At first I had hoped it was a glitch but apparently Photobucket has turned off their free third party hosting and displaying the below message. Getting the feature appears to cost about $40/month. I suppose I had wondered how they made money offering it for free for so long since no ads appeared on a linked photo. So, a dozen years of my photos in the forum here are now inaccessible. How many others use Photobucket?

I use to use the pic by reference (hosting) with my google account but lately I've gone with uploading the pics to the forum and therefore they are good for life on the forum. Eventually I expect the google account thing will be gone.

Should ask Geoff to write a routine to download pics that are referenced in threads. Could loose a lot of good data.

Here's an article about it in PC Magazine: https://www.pcmag.com/news/354711/photobucket-breaks-image-links-across-the-internet

I'm with you Jim!
9 years of posting with PB and now inaccessible. I'll be deleting my PB account.
It's a shame all the pictures that were hosted on PB will be lost.
I've started using IMGUR but wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens with them in the future.

Ive been using image shack, I wonder if its still up....maybe I better lift the pics off there too!

Must still be up, my pic still loads I see!

I thought of using photobucket years ago....but hesitated (maybe good), and loaded onto my ofc computer

I too received a nasty gram from PB. Fortunately, I never used service for anything other than sharing copies of pictures. I just checked, links still work. I assume someday they will not. Really sucks after years of being able to share this way. Please keep us posted on a replacement.

Like Dennis, I only use PB for sharing copies, in my case, almost exclusively for displaying the Firebird-related images here on the 1st Gen Forum. Fortunately, all of my photos are in my desktop computer and backed up a couple ways here at home so even if PB eliminates all access, my stuff is not lost. It's just that the photos I have put in the forum will forever not appear here. PB is also now filled with multiple pop-up ads that have to be closed before getting to my file there. I don't really trust "cloud-like" services as a main photo, document, etc. storage and PB is verifying my distrust.

I am now using this forum's attachment feature when I want to share a photo.

Don't worry the NSA also has a copy of everything everyone has ever posted

, but how do you get them to release them? LOL

Should be grandfathered in on the firebird information act.

So now what? All photos are gone? One of my favorite things on FGF was checking out the other birds, works in progress etc. Sometimes going back years to reference correct assembly pics and finding encouragement viewing completed projects.
I'd LOL if I was not so p###ed

The pictures that were posted using this forum's "attachment manager" feature or image hosting providers other than Photobucket should still be available in past posts. I have started using the attachment manager here for all new posts. Photobucket was just a major wildly used service so several people here were using it.

Who knows, some of the people here may pay the PB $300/year fee to still use their site.

Thanks Jim. I'm just bummed about Photobucket. Not sure how to upload pictures using attachment manager, maybe you could step me through it? I'm not super savvy with this stuff! Thanks again.

On a reply, click the "USE FULL EDITOR" below the reply box.

The "Attachment Manager" is under the reply box. Click it and a new window opens that will guide you to select your photo from your files.

Thanks again Jim.

Update: I've started the process of removing all my Photobucket of mostly Firebird pictures to a home PC file. Photobucket is now a struggle to use. Each picture has to be opened there, saved and then deleted individually while enduring an endless barrage of pop-up ads and messages. I suppose if you don't pay their huge recurring fees, they are going to make it miserable to even be there.

If Photobucket is considered a cloud-like service, I think I'll continue to stay out of the clouds.