Photobucket Demanding Ransom to Show Your Images on RedlineDerby
gtaman Saturday, 7/8/2017
So evidently 3rd party hosting is disabled unless you buy the photobuckent $400 a year plan.
You will just get an ugly grey image. This is unfortunate because every tutorial on the Internet links to photobucket images. I noticed A LOT of images on this site are now grey error messages.
Here are some alternatives. However maybe we could figure something out specifically for redlinederby.
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/07/02/photobucket-alternatives-for-third-party/
Chrome extension to fix does not work anymore...
Discussion
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Wow, this will certainly cripple gazillions of web sites and forums. Everyone will be hurting...
We'll have to do some damage control for a bit. Not too much I can do, unfortunately. If images of yours were on high profile threads and you still have the original images, you can mail them to me and I can try to replace them.
That alternatives list will help. ImageShack might be another. Flickr or Imgur is probably safest for now. If you're technical computer savvy, the Amazon S3 option is the most reliable but is not super easy to get setup or rolling.
I'll do my best to up the pace on my own updates that should offer image hosting for the site, however, whatever I implement for RLD will be limted to viewing on this web site. I'm not creating an image hosting service rather something for our members only. (Although it seems the time is ripe to start an image hosting service...)
I've been afraid of this for quite some time. As a site that relies on content from others, relying on other services is very risky. I took some steps long ago to copy over images I use for headlines and features but had no way of doing that for every image someone included in a post.
And given forum members are transient by nature, sadly I'm afraid we'll never recover most of the photos shared in articles as many authors are no longer active members.
Fortunately, at least we're a super teeny tiny corner of the internet and no lives or revenue is in jeopardy here. Yeah, it sucks and sets this site back probably several years, but this is effecting millions of sites and people...some which rely on services for income.
I'll do my best to help move us through the situation. Your tolerance and support are greatly appreciated.