Alternative to Photobucket and other non-VP picture storage

[Willy]

Team,

With the change to Photobucket's model that basically turned them into a bunch of Money Grubbing Numb Nuts  and wrecked havoc on our Forum and many others that cross linked to their site, let me propose an alternative solution that actually stores the photos on a site so the picture are always available on the VP forum.  That is, store them on the VP Server!

Of course the easiest way to store them on the VP Server is to attach your pictures to your thread and that will store them on the VP server.  The problem with that is if you are like me and often want to place the pictures "in-line" in the text of the post, just using the Attachment feature doesn't work. 

Some Forum software has the option to "Insert Inline" when you post an attachment.  I'm hoping our Admins can explore such an option as an enhancement to our Forum through the makers of our Forum software.   However, in the mean time I have started using the following technique when I want to include pictures in-line (i.e. interspersed) with text in a post.  It may seem a bit tedious at first but once you do this a couple of times you'll find that it really isn't too hard and there are short-cuts you can use when inserting multiple pictures. 

Here's the procedure:

• Create the body of the post leaving space for the pictures.
• Attach the pictures to the post using the Attachments and other options feature.
• Post the Reply. The pictures will then appear as Thumb-Nail images at the bottom of the post.
• Open your new post and double-click each thumbnail image at the bottom of your post to see the full sized version.
• Right click on the full sized image and select Copy link address to get the link where the full sized image is stored in the VP forum.
• Now reopen your post using Modify to edit your original post.
• Use the Insert Image function to insert your photo in-line in the text and paste in the link to the full-sized picture stored in the VP forum web site.
• Rinse and Repeat for each picture you want to be posted "in-line" in the post.

Note: A short-cut for doing multiple images is that the image number for each picture generally always increments by 2.  One image for the thumbnail and one for the full sized picture.  You can just Paste the link to your first image of a multiple image post and then edit the image number.  That often saves time.

To see an example of a post that I did where I stored several images on the VP server and then used their full-sized links to embed them inline in the text go to my Post on the Electronics Bay Floor build.

BTW, this procedure can be used by folks that wish to repair old posts that had PhotoBucket pictures embedded or attached to their posts.  I know it is a PITA to do these repairs as I had to do it once myself when my photo site got wiped out and I had to restore all of my pictures.  However, the good news is that once you do the repair using VP as the server to hold the pictures, you are not going to have the pictures suddenly disappear due to a change in policy of some outside photo site.

[Nigel]

Thanks Willy, I may do that

[Willy]

I'm still hoping someone has a copy of the lost pictures from the Digitrans 24000 modification thread originally posted by @goody.  Sent him a PM but no response.

BTW, when I had to recover pictures for my thread I would use this procedure:

• Scroll through thread to find a post missing pictures.
• Click on Modify to pull up text to see the text of the URL that was pointing to the picture.  In my case it had a meaningful filename that I could use to locate the picture.
• Locate a copy of the picture on you local machine or on PhotoBucket or other picture server.
  (Can you access your own Photobucket account and pull down your own pictures using those links?)
• Use procedure previously outlined to store picture on VP and link to the full-sized image.

Again, anyone have copies of those Digitrans modification pictures?  We have several folks that just bought some that will need to go through that process and those pictures were really important.  (Alternatively, does anyone have @goody's contact info such that we could reach out to him and see if he still has those pictures?)

[MrWell]

Hi Willy, I have those pictures.
Let me do a search in my archives

[Willy]

Salaxi got them for me.  I restored the original post with those pictures and used the procedure described previously in this thread to make sure they are stored on the VP site.

Thanks anyway.

[Kukki]

as Willy describe is very easy, and then all the pictures in here on VP.

I will try to see if there is a module/plugin for our siter that makes it more easy.

Kukki

[Noluck18]

Folks, I had a forum up a couple years ago, you *might* find it in the forum settings under I believe user posting options. I had one that said "allow inline image posting", I might be wrong as it's been a while.

Chip
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[Willy]

Would that be an individual setting or something the admins of the forum software would have to set?

[Kukki]

Just cheked everything, and I cant find anything. I will ask Mike if there is an upgrade or an addon for our site

[Nigel]

It looks like Photobucket works again...all my pics are back. It seemes they offer a free but limited amount of storage again.

[Kukki]

It looks like Photobucket works again...all my pics are back. It seemes they offer a free but limited amount of storage again.

I would say..........GO F..K them 

[Willy]

@Nigel
I know you are a busy guy but it would be great if you could slowly go through your thread and convert those links to an in-line attachment.  That way your awesome pictures would never be lost to VP.

[Nigel]

I would but I just discovered that the old "Download" option for my Photobucket album is gone. I assume you have to pay now to get your pics back. It's always something...

[Nigel]

I would say..........GO F..K them 

Yesterday I would have agreed Kukki, I was very public and very vocal about how bitter and angry I was with them. I would be the first on to say F*CK RIGHT OFF.  I thought all the work I put in taking pics and posting them was gone forever. But I cant tell you how relieved I am that they are back. Go check out their new plans, what they have now seems pretty fair and what they should have done in the first place. I think they wised up. I can say with certainty that the public backlash against them must have worked, people put a blowtorch on them for what they did and how they did it.

[Kukki]

I would say..........GO F..K them 

Yesterday I would have agreed Kukki, I was very public and very vocal about how bitter and angry I was with them. I would be the first on to say F*CK RIGHT OFF.  I thought all the work I put in taking pics and posting them was gone forever. But I cant tell you how relieved I am that they are back. Go check out their new plans, what they have now seems pretty fair and what they should have done in the first place. I think they wised up. I can say with certainty that the public backlash against them must have worked, people put a blowtorch on them for what they did and how they did it.

I hope you are right here Dave