Archiving threads with third party hosted pics
 

Well, it is too late for Brian's thread, which is a shame, but looking forward, I manually archived my king pin thread, which has third party hosting, Here:

http://web.archive.org/save/_embed/h...g-pins-290373/

If for some reason the pics become unavailable, the entire thread can be restored as it was, as of today. I have been messing around over at archive.org and I found that, if they had not already archived a site, that you can just click a button and it will archive it for you. Another thing that could be done is if you like a site the way it is and don't want any changes, you can archive it as it is and always have it the way you like. Ya' gotta' love the web...Mark

Here'show to doit
 

Start here:

https://archive.org/web/

Enter the thread or page that you want to archive in the save page now box. Click save page and it will save the entire thread.
I find this to be very cool, enjoy...Mark Ok, selfish me just saved all of my sticky threads. [duhhh][laugh]The preserved pages are stored exactly as they are today, July 2nd, 2017, so any changes would have to be archived again. All the pics are saved, as well as all links, and are stored on their servers, what a great and easy backup...

Finally!

There is another way...
 

There is another way to preserve your thread and its photos, that is to save the pages to your computer. It would take some minutes for a thread with over 80 pages, like Brian's (thrashingcows). This is done by a right click (on PC's, I don't know squat about Mac's) on each page, then save as complete web page, select the location and then hit save. You should probably rename the file to something like "crewcab update P.1" and so on, so that you know what it is. It would be a shame to lose great threads like this because of sudden changes like foto bucket did. I don't know the details, but it almost sounds like a "ransom ware" type thing. They block the photos, then demand 400 bucks a year to restore them to the site. Shame on them, they should have grandfathered in any existing photos and began charging new ones. Sounds like pure corporate greed to me. I am going to make a donation to archive.org, because what they are doing is very noble, IMHO

Photobucket,
Sounds like a ransome to me, every image in every post I have made since 2004 has been disabled, probably well over 1000 images and videos.

On their website they are bragging about how nice and advanced their site is.

I will do most anything for anybody but I will not be paying $399/year ransome so you can see my pictures.
Jim

Wow Jim, that sucks. You and David, bc847 account for 90% of all the sticky threads. I for one would be willing to drop a few bucks for you and thrashing cows and anyone else that has contributed so much to this forum, so that we could recuperate the photos, archive them, link to the threads archived at archive.org and then tell Photobucket to pack sand. Maybe a public dressing down of those idiots might force them to grandfather in the existing pics. I'll check the archive to see if any of the threads had already been stored. I am sure that there are thousands, if not millions of affected pics in forums all over the web. It reminds me of that idiot CEO that raised the price of commonly needed meds by 10000%. How much profit is enough? Our society has become one of greed and not being able to get enough, worse than a heroin addict on the street. :(...Mark

Edit: I would much rather give the money to archive.org, I donated 50 bucks yesterday to them, but recuperating the pics would be a good investment, even if it has to go to a bunch off j***offs...

That is how I feel as well......friggin crooks so far as I'm concerned.[verymad]

Did they give you any warning that they were doing this?...Mark

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!
 

This is a reminder of what RAH said so many times in his books. In my computer consulting business I always cautioned my clients against putting anything of value in the cloud. Remember, when you upload it to the cloud the cloud owns it. It isn't so much like a ransom but that they are now wanting to rent your photos back to you.

Servers aren't cheap. Electricity costs money. Internet connections cost money. When advertising revenues go down along with the rest of the economy the positive cash flow can turn negative. $399.00/year ain't cheap and it would be better if they could charge monthly but accounting costs money too. Have you bought anything from DTR's advertisers lately? I haven't.

I run my own server and host my own email accounts. I do have a Gmail account for non essential stuff that if Google started charging for I would kiss goodbye without a tear.

Edwin

That all may be true,but their policies were that there was free hosting, and if they changed those policies suddenly, without warning or an opportunity to change hosts, that would be at least, a FU to the customer. It may not be ransom, but it could be extortion (the same thing I think). You are right though, you cannot get mad at cockroaches for doing what cockroaches do...Mark

Well, it appears that there are many that were surprised:

https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=w...hrome&ie=UTF-8

...Mark

Ok guys, it's worse than I thought. This article:

Lauren Wayne: Photobucket phail, or How to ruin a hosting site

Says that they did it without warning, and you cannot even access your own photos unless you pay. If any of you guys Yelp,this is a good one to slam. I can't believe it, what is wrong with these people? This guy also calls it a ransom, I think that there may be a crime here...Mark

I first heard about it on Thursday 06/29/2017
When I got the email, I actually thought it was a hoax and I wasn't going to open it,

If I at least had 30 days notice I would have figured a way to back them up to the server now everything is disabled. I have all the pictures on my computer but it is going to be a lot of work to re-link them.

I was able to log in last night and I am still able to still access my pictures.

I do think this is extortion.

Maybe if enough people affected complain to them, they might reconsider and give you 30 days or so, or let you pay for a month at 30 bucks. They might not have considered the problem of replacing hundreds or thousands of photos that are linked in forums like ours. Maybe it's time for a Photobucket sucks Facebook page or web site. In some cases, bad publicity is not good publicity...Mark

I think that is the reason they did what they did.....and yes it amounts to extortion....if they had given notice of what they were doing, even 48 hours, most people would have removed the photos from their site.

Everything I have read so far has indicated that complaints to photobucket have been treated with static copy and paste replies, with no help or resolutions.