Monday, November 12, 2018

Uncertainty...

It seems every few years, it gets more and more difficult to keep blogging. Flickr just announced that "Free accounts will soon be limited to 1000 photos". I'm already at 1,457, and I've barely been using them for a few years (2016). I thought I had finally found a permanent photo sharing solution, the company just recently changed hands, and now this. What am I supposed to do? Start looking AGAIN for another free service? I've already gone through Photobucket, which no longer allows third-party hosting, Google Photos, then Picasa, and then Flickr. It's annoying because now all my photos are linked in different places, and it's just a huge hassle. My blog is entirely free with no ads. I make absolutely ZERO money keeping this running. I only blog because I enjoy it, and as a personal record of my efforts on the house.

What's worse is that there won't be anything grandfathered-in. According to their email update:

*Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr will no longer be able to upload new content after Tuesday, January 8, 2019 unless they upgrade to Pro. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit. Members may always choose to download content over the limit at any time prior to these dates.


Yes you read that correctly. CONTENT WILL BE DELETED unless you PAY.

This will mean downloading, re-saving, and re-linking 458 photos, as well as re-editing all their associated posts, which will be a MASSIVE amount of work.

Also FYI: Pro is 50$ USD/year, or 5.99$ USD per month. This adds up to around 68$ CAD per year plus or minus any conversion fees that might get tacked on. It's auto-renewing and non-refundable.

If anyone has suggestions I'm open to hearing them.

4 comments:

  1. That is supremely frustrating. I enjoy your posts and hope you find a way to continue it.

    My blogging attempts have been few and short-lived, but I continue to keep all my project photos backed up on Google Photos, which still maintains free storage at a reduced (but quite satisfactory) resolution. Apparently they must still see data mining value in them.

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  2. I am confused.

    I love your blog, and love and admire your work.

    It never occurred to me that your site was costing you $0.

    Perhaps I did not understand, but keeping all your images will cost you but $5.99 a month (US)? And with no future headache? I know you are far from rich, but is $5.99 a month really a struggle?

    Also, I do not understand why all your images are being hosted by something OTHER than your blog host? On my blog, all my zillion images are hosted by my blog provider.

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  3. Free will always have limitations and strings attached, and is not a good option for long term anything.
    You may want to consider shifting your site over to a fully hosted option. Blogger is extremely limiting, and for as little as $2.95 US a month (current deal with BlueHost). You can have your own url, more space than you would ever need to host images, and endless flexibility in how you design your site. Yes it costs some money, but consider it an investment in yourself.

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    1. I forgot to mention that you can import your entire history of Blogger into Wordpress (other than the images) which can be helpful.

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