A picture perfect plan (hopefully)
Apr. 1st, 2025 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsNear the end of 2020, I wrote about which image hosting service I decided to use instead of Photobucket: "I decided on PostImages, which seems to be essentially trying to be more like old-school Photobucket (albeit without the ability to make sub-albums), and so far I'm a happy camper (knock on wood :-))"
Well, it seems I managed to stumble on a use-case where PostImages doesn't work well: Icontests (icon + contests), in which users post their icons based around a given theme, and visitors get to vote on them :-) I joined an icontest community a few years back, and for the first few years I was indeed a happy camper, until a few rounds ago, when I noticed a few of my recent icons suddenly replaced with images saying "Upgrade to Premium" after they received awards or were put up for voting :-\ I tried contacting PostImages about it and they never returned my concerns, so I was left to my own devices and contemplated the idea that how icontests are run may not be fully compatible with how PostImages runs...
When uploading images, PostImages offers code to embed the images, which also includes links back to the website (if the image is large, it links to a dedicated display page for the full-sized image; for icons it's just the main PostImages page) Terms of use says: (with italics mine) "Please keep the images embedded into third-party websites wrapped in links back to the corresponding HTML pages at our site when possible. The outgoing link should lead the user directly to our web page without any interstitial pages or interruptions. This allows your users to get access to the full-resolution images, and also helps us pay our bills." Note that they say "should" and "when possible", which keeps things pretty vague about just how strict they are about enforcing these requirements, and when I post my own pictures myself (as part of Spidersnaps, say) I faithfully follow the requirements anyway :-)
But when icontest communities put up all contributors' icons for votes (as well as present the winning icons), the icons are all presented without any backlinks, and for the first few years, there seemed to be no issue; the images just displayed properly, and I never got anything from PostImages about it, until I ran into the issues as above: More specifically, they displayed just fine when initially submitted at first, until they were re-posted without the backlinks (as part of the vote or winner announcements) and got replaced :-\ The display page no longer even showed the filename of the original icon as it normally would, and the only hint there'd ever been anything there was the download image button showed the filesize, though the image size now reflected the "Upgrade to Premium" graphic, and (HTTP nerd mode) the download request returned the 403 code for forbidden :-\
There was quite a bit of frustration going on about trying to deal with the issue, as I DM'd the moderator of the community about the issue as soon as I saw it happen with my latest submissions, asking them to wrap PostImages icons in proper backlinks going forward and asking for advice on how to deal with the current voting round, but the moderator said things looked fine on their end, and only got back to me again several days later, presumably after finally noticing the problem, noting that wrapping the icons did not work (I said "going forward", i.e. for icons after the affected icons, but whatever) And on top of that, when I re-uploaded the icons for the moderator to re-use, I later noticed they came with an expiry tag saying "Expiring in 4896 days" (which hasn't decremented as I might have expected), which made no sense to me, given that a: the furthest one can set the expiry when uploading is 31 days, and b: setting a picture to expire in 13 years just seems patently random, especially when, I repeat, it hasn't decremented whatsoever... All this without any explicit acknowledgement from PostImages, mind you :-\
Anyways, besides the terms of use, the FAQ also adds (italics mine): "disk space and bandwidth are not cheap, if you use REALLY much of either, and your usage pattern does not allow us to recover our costs (e.g. you do not publish your images embedded into links leading back to our site, thus stripping us of any potential advertising income from them), we reserve the right to contact you and discuss possible ways to satisfy your needs while allowing our project to make ends meet."
Now, I don't really think that posting icons for icontests really uses that much disk space and bandwidth (my static icons max out around 30kb, and max size allowed for icons are 60kb, which has been only an issue for me for the small amount of animated icons I've made), but the lack of clarity around the issue just feels off to me :-\ Photobucket has been very persistent on trying to get me to pay for their (formerly free) services, and yet PostImages has said nothing about why my latest icons have been disabled (or otherwise limited) Given the above FAQ entry, you'd think they'd contact me if they were so concerned about the lack of backlinking :-\
All this to say that I've decided to get another hosting service for my icontest icons to get around the issue with having to have the moderator add the necessary backlink wrapping: Welcome to my ImgBox era :-) This one is more akin to the late TinyPic and Imgur (which apparently requires a Google or Facebook account to use) in that you don't get to keep the filename, but you can still organize your photos into albums :-) Let's see how well it goes :-)
Well, it seems I managed to stumble on a use-case where PostImages doesn't work well: Icontests (icon + contests), in which users post their icons based around a given theme, and visitors get to vote on them :-) I joined an icontest community a few years back, and for the first few years I was indeed a happy camper, until a few rounds ago, when I noticed a few of my recent icons suddenly replaced with images saying "Upgrade to Premium" after they received awards or were put up for voting :-\ I tried contacting PostImages about it and they never returned my concerns, so I was left to my own devices and contemplated the idea that how icontests are run may not be fully compatible with how PostImages runs...
When uploading images, PostImages offers code to embed the images, which also includes links back to the website (if the image is large, it links to a dedicated display page for the full-sized image; for icons it's just the main PostImages page) Terms of use says: (with italics mine) "Please keep the images embedded into third-party websites wrapped in links back to the corresponding HTML pages at our site when possible. The outgoing link should lead the user directly to our web page without any interstitial pages or interruptions. This allows your users to get access to the full-resolution images, and also helps us pay our bills." Note that they say "should" and "when possible", which keeps things pretty vague about just how strict they are about enforcing these requirements, and when I post my own pictures myself (as part of Spidersnaps, say) I faithfully follow the requirements anyway :-)
But when icontest communities put up all contributors' icons for votes (as well as present the winning icons), the icons are all presented without any backlinks, and for the first few years, there seemed to be no issue; the images just displayed properly, and I never got anything from PostImages about it, until I ran into the issues as above: More specifically, they displayed just fine when initially submitted at first, until they were re-posted without the backlinks (as part of the vote or winner announcements) and got replaced :-\ The display page no longer even showed the filename of the original icon as it normally would, and the only hint there'd ever been anything there was the download image button showed the filesize, though the image size now reflected the "Upgrade to Premium" graphic, and (HTTP nerd mode) the download request returned the 403 code for forbidden :-\
There was quite a bit of frustration going on about trying to deal with the issue, as I DM'd the moderator of the community about the issue as soon as I saw it happen with my latest submissions, asking them to wrap PostImages icons in proper backlinks going forward and asking for advice on how to deal with the current voting round, but the moderator said things looked fine on their end, and only got back to me again several days later, presumably after finally noticing the problem, noting that wrapping the icons did not work (I said "going forward", i.e. for icons after the affected icons, but whatever) And on top of that, when I re-uploaded the icons for the moderator to re-use, I later noticed they came with an expiry tag saying "Expiring in 4896 days" (which hasn't decremented as I might have expected), which made no sense to me, given that a: the furthest one can set the expiry when uploading is 31 days, and b: setting a picture to expire in 13 years just seems patently random, especially when, I repeat, it hasn't decremented whatsoever... All this without any explicit acknowledgement from PostImages, mind you :-\
Anyways, besides the terms of use, the FAQ also adds (italics mine): "disk space and bandwidth are not cheap, if you use REALLY much of either, and your usage pattern does not allow us to recover our costs (e.g. you do not publish your images embedded into links leading back to our site, thus stripping us of any potential advertising income from them), we reserve the right to contact you and discuss possible ways to satisfy your needs while allowing our project to make ends meet."
Now, I don't really think that posting icons for icontests really uses that much disk space and bandwidth (my static icons max out around 30kb, and max size allowed for icons are 60kb, which has been only an issue for me for the small amount of animated icons I've made), but the lack of clarity around the issue just feels off to me :-\ Photobucket has been very persistent on trying to get me to pay for their (formerly free) services, and yet PostImages has said nothing about why my latest icons have been disabled (or otherwise limited) Given the above FAQ entry, you'd think they'd contact me if they were so concerned about the lack of backlinking :-\
All this to say that I've decided to get another hosting service for my icontest icons to get around the issue with having to have the moderator add the necessary backlink wrapping: Welcome to my ImgBox era :-) This one is more akin to the late TinyPic and Imgur (which apparently requires a Google or Facebook account to use) in that you don't get to keep the filename, but you can still organize your photos into albums :-) Let's see how well it goes :-)
