Certainly an option.  But I would prefervto find a decent forum host

What kind of deal does H.A.M.B. have?!
Easy to post pictures and its free (to the users anyway!)
I'm not very cumpooter savvy but someone who is could look into  H.A.M.B.'s deal and copy it.
Maybe it just ain't dat simple?!!
6sal6

I think a new forum hosting company is the best option. What archives do we need to keep if there are no longer related pictures?   My thought are that boardhost has deemed itself pretty useless by removing all the previously hosted pictures.

The forum in its earlier version (pre April 2013) had over a million posts between then and inception in 1999.  Since 2013, it has struggled to reach 100,000 posts.

MS wrote:

I  My thought are that boardhost has deemed itself pretty useless by removing all the previously hosted pictures.

The forum in its earlier version (pre April 2013) had over a million posts between then and inception in 1999.  Since 2013, it has struggled to reach 100,000 posts.

 
Boardhost has never hosted pix. They always outsource pic hosting, first with imageshack then with tinypic. It was those two services that left boardhost, not the other way around.

Forums are dying. People have moved to Facebook YouTube and tictoc . I prefer forums but the masses love Facebook and YouTube. There once was more then half a dozen active Mustang forums but now I know of 3, this one, Ford muscle and VMF. My fear is that if you move this forum you will loose new members. If I do a google search for something Mustang related, threads from this forum come up but if we abandon what we have we loose those links. I have been doing a ton of research on this regarding traffic to my own website. And have had to reinvent DazeCars to maintain traffic. In my opinion a move will do more harm then good.

josh-kebob wrote:

What hosting site was used before we went to boardhost? I thought everything migrated to boardhost when the forum changed....i could be mistaken.

 
The forum has always been boardhost. The original forum was their old format and this was their improved format.

Rudi wrote:

We all know what happens when a service/company says “new and improved”
As for Facebook I don’t want any part of it.

 
I really don’t think the upgrade was a bad thing. I think the decline was just getting started and even if we had stayed with the old format we would still be in the same place numbers wise with less features an outdated layout, and we would just have a bigger pic free archive. As to Facebook I am NOT suggesting we go there. I much prefer forums to Facebook. Sad fact is however that is where all the people are. I am a member of 3 different classic Mustang pages and they all have 20,000 members or more.

H.A.M.B. is nice, but those sites are expensive. Ryan runs several blog/forums and makes a good amount off advertisers. About a year ago I took over the NLOC(National Lightning Owners Club) and it is faced with the same issues as this forum. Forums are getting cannibalized by social media, that's not to say social media is better in my opinion it's worse. I swear if I see another PFA (Pic for attention) or "please delete if not allowed" I am going to lose my mind! Anyway not much useful info, just a rant... I don't know this forum's stats (# of visitors, bandwidth usage, etc), but vBulletin offers a cloud based platform for not too bad. Just a thought. 

Last edited by Raymond_B (6/13/2021 12:33 AM)

Pictures would be great, The best thing about this site is its clean and a great group of people.Would hate to loose it.

But WHAT HAPPENED to the pic posting function that used be here?  Tiny Pic, I think it was?

Yes, it was clunky and did not work well, but more often than not you were able to attach a pic to your post. Seemingly overnight the button that allows you to attach a pic to your post completely disappeared with no warning or explanation. Where did it go?

I am not on FB and would prefer not to be. I think the best option would be to migrate the forum to another software/web hosting platform. I am on a couple other car forums that use different software and posting pics has never been an issue in 20 years.  On one of those forums, advertising  covers the costs.  Another has no advertisers and the cost is completely covered by voluntary member contributions.  Total annual cost is apx $1,500/yr.  Each members generally kick in between $25 -$200/yr depending on what they can afford and how much they use the forum.

The other option, as Daze notes, is to use a pic hosting platform and then link your pics here. I used to that here early on with Photobucket until they tried to ransom my photos. I haven't used them since.  There are lots of other pic hosting sites, such as Shutterfly, Vimeo, Imgur (there's probably more that I've missed), that probably still have some free plans too.

My only complaint with using a pic hosting platform is it is a PITA to use. I use my phone to take all of my pics.  So, if I want to post a pic here, I would need to upload the pic from my phone to the pic hosting platform and then copy and paste links into my threads here.  All of that takes time, especially if you have a lot of pics and do almost all of your posting from your phone, like I do. It is much easier and faster to simply hit a button on the forum itself that says "Attach pic" and be done.

Last edited by Chaplin (6/13/2021 8:03 AM)

In the past, the pic hosting site was Photobucket until they went for a money grab and held your pics hostage in the forum unless you paid. I’ve changed my pictures a couple of times when the host sites changed or went away and it’s a bit of work each time.

Now I use Flickr to host pictures. It’s been free so far as long I stay under a certain storage amount. It is clunky to upload to hosting site, then link to forum. When I do this from a phone, I wind up with a link, not a picture. I can correct it from a PC.

Simple machines operates one of the other sites I frequent. I like the format and it does have a pic feature, but I’ve never figured out how to get them to be a decent size. Always had to click them to see a full picture.

I would be willing to make a yearly donation to add a pic hosting feature.

I love the ad free site we have here. I quit visiting other sites when the ads started because they were dominating the screen and shifting the text around that I was trying to read….. not worth the effort.

When I started this thread, it was in response to half a dozen different people asking me how I post pics after the forum lost tinypic. When I made the post I was thinking imageshack would be a good way to get pictures back for the group, and did not expect it to become a thread about moving the forum and the evils of Facebook.   We have something special here and I hate to see it shrinking.  I have made a lot of friends in this group and hope watever ends up happening that the forum continues to be active and a fantastic source to talk about these cars we love so much.

I'm not a fan of "social meda", as i believe it is a big contributor to the troubles we have in our society today.  So, I would really, really.....really, prefer not to have to get involved with FB just to be a part of this fine group. 
I'm willing to contribute or take a separate subscription to a photo service if that's what it takes.
As for saving the content, is is possible that we could take sections of the collected info andsave it through screen shots or copy-paste to Word type files then paste it into whatever forum format we end up with.  I'll volunteer right now to take a section and start saving it.

BB1




 

Last edited by Bullet Bob (6/13/2021 6:58 PM)

Bolted to Floor wrote:

In the past, the pic hosting site was Photobucket until they went for a money grab and held your pics hostage in the forum unless you paid. I’ve changed my pictures a couple of times when the host sites changed or went away and it’s a bit of work each time.

Now I use Flickr to host pictures. It’s been free so far as long I stay under a certain storage amount. It is clunky to upload to hosting site, then link to forum. When I do this from a phone, I wind up with a link, not a picture. I can correct it from a PC.

Oh thats right it was photobucket before it was tiny pic.  I was thinking it was imageshack.  The down side to any free site is at any time the free site can become a pay site and then you have to start over and all the old pix are gone.