Webshots - where have all my pictures gone?

[bikehikeskifish]

Has anyone noticed holes in any of their albums? I noticed one or two missing photos several months ago, but now it seems worse. Take this trip to Madison, for example:

http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/562468011Iiokqm

There are many blanks in the album, the thumbnails and the slideshow.

Note that free accounts do not qualify for real support, only FAQ browsing. There is a clause in there stating they reserve the right to delete photos for accounts inactive for longer than 6 months. Perhaps they mean albums? My account has certainly not been inactive for more than 6 months. They can also take them down for copyright infringements or if they are pornographic (maybe they are hiking porn?)

I'd love to know why... I have a pile of web pages that link to these photos (many of them as TRs here).

Tim

 

[DSettahr]

I don't have an answer to your question, but I highly recommend using google's Picasa for editing and hosting images. I've never had any problems with either the software or the hosting service... so perhaps by switching to a new service you could find a solution to your issue...

 

[bikehikeskifish]

I don't have an answer to your question, but I highly recommend using google's Picasa for editing and hosting images. I've never had any problems with either the software or the hosting service... so perhaps by switching to a new service you could find a solution to your issue...

Switching would be painful. I've got a lot of embedded links, so I'm not interested in doing that...

Tim

 

[ColdRiverRun]

I don't have an answer to your question, but I highly recommend using google's Picasa for editing and hosting images. I've never had any problems with either the software or the hosting service... so perhaps by switching to a new service you could find a solution to your issue...

Switching would be painful. I've got a lot of embedded links, so I'm not interested in doing that...

Tim

I really recommend that switch too. Just start using it now and stop using Web Shots. The free tools and viewers they have are no comparison IMO. You can link things like old reports later on..but I've haven't had any problems with old links to photos anyway.

 

[Quietman]

For what it's worth, I have pics on webshots from 2003 that haven't been editted since then and they are still there. And you are no where near the 9,100 photo limit.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

I found some links to blogs indicating they are transferring things between servers. Of course there are lots of replies saying "so that is the latest excuse." I am not a fan of their ads, and I already have 17 media players and 29 different photo tools on my computer

Maybe I will experiment with Picasa for a bit. I'm not psyched about the embedded links. Really, I'm not. Have I said I don't want to change the embedded links?

UPDATE: the missing photos are all at least two years old, early March 2008 (beginning with the lunar eclipse in fact.)

Tim

 

[Fitz]

Missing Photos

I have also identified a few missing photos within the last few weeks. No idea why. I am a frequent user.

The recent pop-ups and other annoyances are getting to me. I hate to move, but now may be the time.

 

[DSettahr]

Google Picasa gives you 1 gig (1024 megabytes) of free storage space for your photos. Even more incentive.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

First of all, I'm MAD at you DSettahr because I had no intention of converting. Meanwhile I've spent 2 hours installing and playing with Picasa tonight and it is cool - and I haven't uploaded anything yet either.

Second, after review, it appears that all my embedded links still work, so perhaps those things are still being accessed and haven't been killed off as a result.

SO... maybe I will start a transition. I kept a nice blog of my any and winter rounds of the 48 plus the odd NE67/NEHH and I'm not relishing editing all those trip reports.

I am leery of Google getting a hold of all my photos since they have become rather Borg-like.

Tim

 

[Mark Schaefer]

Has anyone noticed holes in any of their albums? I noticed one or two missing photos several months ago, but now it seems worse. ...

I'd love to know why... I have a pile of web pages that link to these photos (many of them as TRs here).

Webshots has a blog in which this was discussed a couple of times. You may subscribe to daily or weekly updates of this "Webshots blog" here. Generally there is not a daily blog update, so if you subscribe to it daily you will only receive the email alerts when the blog is updated.

A couple different, inconsistent and in my mind inaccurate reasons for the missing photos were given. The most recent update was given February 3, 2010 to the original notice of January 29, 2010. Do a find for "missing photos" on that webpage. Initially the explanation was that several servers had failed. Later the story changed to the "photos were being moved". While viewing other photographers' albums during the January/February time-frame I saw several warning messages on my PC that the photos on Webshots were infected with viruses. Several times I saw messages that Webshots had been identified as a dangerous website. Each time I ran full scans on my PC to ensure that that my PC had not become infected, and it never did.

My belief is that several Webshots servers had become infected with viruses last January, and that caused the missing photos in many users' albums. It has now been several months since Webshots had any visible virus problems. I do not believe that the Webshots website was ever dangerous to use provided your own PC was adequately protected. I also do not believe Webshots ever told the complete truth about what caused the photos to go missing. You can click on the comments to both of the blog entries, and you see that many Webshots users did not buy the explanations given by Webshots.

Their February 3 update stated that the "missing photos" were temporary, and they promised to update the blog when the move of "650+ million photos and videos" was finished, but there have been no more updates. I have started to re-upload my own "missing photos". I have only noticed a few dozen that went missing, and these were in older rather than recent albums. I am also going to need to update any forums hotlinks that I had to the missing photos. In general album and slideshow links should still be good.

I have had my own love / hate relationship with Webshots since I joined in 2007. It has been more love than hate, and I have decided to stay with Webshots. I have tried several other photo sharing sites (including Picasa), and overall I still judge Webshots to be among the better photo sharing sites despite the annoyances. Webshots has a nice community of competent photographers, many of whom I now frequently converse with -- much like in the hiking forums.

 

[Jay H]

I have 2 picasaweb accounts and I still have probably another 1gig of photos not on any photohosting site anymore... I used to have a pay site on picturetrail before picasa was around and I had about 3 webshots albums before I gave them up.

I never "migrated" stuff over, I would just start anew so perhaps you can just start using picasaweb and then, if time allows, slowly migrate important albums over if needed.

In fact, I have some kayaking photos I'd like to republish that are off the internet since I no longer pay for picturetrail or use my webshots account (I don't even know if they are still around!!), It is pretty easy to upload photos to Picasaweb if you download their app. Just need to import them and then right click to upload them to your online account.... now, if you use comments and stuff, I don't think there is any automated tool for that so you'd have to redo those if you want to but just migrating them to picasaweb if you have the photos already locally, isn't too hard. (if you have broadband, anyway.. )

Jay

 

[Hikes4fun]

I have noticed some missing pics...I switched to SmugMug a while ago because of WS's ads

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Webshots has been sold and the existing services will no longer work - unless you $ubscribe to the new service.

http://smile.webshots.com/landing

Tim

 

[TDawg]

And the new service looks like crap, IMO.

Although admittedly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time on it. But, first impressions were bad. Are they not sorted by album anymore like Webshots on the "Smile?"

All I'm lookin at is a long stream of pictures. Anyone else play around with this thing?

 

[roadtripper]

Maybe I'm getting old, but I hate the new movement towards text-free icons on email and picture websites. Casual users (i.e. those who do not sign in regularly but do so on occasion) struggle with figuring out what icon is what every time they go to do something. Unless Webshots makes this 10x more user friendly, I see this new move as a complete failure.

 

[Quietman]

And the new service looks like crap, IMO.

Although admittedly, I haven't spent a whole lot of time on it. But, first impressions were bad. Are they not sorted by album anymore like Webshots on the "Smile?"

All I'm lookin at is a long stream of pictures. Anyone else play around with this thing?

I'm seeing the same mess

 

[roadtripper]

FYI if anyone has been holding out on joining Facebook, it really is one of the best (and easiest) places to store, view & share photos.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

FB is still not very good at embedding photos, however, as in trip reports.

Tim

 

[roadtripper]

---

FB is still not very good at embedding photos, however, as in trip reports.

Tim

Very true, good point

 

[bikehikeskifish]

FB also strongly encourages you to use your own name, and a lot of people here are protective of that information, and so even if they are on FB, they do not want to use it for sharing photos. FB is notorious for changing things and upsetting users, so I wouldn't rely on any picture sharing working for very long. Google+ and Picasa both support sharing via embedding. I know other services do as well.

Tim