Photobucket no longer supporting 3rd party hosting

[andy626]

I'm sure most of you have heard the good news with Photobucket not allowing 3rd party hosting anymore!

Has there been any discussions on here about it, I can't seem to find anything?

Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this issue at all, It's ruined a big part of a lot of history on my forum.

Would it be possible to run an attachment script to replace http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/PHOTOBUCKET-USER/IMAGENAME123.JPG

to yourforum.com/images/user/imagename123.jpg

Sounds a bit far fetched but if members were to download their entire photobucket accounts and upload to your forum and somehow run a find and replace script possible?

Thanks for anyone who can help!

[Paul M]

This might do what you want, I use a modified version of it on my forum.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=253309

vb.org also uses a slightly modified version.

[andy626]

Wow, thanks but I wish I had of known about that before Photobucket stopped the 3rd party hosting.

All of the photobucket images on forums now look like the below image, so I'm not sure if it will be pull the photos or just pull thousands of the new redirected image below.

Wish I had of had that plugin earlier!!!:mad:

http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/af357/MudRunnerTD/Stripping%20the%20GQ/GQ%20CV%20rebuild/PC030337.jpg

[Dave]

The plugin Paul linked you to might do the job but it's possible that it requires some modifications because of Photobucket's changes.

[andy626]

Thanks for your help Paul and Dave, unfortunately doesn't look good for that mod with what PB have already done.

--------------- Added 1499137146 at 1499137146 ---------------

Ok, so ran that mod isolated to a test forum and it works great, thank you!

Unfortunately it just imports the 3rd party PB image and not the actual image!

Back to my original question, does anyone know of how one could get around this Photobucket issue. As per my original post, is it possible to run an attachment find and replace?

[Kane@airrifle]

<a href="https://chevereto.com/community/threads/photobucket-debacle-and-file-naming.8691/" target="_blank">https://chevereto.com/community/thre...e-naming.8691/</a>

[Paul M]

How does that link help ?

[andy626]

Thanks Kane, thats definitely a solution!

Going to be a nightmare trying to get all of the members to download their albums!

[Kane@airrifle]

How does that link help ?

The image importer mod no longer works on Photobucket image embeds - it either imports the dreaded P500 thumbnail or simply your preset a image not found settings. Everybody who runs image heavy forums is scrambling for work arounds and solutions. The Chevereto link is but one such.

[andy626]

Thanks Kane, just letting you know it was a success...

[The_Hawk]

Attempting to keep the dream alive...

Has anyone found a site wide solution that allows forum owners to grab the photobucket images? Like many forums we have had a long history of using sites like Photobucket for image hosting since it was usually easier (and better) than the pretty poor image hosting built into vBulletin.

This might do what you want:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=253309


I have now implemented this little plugin (and excluded photobucket for now), something that has been on the radar for a year and sadly I hadn't yet done.

Interestingly, 60% of images from 2005 - 2011 are now dead links vs less than 30% of post 2011 links. None of that that is surprising but highlights the real benefits in using something like this if you can afford the storage space and bandwidth.

I did post this in that other thread but will put it over here as well in the hopes that someone smarter than me can implement this type of work around.

This plugin for chrome appears to work on the user side to get around the problem. I do wonder if this sort of thing could be implemented on the serverside to allow the external image grabber to do it's thing. Even if it only works temporarily it would allow me to grab the images while I can and host them locally.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg

[Dave]

I shortly looked into it a couple of days ago and it shouldn't be too difficult to make a script that downloads all "broken" Photobucket links and updates the links in all posts.

It takes a bit of time to write such plugin though, maybe I have some spare time within the next few weeks.

[MarkFL]

I always discourage my users from using third party image hosting services, and I manually edited posts as they occurred to attach the images inline whenever a user used such a service, because I never trusted such sites to exist forever.

That being said, I think what PB has done is despicable, and I feel bad for all those sites whose images are now broken. :(

[The_Hawk]

I'd love to believe that PB would at least temporarily reverse their decision allowing the forums of the world to retrieve (and re-host) the content rather than let so much content die a sad death. But then there is no money in that or any likely any future customers... but then I don't know that there are many customers is a $400 / year offering anyway.

I shortly looked into it a couple of days ago and it shouldn't be too difficult to make a script that downloads all "broken" Photobucket links and updates the links in all posts.

It takes a bit of time to write such plugin though, maybe I have some spare time within the next few weeks.

I think that more than a few people would be very grateful... I'm sure I could scrape together a few bucks to support a working solution.