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General TR Photobucket Again

CJD

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I just received word that Photobucket "deleted" my account. For those of you who don't remember the rift...I posted all my pictures for a decade on this site through photobucket. In 2017 they decided they were going from a free platform to fee based services. I have no problem with them making money, but they were going from "free" to $100/yr. That was steep, but I actually paid it for a couple years. They did not increase my band with, so I was only preserving the pictures I already posted, which were pretty much "how to" restore a TR2 from ground zero to hair in the breeze again. I finally decided I couldn't keep paying obscene fees just to retain pictures posted decades earlier.

When I quit paying, they began harassing me for years. I ignored them, and my pictures have remained. Now I am deleted. When I check my old how-to posts, the pictures still pop up. I do not know if they always will or if they plan to delete them soon.

Anyway, all my posts from 2017 to date are through Imgur. They are still free...
 
Well, looks like there is no interest anyway...so I feel better about being deleted!
 
John - no interest in what? There are dozens/hundreds? of users who may be viewing your photos here on BCF - but you'd never know.

Tom M.
 
When the internet was born, it was free and we thought it would remain
that way forever... well, the dream is over and the future is bleak on that
regard ($).

However, there's hope. As (admin) Basil explained to me, If you take the
photos and add them to your article/post as an *inline* image, it stays with
the post (as opposed to pasting a link to it hosted somewhere else which
may or may not be there tomorrow).

Furthermore, in order to make it "light work" on the BCF server, one should
reduce the size of images. Today's cellphone cameras are great and take
very high resolution images. As such, the BCF server will complain about
them being too large (for the purpose of uploading them here to illustrate
your posts). I find that to be the best solution all around.
 
There are low-cost web hosting services available. I haven't looked into that for some time now, but I think you probably could do it for less than $100/year. Furthermore, you can get your own domain and multiple email accounts.
 
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Getting your own domain (and a place to host any of your content) would
be the way to go. But if all you want to do is to share images of your classic
car or whatever is pertinent to BCF, this forum is an even better deal (either
free, or paying the small fee this site suggest to help defray costs).
 
Yep, you guys are too new to understand the extent of this. I spent 7 years documenting every operation of restoring a rather trashed TR2, including how to do bodywork, how to weld, how to paint, how to rebuild a tranny, engine, repair a rusted out frame, remove rusted body bolts and on and on...over 2500 photos!! I even show a way to restore and calibrate all the TR instruments, including face painting! It took dozens and dozens of hours to take and upload photos of every aspect of the project. They did not overwhelm BCF, because they are are not on BCF, but were "linked", so the storage was entirely in photobucket.

First photobucket limited my adding any new photos, which was not a problem, as the photos that were needed for the threads were already there. Then, they started charging to keep them active. And now I am told they are deleted. There are other platforms, but it would take months to find and index the pictures in my albums with the verbiage in the threads to rebuild them on a new platform.

Just to give an example of a single thread...


There are about 10 of these extensive threads, to the point there is very little you cannot see inside or out of a TR2, with references to TR3 differences. This was a huge undertaking! I still see the pics, so maybe photobucket is just posturing. Let me know if you guys see the pics or not?!? If they still show, I will provide links for anyone who wants to reference/copy them before they are "deleted".
 
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John,

I’m not sure what it would take to preserve all of your documentation, but I would think forum members might chip in. Although I have not used your restoration posts as a resource having not yet done a restoration, it was nice to know they were available somewhere if I could find them. I always look forward to your experience and advice in the threads that are of particular interest to me.

Steve
‘55TR2
 
It's really not a big deal to me. I just figured I would let everyone know in case someone needed the threads before the pictures go away. I am afraid it's too late. I started bumping the threads, but it turns out the pictures have been deleted, making them virtually useless. Oh well...moving along!
 
John,

I clicked on the thread you refer to and I did see the article with all the photos.
I must say, that is invaluable. Specially for pertinent people contemplating doing
what you did. I then looked at one of the image details "under the hood" and it
showed it is still linked externally to PhotoBucket:

i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j377/cjdurant/DSC05531.jpg (1024 x 768 95.4 Kb)

It's size is quite reasonable and if that (or those) photos were to be made inline
here on BCF, that would not be a problem at all (plus it would be free of whatever
PhotoBucket does). But having that many (2500!!!) photos to transfer to BCF would
not be trivial.

I recently searched and found a great thread on a subject related to what I am working
on my Austin Healey BN2, and had many photos linked externally but none were showing
(a case similar to what you refer to). Since an image is worth a thousand words,
that's a huge loss.

It pains me to see resources like that vanish because of greedy companies that simply
don't care at all to the fate of *your* images.
 
When I look at the thread you linked I still see all the pics. There are lots of ways to archive whole web pages, though I don't have a lot of experience with it, I believe some of not most would also save the embedded image.

It took a bit of a jog, and I haven't been on here much the last few years (seems to have slowed down a bit) but I remember your posts on the restoration of your car, including the work on the gauges. I have always felt like I would tackle most anything, but some of the excellent work you did seems a little beyond me.

Also, screw Photobucket and cloud storage in general, my stuff is very much my stuff, and I would much rather it be on a physically local to me device than somewhere in "the cloud" where it is pretty much entirely out of my control if the custodian of the data wants to charge me, up rates, goes out of business etc.
 
I still see the pictures when I click on the links.

I still think that a host is the way to go, at least for the future. I use Bluehost, which started out as a low-cost hosting service but has expanded into one with more features. The option I use is still reasonably priced, at least for my needs, which (until recently) included a site for my consulting business. My TR4A pages alone (> The 1966 Triumph TR4A <) have 3600 image files, although really about 1800 independent images, since each includes a thumbnail and a large image. Everything is mirrored on my own computer; if I switched to a new host, it would take maybe a couple hours to upload everything, and the change would be invisible to users, since the domain name would be unchanged. The whole arrangement is very versatile and safe. Worth considering, I think.
 
Steve (@Sarastro), what you said above is entirely correct and the best way to go...
provided one can navigate the world of a domain name and doing one's own hosting
with a suitable provider. Unfortunately not everyone here on BCF, for whatever
reason (and there are many) can go that route.

Also, since BCF has been around for a while, many of its wonderful folks, over time,
have accumulated a treasure trove of articles, posts and images. Some are linked
to sites elsewhere, some are "inline" (hosted by the server that runs BCF itself).

For the images that are hosted elsewhere, sooner or later (it seems) there will be
a time where what John (@CJD) refers to, may bear on those image links not working
anymore. For those creating new articles or threads, just uploading images here is
far easier and practical if they don't want to bother with domain names and hosting.
 
Yep, you guys are too new to understand the extent of this. I spent 7 years documenting every operation of restoring a rather trashed TR2, including how to do bodywork, how to weld, how to paint, how to rebuild a tranny, engine, repair a rusted out frame, remove rusted body bolts and on and on...over 2500 photos!! I even show a way to restore and calibrate all the TR instruments, including face painting! It took dozens and dozens of hours to take and upload photos of every aspect of the project. They did not overwhelm BCF, because they are are not on BCF, but were "linked", so the storage was entirely in photobucket.

First photobucket limited my adding any new photos, which was not a problem, as the photos that were needed for the threads were already there. Then, they started charging to keep them active. And now I am told they are deleted. There are other platforms, but it would take months to find and index the pictures in my albums with the verbiage in the threads to rebuild them on a new platform.

Just to give an example of a single thread...


There are about 10 of these extensive threads, to the point there is very little you cannot see inside or out of a TR2, with references to TR3 differences. This was a huge undertaking! I still see the pics, so maybe photobucket is just posturing. Let me know if you guys see the pics or not?!? If they still show, I will provide links for anyone who wants to reference/copy them before they are "deleted".
John, I wanted to write a note and thank you for the rebuild threads that you posted on rebuilding your TR2; they are the best information that I have ever seen on repair of a TR3 or TR2 and what you provided is invaluable. I have been wondering how the Stearman project is coming along. I am rebuilding a Waco PLA up here in Ohio; It would be good to talk to you some time. My name is Greg Huber and my phone is 330-242-3974. My name on this forum is Tailwheel. At any rate many thanks. Greg
 
John-

Your detailed descriptions and photos were invaluable to me during my restoration. Randall's were a close 2nd!

I can still see your pictures at the moment-

Thanks, Jeff
 
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