and more.

Sadly, I'm not going to go back and recover any of my old painting logs, mostly due to inactivity in them on my part, partly due to no longer having any of those minis, and now because Photobucket is basically impossible to use for me to make it worth my time to sort through those images and re-host them.

It's a sure bet Photobucket won't be around in another year. Flikcr and Imgur are much better sites, and should be the norm pretty soon once Photobucket kicks the bucket*.

~iPaint

*Sorry for the terrible pun

 Alpharius wrote:


I thought Flickr was not very link friendly?

Flickr's only issue is that they like you to use their built in link-back to their site as either part of the image or in a link below the image. So they don't have a quick to copy image-tag friendly link for their photos. However if you just view all sizes for the photo you can quickly right click and grab the image url and manually put that between image tags - in keeping with their Terms and Conditions a simple link in your signature or such then suffices that you've linked back to them.


That said flickr is what I use for "serious" posts and mostly my photography. For me Photobucket was a dump ground for stuff that wasn't mine or which was screenshots from games; snaps that are not photos; general clutter; image sharing etc... I think flickr would be great if you're using it for a gallery but for general image sharing and casual use imgur would be a superior choice.

Maybe this is a more nuts and bolts question, but how does Dakka pictures work on the backend? Does the forum pay someone to host the images?

Dakka seems great but I always worry that one day the pictures are going to disappear, it's happened to me in the past so these days I just assume anything I upload is temporary.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe this is a more nuts and bolts question, but how does Dakka pictures work on the backend? Does the forum pay someone to host the images?.

The exact server arrangement is a mystery known only to our benevolent overlords, but essentially, the gallery isn't going anywhere unless the rest of Dakka does too, which isn't going to happen anytime soon.

To be honest, seeing how many tech-related sites have come and gone over the years, I can't help but think that a hobby site is a safer bet for longevity than one that is ultimately only going to survive as long as it makes money. Photobucket was always going to close up shop one day, when it became no longer profitable. Imgur and Instagram will do the same. Dakka will be here as long as there are wargames and miniatures to discuss and someone who cares enough to want somewhere to do so.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe this is a more nuts and bolts question, but how does Dakka pictures work on the backend? Does the forum pay someone to host the images?

Dakka seems great but I always worry that one day the pictures are going to disappear, it's happened to me in the past so these days I just assume anything I upload is temporary.

They are all hosted on our server and backed up as well. We just quadrupled our server space as we have about 1.5TB of images now, so have bumped up to 6TB of breathing room, so lots of space to grow.

There are a few comments on dakka's gallery in this thread so I'll address them:

1. Wargaming-only pictures. This is the main rule, images have to be wargaming related enough that they can be seen by someone browsing the gallery and understood as being related to miniature wargaming in some way.

2. Resolution - the gallery makes 6-8 versions of an image when it is uploaded (depending on the size you upload). Most of the different resolutions can be seen by clicking the 'Recommended Sizes' drop down under each image on the right. That will then update the embedding code for copy/pasting elsewhere and you can use the original, unscaled image too with the 'full sized' option. We dont have that on by default and use the tile zooming to save bandwidth but are totally happy for people to use it.

3. Blur/quality - the default view is 800 pixels wide, so if you are close to that, or a weird multiple of that, you might see a slight blur on the default gallery view from the resizing. You will see no blur obviously if you use the original image / full size image. The resizing is progressive, so the larger the image, the closer to the original it will look as it resizes the previous scaled version in each step for each resized image rather than working from the original each time (too computationally expensive to do that). The quality of a JPG is set to 97%. PNG images are converted to JPG, so the main valid complaint is if you upload a PNG image you might see some artifacting, but nobody should be using PNG for photos of models so it is just campaign and diagram images that get affected. GIF stays GIF so does not get converted to JPG. JPGs are pretty much unchanged from what you upload.

4. Longevity - we have been running the gallery for about 9 years now and have never lost an image. Ultimately it is just me looking after your files, but mine are in there too and I am eager not to lose them! There is a strong backup system in place which, even if it failed, would only lose the last 1-2 days of images. You should always back up your images locally, but you can trust us here to look after things in the long run based on our past record. Dakka is almost 20 years old now too, not like these young upstart companies like google and facebook!

The gallery was added primarily because we wanted a stable source of images that would not break old project logs as and when third party services started pruning, restricting referred views (as flickr did about 7 years ago, and as photobucket is doing now), and prevented intercepted views and added overlays (as photobucket and others have done by plastering annoying URLs on top of remote images) and to have a single broad repository for wargaming images - easily the largest in the world now.

The gallery also allows / allowed direct importing from URLs to the dakka gallery (the 'URL' tab when you upload images). If you host externally and want copies here, you can use that feature to transfer the images over.

The gallery software was designed for about 25,000 images so is in definite need of an update! Updating it will not affect the images already there at all, and no URLs will ever be broken as they are all automated aliases to simple files anyway. Eventual planned improvements include a bigger initial resolution on the gallery page, easier remote linking, better inter-gallery grouping, better searching, refined rating system, and more.

To get a full size image without using the drop down, just grab the default image url from the gallery, eg:
https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2011/11/12/294050_md-Buildings%2C%20Cities%20Of%20Death%2C%20Imperial%20Guard%2C%20Ruins%2C%20Terrain.JPG

then remove the _md after the image ID:
https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2011/11/12/294050-Buildings%2C%20Cities%20Of%20Death%2C%20Imperial%20Guard%2C%20Ruins%2C%20Terrain.JPG

Dakka is lucky to have you legoburner.

Cheers,

CB

Not wanting to flame on the longevity point but wazzoo2000 apparently had his whole Dakka gallery deleted a few years back, 2000+ images, a small part of this was restored, but he lost a lot and relinking each image would have been a major task - I don't believe he had a personal back-up - moral of he story is keep your own back-ups, portable memory is very affordable nowadays...

ah yes I forgot about that and one other instance as well where the anti-spam trap got triggered and aggressively nuked the gallery account. That issue could still happen in theory via slip of the moderator finger, but it has been quite some time since we've run into it and additional protections against it are in place. Very unfortunate, and as you say, keep your own backups just to be safe!

I won't personally be using Dakka for my images, but I do thank both you and Yak for your work, time, effort and money in hosting all of the user images for posterity.

Well, that sucks. I've been less than impressed with Photobucket in the last months, but this is just stupid. I'm glad I opted for Dakka's gallery when posting here. Luckily I'm not as involved with blogs and stuff as others, and have a backup folder for my pictures, so it's not a terrible blow for me.

Any word on if Photobucket is feeling the heat and perhaps backing off in the near future?

Even if they do, I can't see how they can recover from a PR nightmare this bad. I just need to try and get all of my stuff recovered/rehosted/reposted before they go out of business. They won't be around in a year's time, and I'd hazard how many months they'll last at this point.

It seems some of my older content is available again, and I only needed to update newer (as in the last years) photos on my blog. I have no idea if this was intentional or not on PB's part or it other shennanigans are afoot.

No, even my older stuff is still down and I was one of their early members and even paid to remove adds to support the site...that is stopping now.

CB

Salvation?

How to Automatically Download Linked Photobucket Images, by Sven Arild Helleland (The Red Terror)

This has probably been posted, but you can download whole albums as zip files. Open the album and click on the Downlad Album link. After downloading a bunch of albums in a row it did start requiring "verification" with each download.

Have been looking at Imgur and Flicker as alternatives. One problem with Imgur is that you can't have sub-albums.

timd wrote:
This has probably been posted, but you can download whole albums as zip files. Open the album and click on the Downlad Album link. After downloading a bunch of albums in a row it did start requiring "verification" with each download.

Have been looking at Imgur and Flicker as alternatives. One problem with Imgur is that you can't have sub-albums.

I think you can?

I set up an Imgur account yesterday and it certainly looked like I could set up different albums...

Yeah, you can set up albums. Unfortunately you can't view your stuff in them via grid, so it's a long-arse scroll down to see all of your stuff.

Yeah, but if you click 'rearrange images' you can see them in a grid, at least temporarily.

It might be best to have a separate album for every project or theme?

Keep them relatively small-ish?

 Azazelx wrote:
Even if they do, I can't see how they can recover from a PR nightmare this bad.

Which is why I think this is intentional. Instead of just closing shop and getting hit with people suing them or forcing their hand to remain open (ala how MS had their hand forced when they wanted to end support for Win XP); they are instead simply making the service unaffordable to maintain for the average person. The average person is not going to pay hundreds for image hosting and they know this, even those who hardly know how to use the internet are not going to just pay up that sum of money. So everyone hates on them; everyone rages; everyone leaves. In a few months time Pbucket closes its doors and no one fights to have them remain around because anyone who is still current and active has moved on at that point.

Indeed, Overread. I read it that way too. This move is just too suicidal.

However, I resent Photobucket for launching this in the midst of sunny summer. That means it's now or never, and to save golden image material from inactive users one has to sacrifice time one would rather have spent outside... There simply is no choice. Summer weeks have to be sacrificed if the goldmine of hobby inspiration is to be salvaged for future hobbyists.

Please, mods, note the link above. The tutorial can save lots of pictures for you from inactive members.

 Alpharius wrote:

timd wrote:
This has probably been posted, but you can download whole albums as zip files. Open the album and click on the Downlad Album link. After downloading a bunch of albums in a row it did start requiring "verification" with each download.

Have been looking at Imgur and Flicker as alternatives. One problem with Imgur is that you can't have sub-albums.

I think you can?

I set up an Imgur account yesterday and it certainly looked like I could set up different albums...

You can set up multiple albums, but not albums within other albums. Can't have a 40K universe album with sub-albums for 40K, Necromunda, BFG and Space Hulk inside. Can't have a Necromunda album with Escher figs, Orlock figs, scenery and gaming pics sub-albums in it.

From Imgur:

Sarah Schaaf (Imgur)
Jul 5, 14:41 MST

Hi Tim,

That's a great question! Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately sub-albums are not possible on Imgur.

Please let me know if you have any other questions; I'd be happy to help.

Best,
Sarah Schaaf
Director of Community, Imgur

 Azazelx wrote:
Yeah, you can set up albums. Unfortunately you can't view your stuff in them via grid, so it's a long-arse scroll down to see all of your stuff.

Yes, that has been one of the more painful discoveries so far, especially for Painting Logs with over 600 images...:(

CB

Well that's all my images rescued from photobucket and the account closed after a very tedious weekend with lots of computer crashed (which is clearly what they wanted)

Now I've got to decide threads here and elsewhere it's worth hunting down and restoring the images in,

sigh

Fixing your signature would be a good place to start!

Photobucket was never a good hosting service.

There is nothing you can't do with Photobucket that you can't do with Imgur, and it won't try to give your computer AIDS. Alternately, you can use Google Photo, or Amazon Photos. I've used all of these services and can personally vouch for them - I'd go with Imgur first.

I do use the Dakka gallery for my wargaming images, but only to embed them. In a world of 4k monitors, I can't be peering into a tiny 800px porthole. It's the biggest problem with the gallery IMO.

Just out of curiostiy, wasn't Photobucket a good hosting site some ten years ago? At least it was the go-to site for wargaming hobbyists, and always recommended when people uploaded tiny attachments or wanted to know how to upload pictures. I don't know if Imgur was around back then, but I only heard about it first some years ago.

Still waiting for a chance to get back online at home to save my first Nerdfest09 PB photo's but i've saved the good ones from my current nerdfest account and now i'm just using postimage.org to link them and it's damn fast to use too! much better for how I put images up on Dakka.

Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
Just out of curiostiy, wasn't Photobucket a good hosting site some ten years ago? .

Not really. It was the go-to for a while back when there weren't really any decent alternatives, but the limited bandwidth was eternally frustrating.

Ah ha ha ha today I get a super aggressive all caps email from them. After I've already closed my account.

Unsubscribed.

Back when the first Raging Heroes kickstarter was going on I lost use of my account due to excessive bandwidth usage. It was supposed to be reset the next month, but for some reason to this day my account is still flagged as having exceeded its allotted amount.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Ah ha ha ha today I get a super aggressive all caps email from them. After I've already closed my account.

Unsubscribed.

What did they say?

 BrookM wrote:
Back when the first Raging Heroes kickstarter was going on I lost use of my account due to excessive bandwidth usage. It was supposed to be reset the next month, but for some reason to this day my account is still flagged as having exceeded its allotted amount.

Man, that thread really did require an inordinate amount of animated GIFs though. There was nothing you could have done about that. It wasn't your fault.

 Alpharius wrote:
Fixing your signature would be a good place to start!

Project fixing my Sig is Go!

 alanmckenzie wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
Back when the first Raging Heroes kickstarter was going on I lost use of my account due to excessive bandwidth usage. It was supposed to be reset the next month, but for some reason to this day my account is still flagged as having exceeded its allotted amount.

Man, that thread really did require an inordinate amount of animated GIFs though. There was nothing you could have done about that. It wasn't your fault.

I do wonder how much bandwidth was used for all of those. It must have been....



(Also, love how you actually put that the thread required those animated gifs! )

The original The Bane from that one "thank the mods" thread is gone. Let us have a moment of silence for the origin of a great meme.

 zedmeister wrote:

 alanmckenzie wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
Back when the first Raging Heroes kickstarter was going on I lost use of my account due to excessive bandwidth usage. It was supposed to be reset the next month, but for some reason to this day my account is still flagged as having exceeded its allotted amount.

Man, that thread really did require an inordinate amount of animated GIFs though. There was nothing you could have done about that. It wasn't your fault.

I do wonder how much bandwidth was used for all of those. It must have been....



(Also, love how you actually put that the thread required those animated gifs! )

It's a tradition I suppose.

I just hope whoever does the thread for their terrain KS will do the same.

So I just checked, I have 11409 image hosted with photobucket... sigh

 Verviedi wrote:
The original The Bane from that one "thank the mods" thread is gone. Let us have a moment of silence for the origin of a great meme.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

What was it?

Can we fix it?

Retroactively edit the post?!?

I still have this one:



(Now hosted on Imgur - natch!)

Phew, this was posted on Imgur. So all is not lost and you can continue to keep the new blood cowed...



Remind me again, who's who in the picture? Is that Kid_Kyoto on the left?

 Alpharius wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
The original The Bane from that one "thank the mods" thread is gone. Let us have a moment of silence for the origin of a great meme.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

What was it?

Can we fix it?

Retroactively edit the post?!?

I still have this one:



(Now hosted on Imgur - natch!)

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/513517.page#5382199

 Crablezworth wrote:
So I just checked, I have 11409 image hosted with photobucket... sigh

Wow... With all the ads slowing down their site, you should be done downloading by the end of the year if you're lucky...and have them in large folders. :(

 Verviedi wrote:

Spoiler:

 Alpharius wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
The original The Bane from that one "thank the mods" thread is gone. Let us have a moment of silence for the origin of a great meme.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

What was it?

Can we fix it?

Retroactively edit the post?!?

I still have this one:



(Now hosted on Imgur - natch!)

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/513517.page#5382199

Thanks!

I fixed it...!

Hooray! Order is restored!

Well I am moving images over to Imgur now for some of my older PLOGs. Downloading the albums and then uploading them into Imgur (not a fan of the interface, but beggars cannot be choosers).

CB

Photobucket has always been exceptionally clunky and painfully slow. There is now even less reason to use it but it makes no real difference at this point to me.

It was actually pretty good when I started using in in 2004..... but it's certainly been horrible for a long while now

Whelp, guess I'm moving my stuff to imgur.

Yes. Photobucket will lose a load of accounts and still come out of it smelling of roses.

Let's face it. They are driving away the people who are 'sponging' off them by using free and cheap accounts. People like me, who has used a free account for years. the ads don't bother me, and I have still only used 5.7% of the 2GB limit, but more and more of what I had on there was for blogs on forums, so there was certainly more bandwidth being used than I was paying for.

However, they have gone about this the wrong way. If they had said "Due to bandwidth usage, we are no longer able to offer free accounts. If you wish to continue to use this service, then you will have to upgrade your account to $25 a year for an ad-free, 3rd party host account." then I suspect everyone would have paid up. Going from free to $400 a year is just too much of a jump for most people to put up with. Especially when you don't want or can't use the extra 500GB of storage space.

 Conrad Turner wrote:
Yes. Photobucket will lose a load of accounts and still come out of it smelling of roses.

Time will tell, but my guess is PB is in their death throes and this was a move to extract some quick cash from it before it dies.

I find it hard to believe this was a well calculated move for long term success in a company that was already going strong.

Moving images is taking me a long time. :(

CB

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Time will tell, but my guess is PB is in their death throes and this was a move to extract some quick cash from it before it dies.

I find it hard to believe this was a well calculated move for long term success in a company that was already going strong.

OH, I don't see it as being calculated at all. It seems to be particularly brainless to the point of Palladium Books stupidity.

I'm just saying that to make themselves more profitable in the face of rising costs, they seem to believe they had only two options.

A. Drive down costs by reducing the number of accounts which use their bandwidth [I.e. reduce the number by making it only accessible to paying accounts]
or
B. increase revenue by charging for the hosting service.

Unfortunately, they seem to have had a problem making up their mind and have gone for .................. Both! Instead of catering for all their users by just increasing the base cost to have any account [thereby doing away with all the free accounts] they have restricted hosting to their most expensive type of account, and it seems to me that this is more expensive than before. $400-480 a year for the only account that will now let you use them as a hosting service. I don't think they did the math on that. It should be a very quick and easy calculation for their accountant to do.

Number of top level accounts multiplied by increase per account per year equals increase in revenue.

However, I suspect that a higher increase in revenue would be obtained from the following.

Total number of accounts, multiplied by $25 per year.

This is what they would get if they charged EVERY account $25 for the hosting service, on top of whatever you were paying now. If they were to have done that, I'd probably have stumped up for the add free service too. A possible increase of $40 a year for [say 50% of the current 'free' accounts, $25 for the rest] them to get. Should be a fair chunk of change, and more than enough to keep the lights on. Certainly enough to get Palladium drooling and thinking "If only!"

While Imgur crashes a lot and takes a long time to load...it is free so that is where I have been moving.

CB

Anyone know how to get folders that Photobucket seems intent on not letting me copy them back? It let me copy eight of my folders over two weeks, but the last 4 it keeps saying something went wrong, please try again and then it hangs. It will not even give me the option to get an email to download my remaining folders (over 2000 images).

CB

just keep reloading and retrying. It's gakky, but eventually it will work.

Been trying for days. Keep getting "Oops, something went wrong. Try it again."

CB

You could try moving/copying them into sub albums and then downloading those

it might help if the issue is the file size getting too high with them as they stand

Tried that already. Still does not work. Have started just downloading the individual images.

Cheers,

CB

I ended up moving my most important stuff picture by picture. Or at least downloading them from PB singly, then boosting them in albums to Imgur.

Done all I want to save for build logs done, now it's a case of either double-checking that I have saved anything even remotely interesting, or just bombing the lot and re-creating from back-up where necessary.

Double checking [or for that matter, just downloading everything else] will take some time, but re-creating will involve diving back into the media of the past. I dread to think how much I used to have on Zip drive. And all of the newer stuff was shot with an EOS 700D, so that's some serious storage I will have to run through Irfanview again.

Sob,

I've just been researching some old minis on the Lost Minis Wiki and Stuff of Legends

so many blank spaces, I bet that's down to photobucket, it's something I hadn't thought about but it's an even bigger loss than images from individual blogs

Stopgap fix to Photobucket images under lockdown (my emboldening), from Warseer's Captain Brown:

Gentlemen,

As some long term PLOGers and cornerstones of some of the Painting Log areas, the member Ash has come up with a fix.

"With the Photobucket pictures not showing; if you go into edit post and insert ~original between .jpg and [/img] as in .jpg~original[/img] then the original picture will show again..." and it works!

I have asked him to share that in the stickies at the top of each painting forum, but thought I would pass that on to you who had large PLOGs blocked in the meantime.

Cheers,

Phil

Those who have not yet replaced their own Photobucket pictures with identical pictures hosted elsewhere, may want to scour their army blogs and other hobby threads. However,  adding ~original to the address lines will not make the linked images compatible with more advanced solutions!

Note however that we cannot consider this a permanent solution, only a stopgap option. It is possible that Photobucket may come to block this fixture, transform itself beyond recognition or go down altogether as a site.

Sounds like once the news gets out that that fixes the issue Photobucket will change it. At least if they are in any way serious.

It's a huge pain, and yeah a lot of older sites which are not updated often or have users who haven't been around in ages are going to suffer.

Their weird download feature hasn't worked in months now, and I'd be very surprised if they'll care two figs about getting it working again. (they have to know this ass-hattery has made their brand completely toxic, and they're just a husk, raking in a bit of cash from those unfortunate enough to have too many pics linked to a pb account to realistically move)

I downloaded their android app to get my pics down to my phone, but the app didn't support downloading albums either. Forcing you to download the contents of each sub-folder separately, clicking on each individual photo.

I downloaded a few albums, cut my losses and then deleted my account in disgust :(

Chrome extension so you can see the photos on your browser: http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=463140

Found this on another forum:

"If you're using Google Chrome, go to the three dots on the right side of the screen and click them. A drop down should appear. Hover your mouse over "More Tools," and when the next drop down appears, click on extensions. Go to the link towards the bottom that says "Get more extensions." In the search box, type "Photobucket Fix," and hit enter. Click the install button and once it's done, you should be able to see photobucket pictures again.

For FireFox users, click on the three bars on the right side of the screen, then click on add ons. Click search for "photobucket hotlink" and click install. Same result."

Thanks for the tip!

I've been trying to upload to photobucket since saturday morning and the site has been down for the last 20 hours or so. Why would anyone pay for this garbage? I contemplated giving the sick bastards the money come january to buy myself a year until I can sort out the 12k plus images I have hosted with them and find a new host but honestly, if this is what I'm currently paying for, I'll take the extra inconvenience. I doubt they'll even last the year at this point.

So any good sites I should consider? I seen a few and don't know what would be a good free site.

For forum hosting, I'm now using Imgur.

Crablezworth - honestly Photobuckets performance has been dire for years. It only kept going because of so many legacy users (like yourself). The ads policy and general slowness of the site has been an issue for ages now.

Imgur is what I'm also using for general forum hosting of stuff; whilst I use flickr for "serious" stuff

 Azazelx wrote:
For forum hosting, I'm now using Imgur.

How do you deal with the sizing issue? Pics I post from Imgur come out huge on Dakka. Do you size them before uploading? Optimum size for Dakka?

Thanks,

T

I resize my images in photoshop before uploading them to wordpress or imgur so when I post them, they're post-size friendly. Also it lets me crop the useless crap around the model

I hate what Photobucket has done. It bugs the crap out of me.

 Azazelx wrote:
I resize my images in photoshop before uploading them to wordpress or imgur so when I post them, they're post-size friendly. Also it lets me crop the useless crap around the model

+1 I do this as well.
Also note that resizing photos saps some of the sharpness from them; now many online hosts offer automatic resizing but their resizing software varies a lot from applying no sharpening all the way to applying way too much. So if you resize yourself you can adjust sharpening to suit rather than relying on the defaults of the online hosts.

This also helps cut down on how much you have to upload and on ow much those viewing your photos have to download - faster surfing!

 Azazelx wrote:
I resize my images in photoshop before uploading them to wordpress or imgur so when I post them, they're post-size friendly. Also it lets me crop the useless crap around the model

What is your optimum crop size for Dakka?

T

timd wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
For forum hosting, I'm now using Imgur.

How do you deal with the sizing issue? Pics I post from Imgur come out huge on Dakka. Do you size them before uploading? Optimum size for Dakka?

Thanks,

T

My issue with imgur is that my work blocks it’s pics, so I don’t see quit a few people’s pics here on Dakka Dakka

 Red_Five wrote:
I hate what Photobucket has done. It bugs the crap out of me.

I'm still in the process of repairing the damage to my wordpress blog. Once that's done, I'll go back the finish repairing my Dakka plog. I was trying to do both in concert initially, but it was actually more work than just staying on one thing. Given that a random post on the blog on the web is more likely to be read due to google/GIS than page 42 of my blog, Wordpress got priority.

timd wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
I resize my images in photoshop before uploading them to wordpress or imgur so when I post them, they're post-size friendly. Also it lets me crop the useless crap around the model

What is your optimum crop size for Dakka?
T

Depends on the subject. Usually 300-450 for individual models. 400-500 for 2-shots, 500-600 for trios and fours. I rule of thumb larger models such as Ogres, Dreads, vehicles and terrain with appropriately bigger shots, but no more than 5-600 really.

800 or 1000 for larger group shots or (sometimes) terrain. I've gone up to 1200, but those are rare specific occasions such as reviews of game mats where you really want to see the details.

Check my P&M blog (in my sig) to see some examples of my usual sizing.

timd wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
For forum hosting, I'm now using Imgur.

How do you deal with the sizing issue? Pics I post from Imgur come out huge on Dakka. Do you size them before uploading? Optimum size for Dakka?

Thanks,

T

On Imgur, you can directly and easily edit the size of your images after you upload them, right there on the Imgur site.

 Overread wrote:
Crablezworth - honestly Photobuckets performance has been dire for years. It only kept going because of so many legacy users (like yourself). The ads policy and general slowness of the site has been an issue for ages now.

Imgur is what I'm also using for general forum hosting of stuff; whilst I use flickr for "serious" stuff

When I initially signed up on there it was so simple and easy to use. Sure it wasn't a pretty website, but it was friggin functional...and that's what counts. Whoever was running the site destroyed it themselves...it became an immense hassle to do even simple stuff in a timely manner. Now some of my logs from nearly ten years ago are dead as dirt (especially the ones on warseer), and the work it would take to restore dozens of pages is just daunting...I don't even have the energy for it.

Yeah early photobucket was very functional. It just worked.

However something got miss-managed in it and its become a mess. My impression is that it grew too big too fast and those in charge didn't have the best mind for how to monetize it. As a result they found themselves unable to keep up performance for a continually expanding dataload and somewhere along the line tried ads. Then they took their ad-policy from spam sites it seems; overloading the site and slowing it up even more and making it less and less attractive.


One can sort of get the feeling that they almost want to make it un-usable just so that the user base flees. Get their data load down and then either sell it off or shut it down with less of a backlash.

 Thargrim wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Crablezworth - honestly Photobuckets performance has been dire for years. It only kept going because of so many legacy users (like yourself). The ads policy and general slowness of the site has been an issue for ages now.

Imgur is what I'm also using for general forum hosting of stuff; whilst I use flickr for "serious" stuff

When I initially signed up on there it was so simple and easy to use. Sure it wasn't a pretty website, but it was friggin functional...and that's what counts. Whoever was running the site destroyed it themselves...it became an immense hassle to do even simple stuff in a timely manner. Now some of my logs from nearly ten years ago are dead as dirt (especially the ones on warseer), and the work it would take to restore dozens of pages is just daunting...I don't even have the energy for it.

Yeah. I'm still slowly plugging away at repairing years of blog. Hosting those copies of the pics on the wordpress site - and happily giving them some cash for hosting because why not. Photobucket has actually gotten progressively worse after the apocalypse - I can no longer download my own gallery folders, nor even see the full versions of many of my photos. Luckily, I have (almost) all of them backed up on my PC's HDD, so I'm able to repair my blogs via filename when necessary (which is almost all of the photos now).

Once I've got everything backed up. I'll be deleting all of my stuff from there. Leaving them for now while I use them as reference points to rebuild my pages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Yeah early photobucket was very functional. It just worked.
...
One can sort of get the feeling that they almost want to make it un-usable just so that the user base flees. Get their data load down and then either sell it off or shut it down with less of a backlash.

It wouldn't take that many $500/pa customers to replace a hell of a lot of us who were using it for free hosting. Though I'd actually paid them for a few years (out of goodwill) and was actually really close to getting around to to re-upping even though I never went near the photo limit - though not the $500 plan by a long shot! Now they can go feth themselves after treating their customers with such a degree of contempt. I think that's the technical term.

having said that, they've spammed me twice in the last couple of weeks. 17th and 20th October. Trying to flog prints and a $10-off subscriptions. Ha!

I generally use tumblr for image hosting anymore myself.

From Malo on Yaktribe:

"Yes, from this day forward all images embedded here from 3rd party sites will be automatically downloaded and stored locally to prevent such things from happening in future."

I assume this could be done on Dakka as well, but the amount of storage needed might get out of hand.

Thank you Azazelx and ph34r for the sizing and imgur advice.

T

 Azazelx wrote:
For forum hosting, I'm now using Imgur.

Imgur is work blocked for me. That's why I can't see the stuff you post in your blog here.

Ah, well.

 kronk wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
For forum hosting, I'm now using Imgur.

Imgur is work blocked for me. That's why I can't see the stuff you post in your blog here.
Ah, well.

You could try the Wordpress site. It's pretty much all the same stuff as here but the pics there are hosted there instead of imgur. A bit more stuff there from time to time, in fact.
https://azazelx.com/

Update: Photobucket has reverted their pay policy and restored most of their old 3rd party content for free. This means most of the dead threads on hobby sites such as this one can be enjoyed once again, without moderators or users doing anything.



While this is a fortunate boon to hobby forums, it should be remembered that many imagehosting sites have folded or changed beyond recognition (incl. Imageshack), while the once-default choice of Photobucket itself has proved unstable. While the large website of Imgur remains dependable for the moment being, things can change fast, as we saw with Photobucket. Digital storage is insecure and fragile, yet brilliant in its outreach.

As such, do consider these following two steps to backup hobby pictures and artworks for public view:

1. Upload your own hobby pictures into one or more Google Drive folders (or similar), set access to share, and insert a link to this folder in your hobby log(s) and showcase thread(s). That way, even if whatever imagehosting site(s) you are using folds in the future, or play 3rd party hosting rodeo, others may still be able to access your work, admire it and be inspired through this backup folder, even if you yourself have gone inactive.


2. Search out those old treasure threads which you know of, where masterclass work of conversions, sculpting, scenery making, miniature painting or artwork were created by very talented people. Save a selection of these images yourself, upload to both one or more imagehosting sites like Imgur, and to a Google Drive folder. Then you can either pool your and others' backup folders of the best of the best in some common thread, or perhaps commit thread necromancy (if this is not frowned upon on a particular forum) where you share links to these backup albums and folders in the thread in question - or send these links to an active moderator to have inserted into the first post of inactive treasure threads (if threadomancy happens to be frowned upon).


Note that this can be organized as a group endeavour, where a bunch of active members name and link the very best which their hobby site has to offer, and split salvage of these different inactive members' pictures between themselves. If this is done, then it may be advisible to avoid repetitive images, most WIP pictures that lead up to a finished result, pictures of sprues and so on: Salvage selectively, save the very best and don't maximize your voluntary burden.

Other ways of backing up images of others and sharing them publicly are possible - and please talk about them here or elsewhere - but the point to stress here is that inactive members do not save their own pictures for sharing: That is up to the active members to do, if they deem a particular hobby work or artwork worthy to save for future years to inspire themselves and others.

At the moment of writing, a majority of older wargaming hobby pictures online have likely been shared over Photobucket. We have been granted an unexpected reprieve with their reversal of the pay-to-share debacle*, meaning all those dead hobby logs are suddenly up with visible pictures again. A reprieve which we should all consider exploiting while it last: Now is your chance to salvage the true gems of others and help save the very best pictures for the future.

__________________
* Which is why one shouldn't even consider to delete one's Photobucket account unless one have already backed up the images and re-uploaded those one wish to share. Redundancy is key.

Thanks for the update although this will be too little too late for photobucket. I don't think most folks who hosted stuff there will return especially if they actually went through the unnecessarily clunky hassle to download their albums and then deleted their accounts; the folks who didn't even do that probably found other places to host and, while happy their stuff is returning, probably won't host new things there. Photobucket dug their 10ft deep grave and only when done realized they didn't have a ladder to get out; extending a hand to help them out now won't work IMO.

Edit: From this article here,

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/05/17/photobucket-image-hosting-plans/

It doesn't look like free 3rd party hosting is back although the cost is a more reasonable $30 a year to start instead of the ridiculous $400 they wanted last year. I'm surprised to read that they're only a 10 person company though as you'd think a previous "giant" of image hosting would be a lot bigger and it does make me a bit more sympathetic to their efforts to raise money now (although last year's move to ransom images suddenly behind a $400 payment was a pure dick move on their part).