Same here. That's why I only wanna do this ONCE. I've looked into Image Shack and also Postimage. So far, Postimage seems the "free" way to go...
Did you look at servimg.com? Postimage certainly has a simple interface, but I don't get how my images would be organized. Just randomly?
I've created "galleries" for certain categories so they won't end up in one big pile. There's a field and a button that says "Create new gallery." Give the new gallery a name and push the button. Within the Galleries you can sort by file name or by date uploaded. Enter the gallery before uploading photos tho or they'll go into your default gallery and I haven't figured out a way to move them around once uploaded. I might be missing something. I'm not 100% sure but it looks like changing gallery names doesn't break the link for the photos. I don't think the gallery is part of the path.
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
Ive been using Postimage for three years now, they have an easy to use system for image hosting which I highly recommend to the technologically challenged. They have free hosting, I'm not sure what the usage is but like I said have been using this for three years hosting images for my website, my World of Warships club, my Virtual Skipper club and for image hosting for Forumini and Seas (soon to be obsolete) and Man Battlestations. Modellers probably use the high end in terms of graphics hosting over the forums so you are not going to run out of free data for quite some time folks.
Also as another plug for Postimage they used to run no ads at all, which for those that use Photobucket and Imageshack are well aware of the interference issues in relation to the upload and download of your graphics, its a pain in the @$$.
Postimage runs virtually no ads at all which makes the process of image hosting a breeze.
I highly recommend Postimage for all these reasons.
Cheers guys
Dan
pictures upload "The British Army should be a projectile fired by the British Navy" - Viscount Grey
Interesting. I understand Photobucket trying to change their income source. We all benefit from seeing files that others load to Photobucket, but unless one of us goes to Photobucket, not one of us sees the ads it makes its revenue from.
People who use it for blogs (which may offer their own revenue source to the blogger), or for eBay/Amazon listings (which definitely offer a revenue source to the seller) are seeing potentially substantial gain while passing little if any of that on to Photobucket. Obviously anyone using Photobucket sees the ads--I'm not quite sure how Photobucket charges advertisers, per click or per page visit etc.--but a seller of the same type of item may have to visit Photobucket once, then let that picture sit and sell for them for months.
Why should Photobucket serve as a profit-maker for others?
That is not to say I am endorsing their policy change or their execution thereof. The execution is significantly botched--better to give notice and a price point that is sensible. The actual pricing should probably be tailored to the type of use. Offer limited free third-party hosting for home/minor users. Offer cheap plans for a certain number of images or size of images. If possible, require a paid plan, or a cheap pay-per-image price, for use on sites like Amazon/Ebay. I'm sure that's possible, right?
Maybe go the Amazon route with their Kindles etc.--you can have third-party images with advertisements on the bottom (or "while loading") for free, or ad-free images for a cost.
Their choice of method does seem suicidal. The user who had 7 years worth of blog posts (and thousands of images) may have to make the hard choice of paying up or switching, but most people with fewer images are going to jump ship as fast as possible to any other service.
Photobucket has other income sources and uses, so I wonder how much of an income stream they think this will make them? I find it hard to believe it outweighs the negative publicity. But maybe the number of third-party hosting users is small compared to their other user base.
"You like ships. You don't seem to be lookin' at the destinations. What you care about is the ships, and mine's the nicest." ~ Firefly ~