Goodbye Dropbox photos

I've always used my dropbox public folder to share my own photos on here. As of March of next year, every pic I've shared here will now be a dead link:

We’re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience. The Public folder was the first sharing method we introduced, and since then, we’ve built even better ways for you to share securely and work together with your team. As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Basic users will be able to use the Public folder until March 15, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox. If you’d like to keep sharing files in your Public folder, you can create new shared links. Just make sure to send the new URLs to your collaborators. In addition to shared links, we have a number of sharing options designed to make collaboration easier and give you more control. To learn more, visit our Help Center. The Dropbox team

It makes me sad that all the build threads and stuff will now basically be useless, but not so sad that I'm going to work back through a decade of membership and relink everything. I guess the future links will work okay using whatever architecture they implement, but only time will tell.

That kind of sucks.

To bad it wasn't this easy.

Smae thing happend to many of us with Picasaweb when Google decided that Google Photos was a better idea.

You'd swear they do stuff like this just to piss people off.

Photobucket FTMFW!

Other than that, I've got nothing.

In reply to Toyman01:

Berk Photobucket.

Ian F wrote: You'd swear they do stuff like this just to piss people off.

No, just to make money and hotlinking just uses their bandwidth without any easy way to monetize it.

I'm not saying that it is right, but that's the way of the world on the web.

Toyman01 wrote: Photobucket FTMFW! Other than that, I've got nothing.

if you pay for it, it works pretty well. If you use their free service, it sucks and if you manage to fill up your allotted space, they'll lock you out of the account until you pony up the money for their paid service.

Stefan wrote:

Ian F wrote: You'd swear they do stuff like this just to piss people off.

No, just to make money and hotlinking just uses their bandwidth without any easy way to monetize it. I'm not saying that it is right, but that's the way of the world on the web.

I have no problem with them making money, but you'd think there'd be a way they could redirect the hosting address so that links aren't broken. I mean, why else would anyone even bother putting pictures on some 3rd party server?

Ian F wrote:

Stefan wrote:

Ian F wrote: You'd swear they do stuff like this just to piss people off.

No, just to make money and hotlinking just uses their bandwidth without any easy way to monetize it. I'm not saying that it is right, but that's the way of the world on the web.

I have no problem with them making money, but you'd think there'd be a way they could redirect the hosting address so that links aren't broken. I mean, why else would anyone even bother putting pictures on some 3rd party server?

Yeah, but that would require actually hiring people who care and those cost money. The 3rd world "Developers" they typically hire just do what they are told and no more than that.

Stefan wrote:

Ian F wrote: You'd swear they do stuff like this just to piss people off.

No, just to make money and hotlinking just uses their bandwidth without any easy way to monetize it. I'm not saying that it is right, but that's the way of the world on the web.

I'm in the same boat as Ade with Google Photos, and it's pissing me off. I found a workaround where if you added "?.jpg" to the end of a URL, it would work, but it looks like they have now closed that loophole, as well.

Honestly, I'd be willing to pay some nominal fee just to have something that works and is going to continue working for the forseeable future.

Tom_Spangler wrote: Honestly, I'd be willing to pay some nominal fee just to have something that works and is going to continue working for the forseeable future.

No problem. Get your own server and your own domain - or at least one you have control over. I've been hosting my own stuff for a couple of decades now. You can do the same with email. That way it's portable. If something goes wrong with your host, you can just move the domain somewhere else.

Self-Host. Problem solved.

Keith has the answer. I pay $10/mo for a dns and email and web host and it's worked well for me since about 1998 with improvements and security fixes that actually added value. There are cheaper options too I'm sure.

What! Your free hosting service that you don't pay for changed stuff without consulting it's non-paying users?

Try smugmug if you just want somewhere to host/arrange photos.

If you want the whole deal - what Keith said. Buy a domain and some generic hosting - or do both and point photos.yoururl.com to your smugmug and blog/email/pwerno.yoururl.com to your hosted version(s) of stuff by subdomain so when you need to change one the url remains the same forever.

I'm also firmly in the self-hosting camp, but then again Keith, Grtechguy and I probably have both the skills and the experience to do so. Unfortunately with the Internet becoming a more unpleasant place by the week, it's not something I'd recommend for everybody.

One option I'd look into that's somewhere in between a fully self-admin and full-blown photo hosting service that may go out of business would be store them on Amazon S3. Granted, that's not free but should be pretty cheap for a basic setup.

The only drawback with self-hosting that I've found is uploading and sharing via mobile devices isn't quite as easy yet.

I'll bet there's a free photo hosting application you could install on your own server. Looks like there are five available on Bluehost. Should be pretty easy to install even if you're fairly clueless, they've got a simple install interface. Heck, borrow a high school kid and they'll get it set up for you in minutes, then it should be fairly easy to upload and link.

Mobile devices are a bit of a problem because they're still evolving pretty rapidly. I don't know Android, but it should be a bit easier to manage via an Android device. I'm old enough that I usually don't take "real" pictures with a phone so I've not investigated it

Bluehost is about $8/month and includes a domain and email. I think it's unlimited storage.

I'll look into Smugmug and try the Android app. Being able to upload directly from my phone is a key need, but Flikr does that for me now. However, being able to get links and post pictures to forums via my phone is something that has eluded me when using Flikr.

Am I the only one that 99% of the time just links to his photos on Facebook, set to Public?

Stefan wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: Photobucket FTMFW! Other than that, I've got nothing.

if you pay for it, it works pretty well. If you use their free service, it sucks and if you manage to fill up your allotted space, they'll lock you out of the account until you pony up the money for their paid service.

It's worth the hassle free hosting to pay for it, so I do. It costs me about $30 a year. I see no adds. It works flawlessly from my computer and my phone. It gives me plenty of storage and bandwidth for linking multiple build threads, on multiple websites. 99.9% of the time it just plain works.

So again, Photobucket FTW.

With my own domain comes hosting space so I use that. Solved my 3rd party hosting issues and I can sort and keep various photos in files on my server so it is much better organized and with FTP through windows it is nothing more than a virtual directory on my computer. MUCH easier than many of the hosting sites.

In reply to Toyman01:

Photobucket can't "win" if the berking site won't load. It sounds like it's great for you, since you already have a pay account. It won't even load to the point where I can find the "pay" option.

Seriously. Opening the site locks up my computer...

In reply to Ian F:

Ooo, that sucks for sure.

Jerry wrote: Am I the only one that 99% of the time just links to his photos on Facebook, set to Public?

Facebook is a terrible photo hosting site, they compress the hell out of everything and it really screws up the pictures a lot of the time.

Remember this mantra: If you're not paying for the service, you're not the customer, you're the product. Hosting data on the internet takes real money, and if you want to be the one in charge of that data, you need to be the one paying the bills.

I use a self-hosted web site for my quick-and-dirty "documentation" photos (like most of those I post in build threads, usually shot with my phone), and a paid account on smugmug for photos that I intend to be appreciated more for their own sake (usually shot with my SLR).