Post by northlander on Dec 25, 2017 20:43:54 GMT -5
So yeah, I have a Photobucket account that I used to host images for, amongst other things, my Let's Plays as well as all the screenshots we used for the shows we reviewed on THEM. I had a paid account -- around 70 dollars a year -- which suited my relatively small private use just fine.
And then, near the end of November, Photobucket sends me a mail that they've been changing their setup. Basically, their only photo hosting version that will grant you third party hosting is the biggest one.... that will cost me 400 dollars a year. Granted, with that, you get a TON of hosting space and bandwidth, so it's not technically a bad deal, but to me who barely made a dent in my own bandwidth in the subscription I had, that would have been like renting a boat the size of a top-line cruiser just to get over the fjord. Way, way, way more ridiculous than I really need. There are other paid hosting brackets, of course, but none of them allow third party hosting.
Which is fair enough. It's their business, and they can do with it what they want. However, the way they put it in the Email, they've "done me a favor" by basically Grandfathering my old bracket since June, and that I now had 30 days to select a subscription bracket; if I didn't, they'd revert my account to a free one. Which would have been fair enough if they'd actually notify me about that back in June, when I'd have plenty of time coming up with an alternative, instead of the end of November, when Christmas preparations and other events made sure that I didn't appreciate more being put onto an already full plate. The cynical part of me probably thinks this is intentional, so that I'd cough up the money instead of dealing with the hassle of finding new space and putting everything back into place. You know, in addition to all the other things I have to do before Christmas. That, or they only want the big customers who need all that space and can afford it. Or something.
So I basically bought some webspace and a domain name. And, not surprisingly, the yearly costs for that is not even close to 400 dollars a year. After dealing with the THEM screenshots hassle, which was the most important and certainly took its share of time to straighten out, I've already uploaded all the images I use for the LPs, and have been working on editing in the new image links in all my LPs. (Hence the numerous edits I've done today.) So far, I've finished all the Last Ninja LPs, Knight 'n Grail, the Rastan Saga one, both Phantasy Star games and Lunar: The Silver Star. I still have Lunar EB to do, as well as Lufia 2. There's also the matter of Wonderboy in Monster World and Black Tiger, but I've been thinking of redoing those with proper dialogue and character pictures like just about all the other LP's.
And since I now HAVE webspace, I also asked a friend of mine to basically reverse-engineer his site into something for me personally. As of yet, there's nothing much there: two Let's Plays set up just to prepare a template for it, as well as a few of my videogame graphics manipulated into my photographs pictures. He set up the site with a Wordpress template and made it so I can just add pictures and LPs whenever I have the time for it. For now, there's just a few examples since I've had other things to do, but you can see it here: northlander.no When I've completed all the LP image link exchanges, I'll prepare some HTML versions that I can use on that site. Once that's done, I'll just nuke my Photobucket account AND my LJ, since I won't be needing those anymore.
So yeah. Fun times.
And then, near the end of November, Photobucket sends me a mail that they've been changing their setup. Basically, their only photo hosting version that will grant you third party hosting is the biggest one.... that will cost me 400 dollars a year. Granted, with that, you get a TON of hosting space and bandwidth, so it's not technically a bad deal, but to me who barely made a dent in my own bandwidth in the subscription I had, that would have been like renting a boat the size of a top-line cruiser just to get over the fjord. Way, way, way more ridiculous than I really need. There are other paid hosting brackets, of course, but none of them allow third party hosting.
Which is fair enough. It's their business, and they can do with it what they want. However, the way they put it in the Email, they've "done me a favor" by basically Grandfathering my old bracket since June, and that I now had 30 days to select a subscription bracket; if I didn't, they'd revert my account to a free one. Which would have been fair enough if they'd actually notify me about that back in June, when I'd have plenty of time coming up with an alternative, instead of the end of November, when Christmas preparations and other events made sure that I didn't appreciate more being put onto an already full plate. The cynical part of me probably thinks this is intentional, so that I'd cough up the money instead of dealing with the hassle of finding new space and putting everything back into place. You know, in addition to all the other things I have to do before Christmas. That, or they only want the big customers who need all that space and can afford it. Or something.
So I basically bought some webspace and a domain name. And, not surprisingly, the yearly costs for that is not even close to 400 dollars a year. After dealing with the THEM screenshots hassle, which was the most important and certainly took its share of time to straighten out, I've already uploaded all the images I use for the LPs, and have been working on editing in the new image links in all my LPs. (Hence the numerous edits I've done today.) So far, I've finished all the Last Ninja LPs, Knight 'n Grail, the Rastan Saga one, both Phantasy Star games and Lunar: The Silver Star. I still have Lunar EB to do, as well as Lufia 2. There's also the matter of Wonderboy in Monster World and Black Tiger, but I've been thinking of redoing those with proper dialogue and character pictures like just about all the other LP's.
And since I now HAVE webspace, I also asked a friend of mine to basically reverse-engineer his site into something for me personally. As of yet, there's nothing much there: two Let's Plays set up just to prepare a template for it, as well as a few of my videogame graphics manipulated into my photographs pictures. He set up the site with a Wordpress template and made it so I can just add pictures and LPs whenever I have the time for it. For now, there's just a few examples since I've had other things to do, but you can see it here: northlander.no When I've completed all the LP image link exchanges, I'll prepare some HTML versions that I can use on that site. Once that's done, I'll just nuke my Photobucket account AND my LJ, since I won't be needing those anymore.
So yeah. Fun times.