Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 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.