Photobucket.
So when I first started posting graphics and artwork on the internet, I was pointed to Photobucket.com for image hosting. This was probably in 2005, back when I really wanted to show the world my amazing graphic design skills. Sure, I only had MS Paint, but I knew how to use Google for my backgrounds, get transparent renders, and use cooltext.com so I didn't have to use the MS Paint text tool. I was REALLY GOOD, you guys. I was too good to jpg my shit, saving it all as bmp.
...Anyway, that was me 12 years ago now, but the point is that I used that site for ALL of that stuff. I could organise into albums and sub albums and sub-sub albums... so I uploaded everything I ever posted, including image rehosting for single forum posts, because replying on someone else meant my post could one day be unreadable due to someone that wasn't me deleting the image I embedded. I never deleted anything from those accounts. Here's an example of some of my SUPER GOOD teenage graphic design, by the way:
I thought these were amazing, with only MS Paint. Even Kotetsu may not have known me long enough to remember this.
I didn't use Photobucket forever, eventually trying out imageshack because photobucket images were blocked on my school's filter, then tinypic, which I used until I learned they cycle out images without telling you which leads to old forum posts with irrelevant images on them, then I found my image host soulmate, majhost, which I used loyally until the service suddenly stopped working a couple years ago and all my backups were lost. That got me pretty fucking salty.
I even went on their still-up sister host, brickshelf, logged into my account [majhost shared accounts with brickshelf] and uploaded an image where I was screaming for them to put majhost back up. Since it wasn't a lego picture it was removed, which means they saw it, so I reuploaded it. Last time I looked at it, it was still up, but majhost never came back.
Eventually I found imgur and postimage.org [which is now postimage.io, but I use the url old.postimg.org which works just like a simpler [a good thing] Photobucket. I don't use it as much as imgur only because it's a good place to put throwaway images, but if I want to store it for the long term, I prefer postimage. I've moved away from imgur so much because they started to get angry about people using it for websites/blogs/forums, or anything that isn't Reddit, basically. Imgur itself is trying to become some weird social media thing, which would be fine if they let people use the damn site how they please.
I mention Imgur's attitude because it's going to become relevant in .2 seconds.
Photobucket now forbids "third-party hosting" of its images under all account types except the most expensive paid option.
What does it define as "third-party hosting"? Well, Photobucket's official twitter links to their FAQ, and in the FAQ we see plenty of relevant entries to this topic:
My account has been restricted due to 3rd party hosting. Are my photos safe? What is 3rd party hosting? What subscription do I need for 3rd party hosting? How much does Plus 500 subscription cost? [for the record, this doesn't answer the question, but the image below does]
That's right, $400 a year, only billed annually, so Photobucket is basically charging its loyal fans and users 400 dollars suddenly, right off the bat, without telling any of them beforehand. Real nice of them
This is after years of me personally hating the site because they turned it into a slow, abusive mess. It used to be simple like postimage is NOW, but slowly they made the uploader slower and buggier, their ads became worse and worse, then when I finally installed adblock they went and added one of those horrifically annoying to bypass anti-adblock overlays that disables proper use of the site. So... they have basically done everything wrong if they want to keep a userbase and therefore money.
Oh, and by the way, to answer a couple of those other questions, which are important answers to mention in this context:
Basically, photobucket has blocked using the site to upload pictures of your shit for posts, forum signatures, & even ebay listings to all but those that pay for the most expensive paid plan they offer.
To keep you from going too crazy, here is a picture of Wish that was uploaded to Photobucket in 2005 that I recovered after screaming at their anti-adblock overlay: She's only 3 months old here. On another account, I have a picture of her on the same rug in almost the same position, but taken years later in another state: So thank you for at least not deleting them I guess?
Not that I didn't already have these backed up elsewhere [I think], but it's a big pain in the ass to dig out the external hdd especially since it's getting old and I need a new one really bad.
Anyway, I said I was going to post more old shit, so here, have a few more old graphics I made right after getting Photoshop.
Unlike Paint, this was a totally new experience and it was surprisingly hard. But my improvements over time were very quick.
And the best part, the part I wanted to upload the most, old art! Some of it was originally uploaded both on Photobucket for forum posting, and deviantArt. I've since removed a lot of art from my first dA account so nobody could claim I was stealing it from myself if I ever wanted to upload it again, so here we are, thanking past me. I can't even get into that account any more, I forgot the password, don't have access to the email I signed up with [a huge problem with me across a lot of accounts because I used to use my MysticWish.net email for EVERYTHING... and neglected my yahoo/hotmail emails so now that MW expired I don't have that email and because I used nothing but that email, all my others were deactivated except for my ancient gmail from 2005, which is the email I use now]
So for anyone this is relevant to, my image hosting needs are fulfilled by imgur and postimage. I wouldn't use Tumblr because every so often, a bunch of image urls break all at once. Like maybe once a year or something. I think there's a way to fix that by changing the number in the url or something, but I don't know the exact method... Postimage however gives you thumbnail codes all one row or in a column. I think we know the clear winner here, even before Photobucket changed their TOS.
I'll probably post more of this art under a comm lock later. Not a lot of digital art because I hated linearting until I got comfy with it, which took a while because I never did it lol I should redraw some of this one day