Photobucket

[AdrianNPMajor]

Apologies for the loss of images in my posts.
Photobucket has just changed its terms and now requires payment for what used to be a free service.
I'll have to find a new photo upload website. Be glad of any good recommendations.
Best, Adrian.

[oehrick]

If they continue down this path they will shoot themselves in the foot like Friends United and others Adrian

Its becoming an annoyance on several phpBB forums which do not self host photos.

Brian / Oscar what are the cost implications of upgrading us to photohosting ? as a one off joining and then ongoing cost ??

A couple of other forums I'm on fund photohosting by asking for a voluntary donation on items found or sold using the site - they are always in surplus but if this fails there is provision to call for a top up donation to fill the gap.

What say chaps (if the Mods are agreeable) as we don't get much buy & sell activity is anyone else up for an occasional dip in the pocket for the convenience of hosting our own pictures to ensure they remain with the text into the future ??

[mathias1]

I m using postimg.org

Works well

[AdrianNPMajor]

Thanks for the tip, Mathias.
Rick, it seems a bit odd to me. By all means change Terms and Conditions, so that a new contract exists going forwards, but to apply the new T&C's to what has gone before cannot be right.
Any images uploaded after the change should have been subject to the new rules, not images uploaded before.
I can understand why so many people are aggrieved.
Best, Adrian.

[Bensdexta]

A couple of other forums I'm on fund photohosting by asking for a voluntary donation on items found or sold using the site - they are always in surplus but if this fails there is provision to call for a top up donation to fill the gap.

What say chaps (if the Mods are agreeable) as we don't get much buy & sell activity is anyone else up for an occasional dip in the pocket for the convenience of hosting our own pictures to ensure they remain with the text into the future ??

I'd support self-hosting, assuming it didn't cost us a fortune.

[oehrick]

Adrian, Our generation are dinosaurs who still think loyalty should be rewarded with good treatment, we have passed the commercial 'Iridium Boundary' and heading for extinction, same with insurance fuel & power, phone companies and most else, we should be spending our 'lives' glued to a tiny screen trying for a few pennies saving while pounds are pouring away, god there may be a few of us left who can still think for ourselves and make up our minds from available data, I expect we'll be identified by our bowel movements being scanned on receipt at the seawage works and quietly rounded up in the dark & shot.

Sorry, I'm feeling a bit optimistic tonight

Thanks Mathias, I'll have a look at that site as well, although where Foto%uckit lead maybe they will follow.

Its all about us not seeing the adverts through not looking direct at their site - WTF they put the easy paste link generator on their site in the first place, catch with honey, keep with vinegar............

BTW just repaired a gas bird scarer for my neighbour and having warned my neighbours there might be a bang or two, I pointed the tube under the trailer to suppress the noise - What a mistake ! within ten minutes half the village nose pokers had been round looking for the explosion site - I'd hidden the evidence by then and with as straight a face as possible supposed another pub had been blown up (google london tavern, coltishall explosion)

As for my son, (who I had neglected to warn) after sticking his head out of his open bedroom window with a 'what the %%%% was that' followed up with 'if you've finally blown yourself up don't expect me to pick up the bits' what a disappointment, it could have been along the lines of 'are you OK or is the Major mine now ?'

[Brian]

I would be a bit pessimistic about setting up our own picture hosting site. It would need much more band width and the cost would end up being born by Oscar, myself and a few others with good intentions.

We tried to market a few items to raise money and give the site an income to fund "extras" but this has been a bit of a failure, very few of our users were prepared to buy even a "T" shirt to help fund the site. It has bought FTP some display boards for shows and we have £44.00 in our PayPal account.

Had every site user bought one £10.00 shirt, this would be the best funded "free" Fordson site on the web and we would not have had to loose some of our content. Remember, neither Oscar or I take anything from the site and, in fact, Oscar funds the whole thing from his own pocket. I fund little additions like advertising at shows and stands plus travel. Emiel funds the Meddo Show pitch when we go there.

Ann and I are off back to Australia in a few weeks as guests of the Fordson Tractor Club of Australia and will be working on their stand during the Deniliquin show and again at a meeting in Warracknabeal. We will be quietly promoting FTP as the sites representatives at both gatherings and to any club members we meet.

The answer to the Photobucket "problem" is in everyone's hands. Pay for the service! I pay for a "business" service each year, it costs about £100.00 per year and I get advert free usage and, so far, no problems about posting pictures. I do get an occasional message that I am getting to my picture limit and would I like to move to the next level but so far i just delete a few pictures, I do have nearly all of them backed up on memory sticks and discs. The Photobucket rate is far less than the costs of setting up a hosting site.

It has been suggested that FTP has a Facebook Page, I was against this because, at the time, we were being warned against social media as Ann was a teacher and a number of the profession were being targeted for abuse. Could it be an answer now? I do not know but would be interested in what others think.

[AdrianNPMajor]

Brian
You, Oscar, Emiel and the other members of the expert team have created a gem of a website.
Compare and contrast it with the ocean of dross out there.
Would it possible to seek a sponsor for the site so that a stand-alone platform could be built?
Ernest Doe? Even New Holland?
Ernest Doe would connect with the ethos that you and your friends have created.
Just a thought.
Thanks again for creating something special.
Best, Adrian.

[AdrianNPMajor]

I'm going to add a ps to my previous post.
I love the simplicity of the current site. The content comes to the fore.
I'll find a new way of uploading my photos to the site.
Best, Adrian.

[AdrianNPMajor]

Just used postimg.org as recommended by Mathias.
Really easy to use and no ad pop-ups as with Photobucket.
I've reloaded my images on the ' Super lacking power' thread.
Will work my way through my other posts.
Thanks again, Mathias.
Best, Adrian.

[Bensdexta]

Allan Condie runs a FB page on Fordsons.

It's good and has quite a few followers.

But FB tends to be rather unstructured, it's pretty much just a blog. For finding info FTP is hard to beat

[Bensdexta]

How does the photobucket subscription work?

Who pays and what does one get?

[oehrick]

Agree with all Adrian said and add my gratitude for those that facilitate this forum, I had a suspicion someone(s) may have been subsidising our enjoyment.

To clarify, my point was that if we were able to collectively fund a hosting site for the forum that included photos, we would be in control of our future destiny regardless of what other photo hosting sites might do in the future, while may be wide of the truth, there are now lots of former threads which have lost much value through the absence of the pictures.

Brian & Co have clearly tried to find a 'painless to users' and informal way of funding the forum through the sale of the shirts , caps etc and for whatever reason there has been an poor uptake of these (and it can be neither the quality nor attractiveness of the products!)

It seems an ideal time to consider if we can find a way of making the site self supporting from a cost point and if so can we take it another step and make it self contained for data / photos (I assume Brian that there is a cost per Mb or Gb storage used, made available for use or is it purely bandwith used ? )

Even if photos in house under our control is not felt desirable, however cheerfully our current 'sponsors' fund the operation from their own pockets now, they deserve better than us just sitting back and saying 'thanks very much chaps' and just leaving it there............

Hope I'm not speaking out of turn and maybe its something we can think about until Brian is back from the land downunder.

[AdrianNPMajor]

Hi Ben
Photo*ucket's initial business model was to create a free-to-use site to attract as many users and visitors as possible as quickly as possible before they burned through their investor capital.
They were successful enough to begin attracting ad revenue, but that revenue was not enough to cover operating costs, so they allowed pop-up ads, which is a sign of a website getting desperate.
The pop-up ads didn't bring in enough revenue to cover costs, and they slowed the site down, so the owners of the site did what they have just done.
Nothing wrong in asking consumers to pay for a service. We should. It's just the way they went about it.
Their site is a prime take-over target for one of the big players who need our eyes on their service/products.
A*azon?
Best, Adrian.

[Brian]

I would love to own our own photo hosting site, way back in the mists of time Oscar and I did discuss it but the cost is too great.

We also investigated and discussed a site takeover with various parties that would have given the site more services and allowed more room for on line manuals etc. but the persons involved were hard to reach and in the end we gave up. Like all of us, I am getting older and both Oscar and I have issues. We had hoped to guarantee the sites future and to expand it by joining up with other like minded people but no one is interested.

However we do own two other web sites which are sitting idle at the moment, fordsontractorpages.com and fordsontractorpages.co, I will drop an e-mail to the web host and see if either of these could be used for photo hosting at a reasonable rate and report back.

It may be an idea to move this topic to the "Misc" forum so if it disappears, check there.

[oehrick]

Brian,

The site is a testament to the hard & dedicated work you have all put into it plus all the contributions of the membership and it would be a shame if this was permanently reduced in completeness due to Photoblasthem's greed.

I'm on a couple of other forums similarly affected and there are numerous suggestions for the way forward for them, some from IT savvy people, I am keeping a close eye on these and will advise back anything which seem useful and affordable, particularly some discussion on if/how it might be possible to automate checking links to the location of the original photo files and then copying them to some other location then updating the url in the text of the thread - no doubt Russian hackers are working on a program to install with firefox to do this much as they allow people to 'steal' youtube videos or audio files!

Last thing we need is the Forum team carrying an extra burden, lots of organisations are in the same boat, lots of people now have Fotochuckit in their sights for being the fatherless corporate sons of mother dogs they are and want to find a way to short circuit their action !

Looks like there may be two key issues for us 'consumers' to try and help with if we want your aims to continue :-

Ongoing funding for the site as is, or maybe more funding for more storage etc.

A practical hand with keyboard stuff so the existing camels backs are not broken, possibly not so easy from the membership skillset, although ISTR someone posting a bit back with an offer on those lines.

Meanwhile I'll try to find someone who understands a way to recreate the photolinks and hoover up those pics still there.

Coo my soapbox ain't arf wobbly these days..........

[woodcutter]

I'm also on the ford and fordson site on Facebook, and with the way the new smart phones have got I find it a much easier way to add pictures or a quick post, that site lacks the technical info you can get here, so I think it would be good we had this site on there aswell

[Brian]

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Just got this from my membership of Photobucket. I am on Plus 500 which is the most expensive and works out at around £200.00 per year

[blackbob]

...or use Imgur and pay nothing?



(although I don't know how long that will last, as there don't appear to be any adverts on there either)

[mathias1]

...or use Imgur and pay nothing?



(although I don't know how long that will last, as there don't appear to be any adverts on there either)

No one knows, as long as there are free alternatives like the one you mentioned, photopucket will loose a lot of its users. Or if you have to pay peanuts, you get ...

[dwol]

The trick is to have control of your data. This means backing up the entire forum on some interval (maybe once a month). Ideally the site and all of its pictures are backed up. Then you can always feel safe in case of blackmail (which is what Photobucket is doing now).
Another possible step, If possible, would be to distribute this entire site to all users (similar to the way the old manuals can be sent to whoever needs them). I know I would love to have a copy of all the info, for future problems.
I am very grateful for all the help I have receive from this forum, other forums, and great old timers with experience I will never attain. I would hate for all this information to disappear someday because some ass***e needs to make more money.