Many members of CDO have used Photobucket as a freely available resource for image storage which allowed them to link images to the forum (called third party hosting). Unfortunately, with the abrupt and unexpected change in Photobucket’s Terms of Service third party hosting is no longer permitted for free accounts or any of their basic paid accounts, and can only be restored at a cost of $40USD per month. This is a very disappointing and underhanded tactic by Photobucket, but they are a business and well within their rights to do-so. We as a community do not have to kneel to their pressure (as if any self respecting Dawi Zharr would)!
Chaos Dwarfs Online has a solution, and we need you’re help to restore the forum to its former glory.
Below is a list of instructions, which we need you to read carefully. This requires little effort from our members and, most importantly, no editing of any posts made to the forum!
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Instructions for members who have content hosted with Photobucket.
1.) Login to your Photobucket account and from the right hand side select "Download album"
The next screen can take a few second to load. Wait for the CAPTCHA prompt and follow the instructions to show you are not a robot.
You will be shown a progress screen letting you know that the image backup is underway. Depending on how much content you have and how busy their servers are this may take seconds, minutes, or longer.
Once complete you will be presented with the option to download your bundled content. This will save a .zip archive to your hard drive.
2.) Save the zipped archive of your Photobucket contents. This will give you a file with the format (YourPhotobucketUsername)#######.zip
You need to save the file without renaming it. We need your Photobucket username in order for this fix to work, and it’s easiest if you just leave your Photobucket username as part of the filename.
3.) CDO Staff would appreciate it if you would remove non-CDO content from the .zip archive at this stage.
4.) Upload your (YourPhotobucketUsername)#######.zip file to Dropbox, Google Drive, or some other source we can download it from easily.
5.) Send a PM to Staff, which is an account all CDO Staff and Admin have access to. Include the link we can download your .zip archive from, as well as ONE example page here on CDO that you created in the past which has a broken photobucket link (presently photobucket images shouldn’t even be showing the ad so just point us to a thread with missing images).
And that’s it, just sit back and let us take it from there.
DO NOT edit any of your posts that have links to photobucket.com in them, we take care of this!! :hat off
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As a large amount of forum content is image-based we heavily rely on this content. In recognition of member’s efforts to restore their content that had been hosted on Photobucket we are offering a new Medal for this occasion.
Behold the flaming fractured camera:
To be eligible to receive the medal members will need to backup their content and get the .zip archives to us ASAP.
If you are a member that has not been so unlucky as to have hosted your content with Photobucket, do not fret, you too can earn the swanky new medal. We are still working out the details, but there are lots of members who are no longer active and we will need to backup their data (manually, picture-by-picture). There will be a special version of the medal for members that partake in rescuing this content.
Staff are organizing and prioritizing a list of pages that will need this sort of manual help, so please be patient. We will post another Migration to the Darklands - Stage II thread soon, and in there keen members can sign up to help out, but Staff will be coordinating assignments, so please don’t jump the gun just yet and start backing up data. We want to ensure Stage I completes successfully first before trying to pull off the more labour-intensive Stage II :cheers
This will remain a work-in-progress, and we may need to post updates, further clarifications, and corrections to the process as we go, so please bear with us and with any luck we should be able to recover the bulk of the missing and broken Photobucket content.
~N
P.S. If you want to see what a restored page looks like, Xander and I tested this out with my main blog today. ~8 years of content restored without editing any pages - check it out: Nicodemus’ Restored Forge of Unfinished Business.
P.P.S. The reason you don’t need to edit your old posts is because we have some code that runs on-the-fly as the posts are read from the database and looks for links to Photobucket, and replaces them with a redirect to the image directory on the CDO server. If you go editing your old posts with img tags pointing to Photobucket this fix will not work.
I shall try, but for now Photobucket.com won’t even load proper and let me look at my albums. Guess others came up with similar ideas and the “service” is overloaded right now.
EDIT: Anyone know how to download all pictures in one go if you have organised your bucket using folders and sub-folders (albums)?
@clam: Maybe. I can access my library now and could download just up until recently (in process, many subalbums to go; currently it doesn’t work though), but overload issues do seem a huge risk these coming days.
Time to resume manual salvaging from others’ inactive logs, just in case Photobucket goes down in flames… Stage 2 of the above masterplan will engage itself with this crucial issue to save our archives, but we might do best to strike out immediately in a more primitive salvage manner because time might be of the essence. As of now, most of our inactive members’ remaining pictures from Photobucket are accessible, but this could be phased out any day - we have no way to know when this window shuts.
Therefore, after downloading your own albums as described above by Nicodemus I encourage everyone with time left-over on their hands and a will to help out to head over here and start salvaging worthy pictures from inactive CDO accounts - take your pick, the member list is long. Some of this might turn out to be redundant work once Stage 2 rolls out, but it will mean we have backups should Photobucket complete the lockdown or collapse utterly. I’d rather take some confusion and double work above risking to lose virtually all images that’s gone before here on CDO.
Also, some Dakkadakka members have posited speculations as to Photobucket’s motives: There exist a suspicion that Photobucket is intentionally making itself impossible to have its users download and migrate before shutting down finally, after grabbing some last money. Whatever the actual reasons, we would do best to seriously consider the possibility that Photobucket may cease to exist in the future.
EDIT: Anyone know how to download all pictures in one go if you have organised your bucket using folders and sub-folders (albums)?
clam
I dont think there is. I tried looking for a solution as im having the same issue. Ive got over a thousand photos split over two dozen albums and at least a dozen sub albums but im having to download each one individually.
Is there any way to do this with my photos if they are split over dozens of different zip files? If i move all the relevant ones into one file and send it will it still work?
I’m in the same situation. Lots of compartmentalization in my Photobucket as well. Shall we keep the Zip files separated as they come out of downloading different albums, or shall we pour every image into one common folder? (Guess separate Zips.)
I'm in the same situation. Lots of compartmentalization in my Photobucket as well. Shall we keep the Zip files separated as they come out of downloading different albums, or shall we pour every image into one common folder? (Guess separate Zips.)
Admiral
I guess it doesnt matter really. If its just going by the image name and not the path name then it shouldnt make a difference if they are split up into their respective folders and sub folders. Would make everything a lot easier if putting every image we needed into one folder worked. Will it still work if i delete my photobucket account?
I’d advise everyone to not delete their Photobucket account, just in case. Having it strewn about inactive should not be detrimental in any way. I have no knowledge of this technical matter whatsoever, but waiting for expert advice, the best advice is to touch nothing, wreck nothing.
I’ve not been able to download a sub-album is hours now. Anyone else who have the same issue?
I've not been able to download a sub-album is hours now. Anyone else who have the same issue?
Admiral
The main problem i had was the page freezing when it said something like "preparing download, we will email you when its ready". I noticed it still sent me the download link in an email even if the page looked frozen so try that
I'm in the same situation. Lots of compartmentalization in my Photobucket as well. Shall we keep the Zip files separated as they come out of downloading different albums, or shall we pour every image into one common folder? (Guess separate Zips.)
Admiral
I guess it doesnt matter really. If its just going by the image name and not the path name then it shouldnt make a difference if they are split up into their respective folders and sub folders. Would make everything a lot easier if putting every image we needed into one folder worked. Will it still work if i delete my photobucket account?
Pyro Stick
But with a sub-structure you would actually be able to name a picture the same name twice - so I'm rather certain that this will only work if you have a file for each album (and tell which album it is) unless you are certain that a filename will only appear ones in your overall account.
This is such a genius solution. I love this admin team so much!!!
My bucket is sorted somewhat like this (Can’t open it now due to load):
Primary bucket: Around 9 images
_ Chaos Dwarf Army: 600 images
_ You better work: 14 images
_ FFS WORK GODDAMMIT: 9 images
I already have the primary folder downloaded, but I will try to get the remaining 3, which I have used when my primary folder didn’t work. Is that okay?
Stage II of the Photobucket backup is up and running. It’s a little more involved than Stage I, but not terrible. And like Calvin and Hobbes, when it’s all over there’ll be commendations and medals for everyone :cheers
Hats off to tjub who is the first member (besides admin or staff) to have backed up his Photobucket account and get it to Staff. tjub now has is new medal.
Please let us know if anything doesn’t look right tjub - I noticed that data was in a Photobucket subdirectory called “Chaos Dwarfs” so I took the liberty of appropriately allocating the necessary directory structure here as well.
@Nicodemus: I asked a question earlier, which was:
My bucket is sorted somewhat like this (Can’t open it now due to load):
Primary bucket: Around 9 images
_ Chaos Dwarf Army: 600 images
_ You better work: 14 images
_ FFS WORK GODDAMMIT: 9 images
I already have the primary folder downloaded, but I will try to get the remaining 3, which I have used when my primary folder didn’t work. Is that okay?
@Nicodemus: I asked a question earlier, which was:
My bucket is sorted somewhat like this (Can't open it now due to load):
Primary bucket: Around 9 images
\_ Chaos Dwarf Army: 600 images
\_ You better work: 14 images
\_ FFS WORK GODDAMMIT: 9 images
I already have the primary folder downloaded, but I will try to get the remaining 3, which I have used when my primary folder didn't work. Is that okay?
Thanks for all your hard work
Malorndk
Apologies for missing your earlier message. If you can preserve the sub directory names and files are in the correct subdirs then it'll just work (famous last words)... but really, it should!
Tried to download my photobucket album yesterday and it wouldnt download; followed the steps in Nicodemius’s guide but when I clicked ‘download’ nothing happened
It’s possible servers are overwhelmed or they are now throttling certain accounts. I had to resort to downloading one at a time… I had these all backed up but the basement flood this spring fried the computer it was on.
