Photobucket getting harder to use?

ChrisR

ChrisR

I'm a well known grump...
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Chris
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I've been using Photobucket as just that, a bucket to hold my photos for display here and elsewhere, for a few years. This started when flickr would only allow me to show a hundred or so pics in its free mode. By comparison, Photobucket's free mode was pretty well unlimited; there are over a thousand up so far and my free storage is only 17% full.

Now, I do appreciate that it's free, and that I have to "pay" for that freeness by getting adverts put in front of my attention from time to time. But I wondered if anyone else feels that Photobucket's advert policy is getting so aggressive as to make the site MUCH more annoying, while other features are at the same time making the site much less usable?

The usability problem is a right pain; I'm finding that when I upload a pic, it's not available to view and find the IMG tags for sharing. I have to go through some weird contortions before I can see it. No consistency, either, except that it's reliably visible by the next day, and sometimes before. As you might imagine, this makes using it to create an image thread on TP very difficult!

The adverts now include half a dozen of more different types, from banners and sidebars, including some randomly with sound, to full page pop-overs and smaller pop-from-the-side adverts. Some of the adverts are pretty clearly scams of some kind or another that look dangerous.

So I guess I'm rather thinking of taking my attention span and photos elsewhere!
 
I don't use Photobucket, Flickr or any other site to store or upload photos on here but tbh I'm not one for sharing my work in that way

I find it much simpler to resize whatever file in my PP program ( photoshop) and store it on my hardrive then upload directly from there to TP

As they are only small files for uploading they take very little space up on the drive and of course they are there for emailing to friends etc.
 
I used to use photobucket but only for like snaps for posting gear for sale or showing a 'look what i just got' kinda pic.

Just recently I was selling a lot of fish tank stuff on a forum and went to photobucket to upload phone pics for forum posting.

My phones browser ended up with about 20 pages in the background with some graphic images of a VERY adult nature and ads directed towards someone searching for that kind of thing. I now see these on google from time to time in my mail ads and on my facebook side panel.

I was so shocked and more worried that it would show somewhere that i had been watching that kind of thing, even my facebook trending searches showed 'adult' things which i hate!

I will never use photobucket again coz god forbid should my grandchildren see anything like that on my phone (not that they have it unattended) but I shouldn't have to worry when they're swiping mr tumble over and over :eek:
 
Only use it for 'dumping' images e.g. 'for sale' images or stuff I don't want to appear on Flickr ... it has become more disarranged in recent months but I don't use it often. :)
 
Glad it's not just me, then. The NSFW ads and background images sounds terrible, I've not had that luckily. I think that would be the end!

Oh, and another thing, is there any way of searching for an image you have put there in the past? I've tried putting words in the title, including the film type, image filename etc. Tried searching for "reala" (a lovely but obsolete Fuji film), get loads of Japanese manga type pics but not my image. I've been finding the best way is to search for the TP post I think might have included the image, then click through to PB from there!
 
ChrisR said:
Glad it's not just me, then. The NSFW ads and background images sounds terrible, I've not had that luckily. I think that would be the end!

Oh, and another thing, is there any way of searching for an image you have put there in the past? I've tried putting words in the title, including the film type, image filename etc. Tried searching for "reala" (a lovely but obsolete Fuji film), get loads of Japanese manga type pics but not my image. I've been finding the best way is to search for the TP post I think might have included the image, then click through to PB from there!
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Yup. You know, for 5 or 6 pounds a year you can get hosting. Pop up a wordpress site in literally 2 minutes and quickly and easily upload your pics up there. No hassle, no ads, no real limits to speak of and so much quicker. Well worth a fiver, I'd say.

Alternatively, put up a quick wordpress.com site and your hosting is free..
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
Yup. You know, for 5 or 6 pounds a year you can get hosting. Pop up a wordpress site in literally 2 minutes and quickly and easily upload your pics up there. No hassle, no ads, no real limits to speak of and so much quicker. Well worth a fiver, I'd say.

Alternatively, put up a quick wordpress.com site and your hosting is free..
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Ooo Dunc, I'd not thought of that possibility. I've got an old Wordpress blog (not photo-related), and a new Wordpress site I made for my sister-in-law who wanted to celebrate an exhibition of her late autistic daughter's tapestries (both on wordpress.com). Made the latter one late last year (but I'm only a novice WP user)... I didn't find the image upload process particularly easy though, not sure quite why now. For TP I've been saving images at 1024 pixels from Aperture to hard disk, then uploading those 1024 pixel images to TP, then using the Share page to get the IMG tags. For Wordpress I seem to remember it wanted the full size images and resize them itself. I suppose there's no real problem in following the same route, just making the "full size" images 1024 max. No idea how to get the IMG tags though.
 
ChrisR said:
Ooo Dunc, I'd not thought of that possibility. I've got an old Wordpress blog (not photo-related), and a new Wordpress site I made for my sister-in-law who wanted to celebrate an exhibition of her late autistic daughter's tapestries (both on wordpress.com). Made the latter one late last year (but I'm only a novice WP user)... I didn't find the image upload process particularly easy though, not sure quite why now. For TP I've been saving images at 1024 pixels from Aperture to hard disk, then uploading those 1024 pixel images to TP, then using the Share page to get the IMG tags. For Wordpress I seem to remember it wanted the full size images and resize them itself. I suppose there's no real problem in following the same route, just making the "full size" images 1024 max. No idea how to get the IMG tags though.
Click to expand...

All you do is log into your site, hover your mouse at the top of the page over the media tab, from the drop down click on "new". That takes you to the upload page. Click the "upload" button, choose your images and press "OK". When they're done you'll have a list of the uploaded images before you. On the right side click on the "edit" link. On the right side (middle) of the resulting page you'll find your direct link to the image. Copy it, come back here, click on the image icon in the editor whilst posting, paste in your image URL and click ok. Job done. When you want to find images again in the future, log in to your site, hover over the "media" link again and then choose "library" from the drop down.

I also upload all my images at 1024 pixels which is the max show size on most wordpress themes.
 
I don't see any adverts on Photobucket but I use an ad blocker. Would that not be the simplest solution for you Chris?
 
I just used my ad-blocker on Photobucket and went through the process of uploading an image and then getting to the page where I could copy the direct code. My ad-blocker blocked 104 (yes, one hundred and four) ads. That's just silly, IMO and enough reason to go elsewhere, even if I can block most of them.
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
I just used my ad-blocker on Photobucket and went through the process of uploading an image and then getting to the page where I could copy the direct code. My ad-blocker blocked 104 (yes, one hundred and four) ads. That's just silly, IMO and enough reason to go elsewhere, even if I can block most of them.
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Mine said it had blocked 40 so I turned it off to see what they were and there were only 2! :thinking:
 
fabs said:
Mine said it had blocked 40 so I turned it off to see what they were and there were only 2! :thinking:
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You have to add the figures together, I think. As the next re-direct kicks in the last lot of ads counted are removed from the counter and it starts again. Mine showed 36, then 20, then 48.
 
I haven't really looked at my Photobucket too much in the last little while, but what I do know is that everything I started with in 2006 is still there. :D
 
I still use it, and also use an ad blocker - makes for a faster, happier experience - because it's still a good host for embedded images in other places. A while back I paid for an extra 10Gb bandwidth, and at the time enquired if there was a way I could have a 'pro' account that would enable others viewing my images to have an ad-free experience. The answer was no, so from that point on I looked for another place to have galleries that I could direct potential customers towards.
 
fabs said:
I don't see any adverts on Photobucket but I use an ad blocker. Would that not be the simplest solution for you Chris?
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So, an ad blocker sounds a good idea... normally I wouldn't want to use a "free" service with an ad blocker, it seems unethical, but with this many ads my ethics are shot to pieces! :D:mad:
Any recommendations? (I'm on a MacBook Pro, currently Yosemite).
 
ChrisR said:
So, an ad blocker sounds a good idea... normally I wouldn't want to use a "free" service with an ad blocker, it seems unethical, but with this many ads my ethics are shot to pieces! :D:mad:
Any recommendations? (I'm on a MacBook Pro, currently Yosemite).
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Adblock Plus, Chris. It's the first one on the page when you come to Safari extensions.
 
ChrisR said:
So, an ad blocker sounds a good idea... normally I wouldn't want to use a "free" service with an ad blocker, it seems unethical, but with this many ads my ethics are shot to pieces! :D:mad:
Any recommendations? (I'm on a MacBook Pro, currently Yosemite).
Click to expand...

I used to be a regular Harmony Central user and took that approach, but when their ads (provided by a third party) started using the old pop up console process to respawn popup windows as quickly as they could be shut then I started using an ad blocker for every site, whether free or not. On limited bandwidth it made my internet experience much more pleasant, and I've never looked back.
 
I just used photobucket right now, uploaded a picture, took the link right there and sent that into a conversation I was having in this site, and was available straight away, no fuss at all, I do not have the problems you mentioned
 
I have noticed photobucket becoming more ad invasive lately, even with adblocker in place, but that's me assuming this is all part of using a free account and the creators of PB being able to circumnavigate the Adblocker. However, it has been my favourite "go to" photo hosting for providing links to put in forums such as in here.

The other trick is that you can use links to any photos you put on Facebook for showing as images in here, but the drawback is FB's own image compression method which is a bit on the rough side.
 
I have always used Photobucket all my files are organised in my library and when I bulk download and it is a new subject always create a new folder or sub-folder first,so I have no problem finding photograph,s.

I did notice at the end of the summer more and more ads appearing and the system slowing down,so I upgraded at a cost of $29.99 per year much more storage,faster downloads and no ads. I felt that was good value for the benefit received.

I like Photobucket I think it handles the files better and when you post to the web they seem to be more like I processed them than other hosting sites.
 
wegi said:
I just used photobucket right now, uploaded a picture, took the link right there and sent that into a conversation I was having in this site, and was available straight away, no fuss at all, I do not have the problems you mentioned
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Your experience is very different to mine. In my experience sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes I just don't know if a picture has been uploaded or not and when I look it isn't there so I try and upload it again and maybe it'll appear or maybe two will appear. It's just dreadful at the moment and even when it works it's often painfully slow. For me it's gone from being easily useable to being unpredictable and at its worst an unreliable right royal PITA. And then there's the ads.

I use it for two reasons, to upload to this site and to share pictures with people on the other side of the world but it's becoming pretty much unusable without a lot of swearing at the screen and wanting to take an axe to someone at photobucket.

When I get more time I'll look at another way of doing things.
 
Pretty much my experience exactly, Alan!
 
medwaygreen said:
I have always used Photobucket all my files are organised in my library and when I bulk download and it is a new subject always create a new folder or sub-folder first,so I have no problem finding photograph,s.

I did notice at the end of the summer more and more ads appearing and the system slowing down,so I upgraded at a cost of $29.99 per year much more storage,faster downloads and no ads. I felt that was good value for the benefit received.

I like Photobucket I think it handles the files better and when you post to the web they seem to be more like I processed them than other hosting sites.
Click to expand...

I didn't kniw about the subfolder idea, Richard, that could be helpful. I've generally not had a problem with how images look, although I do have problems with images not visible in TP posts sometimes. Oddly, it's often my images not visible in my TP posts, but some (or all?) others can see them!

Not sure I want to pay $30 per year for a bucket...
 
I have paid for photobucket for 4 years now and have had no real hosting or image presentation problems but lately I have been getting spammed to death by them, photo mug this and mouse mat that and it drives me crazy, not just upon logging into my photobucket account but also to my email in box, so much so that I have unsubscribed to their email notifications twice in the last 6 weeks but I still keep getting spam from them.
Why would I want to upgrade my storage with them when I am currently only using 8% of my paid for storage allowance, come on photobucket....lol
I have looked at exporting my images to Flickre but there is no convenient way.
 
[QUOTE Not sure I want to pay $30 per year for a bucket...[/QUOTE]


:D
 
ChrisR said:
I didn't kniw about the subfolder idea, Richard, that could be helpful. I've generally not had a problem with how images look, although I do have problems with images not visible in TP posts sometimes. Oddly, it's often my images not visible in my TP posts, but some (or all?) others can see them!

Not sure I want to pay $30 per year for a bucket...
Click to expand...

If others can see your images but you can't then it suggests there's an issue at your end, rather than PB's.
 
ancient_mariner said:
If others can see your images but you can't then it suggests there's an issue at your end, rather than PB's.
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Agreed, but no idea what it is! For example, in this post I could see both images when I posted it, then I replaced the second image with a smaller version, and couldn't see it. Today, I can! I've found looking through older threads occasional posts of mine with no image showing up, but others assure me they can see it. :(
 
ChrisR said:
Agreed, but no idea what it is! For example, in this post I could see both images when I posted it, then I replaced the second image with a smaller version, and couldn't see it. Today, I can! I've found looking through older threads occasional posts of mine with no image showing up, but others assure me they can see it. :(
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Is it browser-independent or specific? Worth trying a different browser if you can next time it happens.
 
Good plan. This was Safari... I used to use Firefox, but there have been weird interactions between it and Kaspersky that made it almost unusable... but that's a different story!
 
Gave up on on Photobucket a good while ago.

Now back om Flikr but not really settled yet on any online sevice.
 
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