Well I guess it was bound to happen, but I've somehow exceeded my bandwidth on Photobucket. I'm not the most computer savvy, but apparently deleting bunches of files from my account have nothing to do with the number of times they're being viewed. According to my stats, blog pic files have been viewed a whopping 717,548 times.
Wow.
It will reset, I dunno, at the beginning of the month or so. It resets at the beginning of whatever day I signed up on, but it's been so long I don't know when that was. Of course this means that the majority of my posts have had their pics temporarily disabled, which seeing how my blog is mostly visual, this is a heavy blow indeed.
I received a ransom note via email today though, if I pay up $25 bucks and "go pro" everything will go back to normal. That's kind of crap, and I certainly don't have the cash to pay a pic-posting site right now. So, does anyone have any suggestions out there? Flikr only gives you 200 (free) images, and their interface is wonky, I guess I could try them though. Photobucket was the simplest and easiest to use however, plus I've invested all my time, pics (and apparently bandwidth) with them up to this point.
EDIT: Three years later I look back at this and am shocked at my resistance to pay for a service that I have no problems using in the first place. I'm having hundreds and hundreds of my pics hosted off site, securely and without hangups to the blog. Yeah, paying for stuff sucks sometimes, but you get what you pay for and in this case, the blog's getting consistent image hosting. Anti-rant off.
Just get a new e-mail address and sign up for another account, maybe?
ReplyDeleteYou could move the blog to Wordpress.com - a free account gives you 2.9 GB of space with no bandwidth limits. Or you could just move the pics to WP and hotlink back to this Blogger blog.
ReplyDeleteOuch! That stinks! Are you not interested in uploading your pictures directly into your Blogger posts (side-stepping Photobucket all together)?
ReplyDeleteBlogger and Wordpress both offer less storage space with their free accounts than Photobucket (which I also use for the Repple Depple). I would easily have filled my Wordpress storage space. I currently use my Wordpress space for my downloads page (scenarios, etc). The bandwidth issue is a separate one, but you sort of have to pick your poison. I don't feel the $25 from Photobucket is a bad deal (after all, the limits were posted when we signed up), but I can definitely see how your current life situation can magnify that $25.
ReplyDeleteyou could try google picasa too should be linked to your google account:
ReplyDeletehttp://picasa.google.co.uk/
Just use Blogger's own picture upload service, Picasa. It's all Google really, but linking to pictures on Photobucket isn't good for anything other then forums.
ReplyDeleteI've been using pisca more than photobucket. There's plenty of storage space and bandwidth isn't an issue.
ReplyDeleteHoly helpful community Batman!
ReplyDeleteWow guys, thanks for all the input, seriously. You've given me a lot of options to mull over, and I'm sure I'll find a winner somewhere in all that. My main thing is trying to figure how to get my old picked un-hijacked from PBucket.
You're right though Brian, I knew the terms going in, but when I made the account I didn't even have a blog! 3/4 of a million pic hits simply blows me away.
Bear with me everyone while I do some damage control and get everything back online.
Even though it stinks right now, its a great problem to have =) Do you have to move all your old pics? Or can you simply move to a new picture site?
ReplyDeleteThanks Shelexie...everyone up above has been very helpful with some viable options for the future. My problem now is the old photo archives which are so numerous moving them one-by-one may not be viable.
ReplyDeleteFortunately with 3/4 million views my non-gamer wife sees that I'm providing a "valuable resource to the gaming community" so I think as of payday this week I'll settle the tab with Photobucket.
All hail Galaxar...