I've posted this on my business blog & Elle has given me permission to share on her blog too because the image crash is affecting hers and countless others.
So, as you may have noticed, you're seeing the message 'Please Update Your Account To Enable 3rd Party Hosting' on most of my images. This is because the site I've been using for various projects since 2003 suddenly decided to become a 'paid' site. Photobucket.com has hosted images for free for many years with ad revenue being generated on their site. Suddenly the beginning of July they cut off all of their 'non-paid members' (which is pretty much everyone) from hosting their images, leaving users who post images of their goods on Amazon, Ebay, blogs etcetera, to have no image-hosting. As you can imagine, users are livid. For weeks I could barely get into the site to even see what images I have there, but today I finally got access and began downloading and deleting my stored photos. What's the big deal you might think? Anyone who is using a hosting site has content seen by users and you want to appear professional online. This situation obviously does not give that appearance.
I've given this topic too much of my time already, but I wanted to make my readers aware the reason my images are messed up. If you'd like to read more, there are plenty of current articles on the web, including some recommendations of other sites to switch to. (See Below)
Musings Of An Average Mom: Photobucket Crash
The Verge: Photobucket Accused Of Blackmail After Quietly Requiring Users To Pay $400 A Year To Hotlink
So as soon as I find the time and a different image host site I will get to work on replacing the lost images.
Thanks for your understanding,
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