Hello all - in an effort to make our site as cost effective as possible we have been using a free web based internet image hosting site called PhotoBucket (PB).

In the past PB was free to all. Sadly, the free ride has ended. Because I knew that we were saving money by using their image hosting service I donated Barthmobile resources to their cause. Much like we have supporting members helping us pay our bills here I decided on a $39.95 yearly donation.

During the run up to the 4th of July weekend of this year PB decided to break every one of their customers image links on everyone's sites . If you research the various articles posted all over the internet you'll see that no one was immune. 100% of their customer base lost their ability to see images on any place that was trying to view a PB based image.

We have two PB accounts. I opted to pay their fees for one of our accounts. The second account has all of the same images as what we have in our primary account. It took me almost a week to merge all of our images into the primary paid account.

In the following image I'll describe how to access any photos that my populate with this warning.



This is the direct link to that photo.

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg28/barth_photos/rps%20barth/rpsbarth4-1.jpg

The image really looks like this.



This is the direct link to that photo.

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv240/barth_upload/rps%20barth/rpsbarth4-1.jpg

If you happen to run across a post that you can not view, then based upon the above code string, replacing the...
i244 with the i687 and the
gg28 with vv240 and the
barth_photos with barth_upload
would fix that. That change will fix most images on our site.

Bad

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg28/barth_photos/rps%20barth/rpsbarth4-1.jpg

Good

http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv240/barth_upload/rps%20barth/rpsbarth4-1.jpg

For anyone having a problem understanding this post and what is going on then feel free to ask away and we'll try to help. I know something like this might seem like a tall task but short of me scouring every single post on this site the image links will be repaired one at a time as needed based on feedback.

My only issues would be someone trying to fix a link and then booger the link until to the point that we can't figure out how to repair it.

So, if you attempt to repair an old image link in your post, if after the first attempt you fail then notify us by replying to this post with a "HELP - please fix image links" or something like that and insert the link to the bad post in this post.

Hopefully it'll be as painless as possible - one can hope right?

Thanks Bill NY.

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I also want to add to your information above. If a seasoned Barth member has been granted the privilege to e edit their post, you can also help. If there are emotions in your older posts, that have the broken Photobucket emotions links, you can click the eraser and then click post and the emotions will populate properly. It is a simple task that seasoned members can do without changing anything.

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I noticed the emotions come back correctly Bill after corrected several of the emotions on his Photobucket account.

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One other question, for Bill: Will the emotions become animated again at some point?

Check this page of my posts and you can see some emotions were updated and some post have the old emotions.

"Emotions"
Or
Emoticons?

Same thing?? Call them as you choose.