ImageShack apparently shutting down free accounts and deleting images suddenly (now)

Wow I wonder how many posts on BLF have photos that are hosted there.
I hope the impact here is minimal.

Trying imgur

Yes, this is what worries me. I definitely wouldn’t use ImageShack for any new reviews.

The impact should already be pretty visible. ImageShack has been actively changing the behavior of their image servers recently, but for the past couple of months they haven’t been serving images to forums at all. That’s what the discussion starting with post # 46 here stems from. At the time, none of nottawhackjob’s images were showing up in thread, but if you pulled up the images individually in their own tabs they worked. Now the thread looks like it might be healthier, but I think that this is not true. Looking at post #1 you’ll note that 2/4 images load. There seems to be little rhym or reason to it, but those missing two images are just gone from ImageShack’s servers. I can personally attest to the fact that those and other missing images were present a few days ago. I’m picking on that thread specifically because it’s the one I’ve personally been playing with, but there are plenty of other threads and I think that currently there are more missing images than present images. :frowning:

As far as switching to another free host… ImageShack was quite popular in it’s time. The idea that imgur can’t suffer the same fate is simply ill-considered. EDIT: with that said, of course you’ve got to put your pictures somewhere. I’m certainly not going to say that imgur is somehow worse than the other options right now. Just don’t consider any free hosting service permanent.

What are they charging to upgrade to a paid account? I went to a paid account at photobucket as apparently I'd used up all my bandwidth allowance or something along those lines.

I should remember to send the invoices to sb for credit to my account.

I always have used Postimage.org never registered and even the oldest pics from more than 10 years ago are still up, imageshack can go F themselves

Thanks for the heads up. I used to have and use imageshack until they started charging then moved to photobucket.
Still had many images on imageshack that were posted in forums but just checked on a few and they are missing now.
I went to imageshack and all my images are gone, hopefully photobucket doesn’t go the same route.

MRsDNF, they are currently charging three options:
3.99/month - basic
29.99/month - pro
99.99/month - premium

At the moment all my pictures are gone - it shows only empty frames. I wrote an email to the support an hope that they will activate the pictures for the next 2 days to download all.

I have photos with 3-4 places and I went with paid for all of them, so I don't have to mess with loosing photos. Well, at least until they loose their database and backups, that is, or someone hacks them. I think I pay about $100 a year between all 4 sites, just to keep the photos up. It isn't cheap, but I had so many photos. At least youtube is free - So far...

The thing I like about self hosting is that all the photos stay at their same URL even if I change hosts every month. It doesn’t matter where the photos actually are as long as the URLs resolve properly. No one can lose my photos, or suddenly change the price for my service, or suddenly go out of business. They all point to a TLD (top level domain) that I own.

All those photos, a dozen of my own web sites, and a few of my client web sites all currently for $60 a year on EasyHost1, which is a decent budget host. Unlimited domains and email as long as you stay within I think it’s 100 GB storage and 250 GB/month bandwidth per account. Oh, and about $10 a year for the TLD.

Anything else, and you’re at the mercy of whatever image host. And if you change image hosts, yep, you have to go back and change every photo on every post on every forum assuming you find them all. Been there, done that. It’s worth it to point to your own TLD for that reason alone. All my links last exactly as long as I want them to.

Depending on the importance of the photos, I’d probably just recommend Amazon S3 with their insane redundancy and 99.99999999999999999999 (give or take a few nines) integrity guarantee. It’s really quite cheap too.

Or for cheaper cheapskates, Google Drive will probably be around for foreseeable future. This is an excellent option at least for pictures that will be shared publicly on a site like BLF.

I personally use my dropbox account to host my pictures. More control as to when I choose to ‘pull the plug’ or have a copy if the hosting service dies (copy is replicated on pc/online).

A big plus… getting link is just a right click>get link away.

Example: My flashlight folder in my public folder. (contains other subfolders for other stuff)

How many gigs do you have?

I got 13.59 GB. Got from referrals, uploading pics promo etc…
Check out this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/54?path=space_and_storage

I think you start with 2 or 5 GB space…I forgot. Should be more than enough to host your pics, get control of when you want to delete and get easy links :slight_smile:

Speaking of image hosting, could we contribute to buying a file server, which would be run by our admin?

Thanks for the warning, Wight.

My images are already gone, so I have sent a message to their support...

Seconded. They claim to never delete pics (unless you choose to do so), which has held true for me for ~3 years. Easy to upload/organize/edit/etc. And it's free. I don't anticipate it going away anytime soon.

Always make sure to maintain a frequently updated backup or two of your important images/files!

Always use mirrors. Related: List of trustworthy file and pic hosts

I host most of my images on abload.de

Here's my overview:

https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/21257

They offer free unlimited storage & bandwidth, and they never delete your pics. ;)

Maybe just a coincidence, but the pictures in all of HKJ’s reviews are not showing right now. Hopefully that will correct itself, I don’t think he uses ImageShack. What a catastrophe it would be if they were to go off line.

Whew, they’re back!