A few weeks ago I ran into problems with my main browser displaying embedded Photobucket images on pages like this one. I mostly use Opera 12.17, which is an old, no longer developed version of the Opera that power users found attractive. Long sad story, but the current Opera is a really a totally different "simple" browser based on the Chrome engine.


In troubleshooting, I found some disturbing (to me) information about the way PB is displaying embedded images:

An embedded PB image on a page like this one contains an img tag pointing to a PB site like this: "i##.photobucket.com/...albumpaths.../my_picture.jpg", which your browser then requests from PB.

But they don't actually return the image. Instead your browser is redirected to "s##.photobucket.com/...albumpaths.../my_picture.jpg", which it then requests.

But they still don't return the image. Instead your browser is redirected to an html page.

When your browser requests that page, it then gets the html page and runs some scripts that actually retrieve the image. This is where Opera 12.17 was having problems, which I was able to resolve by figuring out how to have Opera get PB to just give it the image in the first place instead of all the redirecting and scripting.



Now you might be thinking at this point, if PB can just serve up the image directly, why all the redirecting and scripting?

My guess is that it's probably so that they can also run ten different marketing scripts (for those who don't block such things). For every user, for every embedded image on every page.


Anyway, I'm looking for somewhere else to host my pictures. Recommendations?

Asked the same question a few months ago - imgur was the answer.
And that was the end of my problems with image hosting sites.
 
Well, if not for the fact that Photobucket has been spamming me ever since they've upgraded to "unusable"...

 
:P

Rain
Asked the same question a few months ago - imgur was the answer.
And that was the end of my problems with image hosting sites.
 

Thanks, I'll take a look.
 
Of course it will have to involve my spending time making sure that this and any other options have nothing convoluted going on under the hood. 

Rain

 
:P

 
Well, it works except for the broken "." key, not to mention all that other stuff. 

imgur is by far and away the best image hosting site I've ever used, and I've used a few. I never liked Photobucket. I like the imgur interface very much, the way you can just click on various options to copy the relevant pasting code to the clipboard. And you can just drag images onto it to upload them. 
 
There are a few browser extensions you can use to add imgur functionality to your right click menu. This is useful for when you want to insert an image that's online but you don't want to point to the original image (maybe because you're not confident that the original will always be online).  I use "imgur Extension by Metronomik" for Chrome. When I want to rehost an image that's already online, I simply right click on it and select "rehost image" in my right click menu. It automatically uploads it to imgur and redirects to the new image location so that you can get its URL from your address bar. Very quick and convenient. 

I like http://postimg.org/
 
 

 
 
Photobucket used to be quite a neat application, and the editing software for uploaded images was quite sophisticated. Sadly, over the years it seems to have been dumbed down to cater for the 'selfie' crowd.
 
I signed up to Imgur a while back, but never really gave it a chance. Judging by what others have said here, I'll give it a proper try out.
 
Just one thing, does anyone know if it's possible to change that awful black background on the Imgur interface? It makes it really quite difficult on my eyes (I'm one of those people who finds it much easier to read dark text on light backgrounds).

I don't know about changing the imgur background, but I do know there's no need to open an account to use it. Unless of course you're looking for a place to store your photos, comment on other people's etc. 

sharke
I don't know about changing the imgur background, but I do know there's no need to open an account to use it. Unless of course you're looking for a place to store your photos, comment on other people's etc. 

Not for storing them per se, just somewhere to upload them and then get a link to be able to embed/include them elsewhere... mostly here.