[SpecialK]

Photobucket has recently "upgraded" its photo hosting site, which now is unusable. Customers are posting pretty nasty comments on the PB comment page. It is pretty hilarious - unless you have an account there.

The short list of problems that directly affect me...
1. Can't sort by file name - all my file names start with yymmdd. The current options are by title, or upload sequence. No one can find their own photos in their albums, complicated by...
2. The "endless scroll" as it has come to be called. You scroll down - it loads some photos, you scroll down - it loads some photos. This is apparently because the "view by page" feature has not been restored (supposedly to come tomorrow...) Oh, and it is only 4 thumbnails wide, max. I have 3 inches of white space on each side...
3. The "image info" i.e., exif data, is unavailable.
4. The thumbnails are only portions of the image - maybe 1/3 of it. For some of them I don't even recognize it.
5. The display size within Photobucket is something like 768 x 1200. Linked images (such as I post) still show up larger - depending on what hoops you jump through first. One complication is that if you set the image to display as original size, PG adds riginal (that is : original without a space) after the jpg extension which fools many forums, like this one, into trying to make a smiley out of it and not display the image (like the smiley here). You can add a few characters of text individually to work around that until they debug it...)

Photobucket has sort of admitted that the survey (which many of us never saw) had "skewed results" (that means "wrong") and they were designing the new site based on things people did not want (Facebook hoopla) and omitting the things we want (see above) and in some cases need for business purposes.

Anyway...that's the background.

I know there are bazillion other hosts, but I am not going to Flickr (again) for personal reasons - it did not work for me.

I am in fact contemplating slickpic.com where I am testing with a free account. There are $24.95 and $99.95 per year alternatives. For free or $24.95, I have to live with some resize limitations.

However, the two things stopping my immediate migration are:
1. I have a lot of time and effort already in the photo descriptions/captions (perhaps 20,000?). If I copied and pasted from one site to the other, at a rate of 100 per night, I'd never finish...(too bad the captions are not downloadable).
2. If my account gets deleted, almost all of my images on PentaxForums would have the dreaded "missing or moved" image. Not every image I post is wonderful, but quite a few are, and many are useful and helpful, if not entertaining.

I suppose I will have to wait and see how they have progressed when my subscription comes around.

And it used to be such handy host which I would not hesitate to recommend.

I know a few others have commented about PB in passing in other posts, so I thought all the PB users could commiserate here ...

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Last edited by SpecialK; 03-19-2013 at 07:51 PM.

[Not a Number]

Every issue you have listed is being addressed.

#5 on your list has "fixed" a couple weeks ago::
Upload Size Options : Photobucket Support

[SpecialK]

Every issue you have listed is being addressed.

#5 on your list has "fixed" a couple weeks ago::
Upload Size Options : Photobucket Support

Addressed? Perhaps. Some things are basics, and not been seen in weeks or longer.
The upload size affects the linked out sizes, not the one viewable within PB. At least that's what some have figured out. Maybe...

[atupdate]

I use the free version of Photo Bucket and they have taken a very user friendly site and removed most of the friendliness. I'm going to wait it out to see if they fix it but I'm not going to wait long.

Tim

[Ash]

The iPhone app is still reasonably user friendly and does all the tasks I need.

[Not a Number]

The infinite scroll was changed earlier today and albums are now paged.

Sort options additions like sort by file name are scheduled to be rolled out early April. These are being beta tested and Photobucket has widened the group of beta testers on these changes.

Upload from URL was implemented the same time as the upload sizing options. Actual size viewing within Photobucket might be rolled out in April.

I won't deny that Photobucket dropped the ball and lost sight of the goal with their changes. I tried out the beta site several times since they first offered it late last year and every time after using it for less than an hour switched back to the old site. "Not yet ready for Prime Time" was my verdict. Since it was a beta site I understood that it was in flux. I tried it again in early February but felt it was still not ready for prime time. However the option to go back was no longer available. After a period of ranting and raving I just decided to sit back and work with Photobucket, opening support tickets on problems and offering suggestions and posting constructive criticism on the support forums. If nothing changed I'd look for alternatives, although the ones I've looked at before don't suit me. I'll have to say that in the 5-6 weeks since I switched over Photobucket has addressed positively as much as 75% of the suggestions and feature requests I have made.

They've also conducted several feature surveys in February and these were used to prioritize the R&D and rollout of these changes.

[SpecialK]

The infinite scroll was changed earlier today and albums are now paged.

Yep, though the numbers are at the bottom of the page. Still, much improved.

Sort options additions like sort by file name are scheduled to be rolled out early April. These are being beta tested and Photobucket has widened the group of beta testers on these changes.

Unbelievable it was not there from the git go - especially since it was on the sort-type list (for awhile).

Upload from URL was implemented the same time as the upload sizing options. Actual size viewing within Photobucket might be rolled out in April.

I have no idea what this is :-)

They've also conducted several feature surveys in February and these were used to prioritize the R&D and rollout of these changes.

None seen by me or many others.

The main bitch is the new site was/is not ready and missing the usual features, and we were essentially forced into it.

[Racer X 69]

I have to say that the "new and improved" is not, at least for me. I get used to something, and when it gets changed I really dislike it. Kinda like if a blind person gets used to their environment, and then some inconsiderate basterd rearranges the furniture.

I somehow got funneled into the beta setup last fall, and was then locked out of my account for over a month. Apparently some of my albums are set as private, and the beta site said my user ID and password were incorrect. What followed were literally hundreds of emails back and forth with their technical staff, and many wasted hours of frustrating and fruitless attempts at resolving the issue. When I finally figured out what to do to get things working again, I went back to the old site and vowed to never step up to the new one. And the Braintrust at Photobucket couldn't even figure it out, I did.

Things were working just fine until the 18th of March, when I was forced to accept the new Photobucket. It appears that the buggy issues that I had experienced are (mostly) resolved, but it still makes me feel like a blind man in an unfamiliar environment.

My various albums used to be sorted in the order of when I uploaded the pictures. Now I have no clue what the order is, but it makes no sense at all, and I am forced to spend time relearning my albums so I can find stuff again.

I just don't get why they have to change stuff when it was working just fine. I don't run out and buy a new car every 14 months when there are new features offered. I don't go looking for a new house every year or two when the current one starts to get that "old" feeling.

I dunno. It wasn't broke, so why did they feel that they had to fix it?

[Parallax]

Photobucket has sort of admitted that the survey (which many of us never saw) had "skewed results" (that means "wrong")

I think in this case skewed means "The designers faked them to try and save themselves."

[SpecialK]

Things were working just fine until the 18th of March, when I was forced to accept the new Photobucket.
My various albums used to be sorted in the order of when I uploaded the pictures. Now I have no clue what the order is, but it makes no sense at all, and I am forced to spend time relearning my albums so I can find stuff again.

Well, we all want progress without change :-)

I've been stuck on the new site for about 2 weeks. I had "looked at" the new site once or twice weeks earlier, and when I saw it could not sort by date, I bailed back to the original. Third time, I could not go back.

Bad thing about the sort by upload date is that if you edit an old image and send it up, it goes to the front....and even a batch is not guaranteed to arrive on the site in sequence...

[SpecialK]

Photobucket closed its feedback comments thread.

Here are 2 of the more entertaining posts...there were many more shorter ones just as bad - or worse :-(

"This is a kick in the backside off all PRO paying customers. Guess: what was the reason to pay for a hosting site over several years? Right: It WAS working mostly very smooth in a nearly perfect way.

The advertising on your frontpage: All your Photos & Videos - Everything you want to do with them ?!? Nearly none !!!!

I'd tested the beta in November I think. I switched off the beta one hour later because there were many bugs and told you (PB) about this. You assured to fix all the bugs until March. In February I turned to beta by mistake and wasn't able to switch off any more. I told PB again about some bugs (infinite scroll, missed sorting by file name, missing added titles after changing to albums). PB renewed assurance to fix these.

So what was going on these month since November? Basic skill of all image hosters is sorting by file name, like you did before March. Most people (including myself) I know editing their images in size or file name before upload. So I don't need a sorting by date (upload/image shot). But I'm satisfied with the option of original file size you brought back. Renewed paging is the better way than infinite scroll, but please bring back the option "view all" of a album and add pagination at top of shown images.

In the first annoyance I'd tried testing some other hosting services. I found none who has nearly all the features you had on PB until March. Slick looks a bit like PB, but getting a link is uncomfortable and allows not to be used for commerce. Most others are working like the new PB without these formerly famous options and features. So I decided to me to sit and wait until next payment period in February 2014 if it will be not worse here.

So please, Danny, remind your head office in the next meeting to all these paying PRO customers which were nearly 100% satisfied with your product until March. Like filigranlover and others said: the seemingly new generation of users like kids and other infantil people are not these who are ready to pay for an account 29 $ or up to 399 $ you are offering. I do not need PB to upload from mobile device the newest brawl in European Soccer Stadium or something stupid else like that.

Most of us paying customers use PB to store and share the images on eBay, other websites, own homepages, blogs, for regular income as photographer etc. etc. Please do not drive us out!

Best regards from Germany, and sorry for my clumsy English again (my German is much better ;-))

P.S. In Germany "Image" is also a word for reputation. You lost many of it."

and

"Please. Please. Go to Google and start to type in "new photobucket" in front of your entire staff. Make sure your boss is there. Maybe you could do it during one of your important meetings about creating an online binder to hold our 48 page story for every picture we take, because that's what we all do right? Beacuse this is the decade of the stories, because we're all USA characters right?

Before you can even finish the sentence, Googles auto complete shows "New Photobucket Sucks" as the 5th most searched auto complete sentence for those keywords. Once you search that, you'll find dozens of sites completely bashing you. Calling you every name in the book. Telling the world what a waste of a site this is. Please. Look around. See what everyone really thinks of PB right now, instead of using your little tainted online pop-up research quiz that only children answered, because all the adults were all too busy trying make a living."


And Photobucket's last.

"We know what users are having issues with on the new site. We're working on them as quick as we can, but there isn't a one step fix for them. Adding features to the site takes time, as they need to be recoded for the new site, tested, and there must be time to do all of that while fixing bugs and other issues. Our engineers cannot drop all of their other work to roll out a feature, as a lot of the other work is fixing bugs and defects that arise, as is the case when rolling out any feature or change.

If you want information on a specific feature, please write in a ticket to support. I will most likely close this forum soon, as it doesn't appear that the information I have provided previously is being read.

If there is a feature or issue you have, please read over the information on the following article: Feature Updates

Thank you"

Meanwhile, I'm off to work on a bug-fix...

[Racer X 69]

So what was going on these month since November?

They were in hibernation.

[sb in ak]

I've been using PB for a long time....can't stand the new interface. Maybe I'm just not used to it yet. But I mostly use it for uploading and sharing to forums like this, and it seems like it takes a few more steps now. I might check out some of the other photo websites.

[Not a Number]

I've been using Photobucket to close on seven years now. The new interface has a steep learning curve. A lot of the old functions were simply missing but most are slowly being added back. Uploading is actually a little easier in some respects with drag-n-drop. The trick is to open the album you want to upload to and from the "More" drop-down select "upload to album" and your files will be placed in open album. Otherwise you can always click on the button next to "upload to" in the upper left to choose which album to upload to. The default is "Library". They also have a desktop application (for Windows) which will upload files that you drop into a folder on your PC. You can set which albums to upload to.

What I miss is the java Bulk Uploader they used to have. It was nice because you could select files from different folders on your PC and upload them at the same time. It was also nice because it was somehow much faster - in the time it takes to upload one image from the normal file picker (or now drag-n-drop or desktop uploader) it would upload 2 or 3 images.

I have accounts with some of the other image hosting sites. Sharing involves more steps than even the current version of Photobucket does. For instance many of the others don't add the [ img ] tags - you have to type them in yourself or use the insert image button on the forum. And organizing your albums takes more steps too.

From what I gather from reading the comments posted by Photobucket is they used too narrow of a group of users in their survey for features on the rewrite and also used this same group as beta testers. When they opened up the beta site to anyone in November most everybody reacted in the same way - "This sucks", fired off an angry message or two and switched back to the old version. They should have just asked for more people to commit to be serious beta testers and provided a means for them to run both versions.

So why not stay with the old version or switch back to it? Photobucket says there are technical problems with going back. This may be true if the database structures were changed. I suspect the reasons are more legal than technical. They were using a third party editor (which most people want back). Photobucket may not have been able to renew the license on the editor and other portions of the site. That would explain why the absolute switchover could not be delayed.

By all means look at the alternatives. If you find one that is as easy to use for creating the links for sharing as the old Photobucket let us know. However Photobucket has restored most of these features even though implemented slightly different. For now I'm going to stick with Photobucket a little bit longer and work with them to improve the site. Since most of the issues that affected how I most use Photobucket, i.e. sharing on forums, have been addressed I see no immediate need to jump ship.

[SpecialK]

You are lucky that the limited functions of PB meet your needs. I'm stuck by having lots of time invested in the captions/titles - some of the anecdotal info there is the only location for it. Much less lacking the features we had and expect, some suggested work-arounds, such for linking to full-size images, doesn't work.