Stop Using Imgur For Avatars/Signatures

[Libra]

Sooooo...it turns out, that image-hosting site Imgur has recently made some changes to their Terms of Service. There's currently a sticky-ed thread on ProBoards Support regarding this:

support.proboards.com/thread/573055/use-imgur-image-hosting-read

The most relevant parts to said thread, inasmuch as it should concern Pulse posters, comes from ProBoards Admin Michael Stone, who notes the following:

From Imgur's TOS:

...don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network.

As a byproduct it appears that some popular forum hosts have been blocked by Imgur, effectively breaking forums due to the missing images. While ProBoards has not yet been affected we want to make sure that this never happens to our customers.

And clarified thusly:

I wouldn't suggest using Imgur at all (for avatars, signatures, or the like). Most likely it would get your forum banned from Imgur as we don't use the same process of domain connection as other forum hosts (which is what caused the problem for them).

So, if you have an Imgur-hosted avatar or signature image, I strongly recommend either updating the host or changing it. For avatars, you'd have the option of saving the image to your device and then uploading the image directly - as long as it's no greater than 1 MB in size. (Example: The "hook" gif that I've been using - it turns out that that is an Imgur-hosted image. So, I saved it to my laptop and then re-uploaded that as my avatar picture directly.) Signatures, on the other hand, will need to be either re-hosted or changed.

Also: Single-use posted images are fine. Example: The Post Your Pics thread. Hosting your picture on Imgur and then posting it in PYP should totally be fine.

[Deleted]

I only use Imgur for tournaments and posting pictures, but not signatures or avatar. Should I be concerned or switch picture sites?

[Libra]

Feb 26, 2016 15:35:06 GMT -5 @jakelmmrs44 said:

I only use Imgur for tournaments and posting pictures, but not signatures or avatar. Should I be concerned or switch picture sites?

It's up to you if you want to start using a different host for posting those, which wouldn't be a bad idea in the event that Imgur ever decides to block Pulse entirely.

But on its own, that shouldn't be a problem - the issue is when the picture is in a place where it will be prone to load across multiple pages, which avatars and signatures will. And of course for banner/theme-related images, but that's not something non-staff can do anything about.

[Kurt]

Oh, OK, I think this is actually fine (but not ideal - I might move them to be safe; mine's hosted on my own website, so no problem there) for personal avatars and signatures - if it's not, then Imgur is essentially an image hosting service that refuses to host images. I think it's more for avatar/image libraries - say if we hosted all of our themes' images files on Imgur and a 500-image library of pre-loaded default avatars. I think we will need to address the possibility that some of our custom themes may be using images provided by Imgur, which we'd probably do well to adjust. (Naturally, it's too much to suggest that ProBoards might offer its own image hosting solution.)

[Libra]

Feb 26, 2016 15:54:22 GMT -5 Kurt said:

Oh, OK, I think this is actually fine (but not ideal - I might move them to be safe; mine's hosted on my own website, so no problem there) for personal avatars and signatures - if it's not, then Imgur is essentially an image hosting service that refuses to host images.

After re-reading the Support thread, I think it's really a case where this situation affects ProBoards in general to a greater extent than it will elsewhere. As noted above:

we don't use the same process of domain connection as other forum hosts (which is what caused the problem for them).

So it could be something like ProBoards' connection process causes greater bandwidth pull per image than will be encountered by such processes used elsewhere, and the cumulative effect has reached a mass where Imgur ultimately decided that something had to be done about it. That wouldn't necessarily mean they made this policy change because of us (only Imgur themselves would be able to say for sure), but if that greater bandwidth pull were to be the case, then certainly PB wasn't helping matters.

Think of it like PB being the red-headed stepchild in the situation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Kurt]

Ugh.

[JOJO SIWA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME]

Several of the image hosting sites that they suggested as substitutes are extremely unreliable. I used to use ImageShack but then my images started vanishing because they deemed some to be "inactive" and then TinyPic reuses URLs sometimes (I saw that others mentioned that too in the ProBoards Support topic that is linked to in the original post) and that is out of our control. Photobucket has a lot of limitations too.

I know that OhNoTheyDidnt is not allowed to use Imgur for the reasons related to so much bandwidth use.

[Libra]

Feb 27, 2016 1:51:14 GMT -5 JOJO SIWA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME said:

and then TinyPic reuses URLs sometimes (I saw that others mentioned that too in the ProBoards Support topic that is linked to in the original post) and that is out of our control.

I seem to recall there was a bit of a brouhaha here a few years back when TinyPic did a URL shuffle one day and it consequently changed everyone's TP-posted pics (mostly in the current PYP). We pretty much dropped them like a bad habit for that.

[Glove Slap]

Thanks for this, they were generally my go to for this stuff. Good to know. I'll go ahead and re-host.

[Deleted]

Any good alternatives?

[trebor]

Feb 28, 2016 10:15:18 GMT -5 @jazzysoul47 said:

Any good alternatives?

I use Photobucket and I'm super satisfied. Easy to use and very reliable.
They have only been down once for maintenance and upgrade (a couple of hours).
They'll drown you with e-mail adds, though; and sometimes the promotion pop-ups are annoying. The built-in photo editor sucks (at least for me).

[maine]

I use Flickr for my chart. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to get the actual link to a photo, but overall it has been reliable.

[Deleted]

Well this is obnoxious. The entire reason I switched to imgur was because someone yelled at me during the 2014 PMAs that I needed to get my 2000-and-late ass off Photobucket and I switched in the middle of the nomination announcements...so if you are ever looking at the 14/15 PMAs and see half the images broken that's why. I guess I'll just go back to Photobucket until I figure out a better alternative.

[Colton]

is this mandatory?

[Libra]

Feb 28, 2016 18:39:37 GMT -5 @antigonerising said:

Well this is obnoxious. The entire reason I switched to imgur was because someone yelled at me during the 2014 PMAs that I needed to get my 2000-and-late ass off Photobucket and I switched in the middle of the nomination announcements...so if you are ever looking at the 14/15 PMAs and see half the images broken that's why. I guess I'll just go back to Photobucket until I figure out a better alternative.

Well, as I noted above, single-use images like just posting them in individual threads shouldn't aggravate the problem as much as signatures/avatars will. So it should still be OK for like the PMAs and such.

Feb 28, 2016 18:41:09 GMT -5 Colton said:

is this mandatory?

Technically no (though I'm not opposed to making it so)...but, something to consider is that if Imgur ever decides to block this forum (or worse, ProBoards as a whole ), you won't be able to use Imgur-hosted images anywhere here - not for avatars, not for even just posting them in threads, nothing. That's why this is so important.