It would have been nice to get some kind of advanced warning, but it is what it is. Since I already pay for my own hosting—which is much cheaper than Photobucket's new option—I'm moving all my images there and updating the links. To be honest I should have done this a long time ago, but I can be lazy at times. It gives me a chance to clean up and reorganize them, so it's actually a good thing.
So they should all be fixed soon. Clearly a few lessons to be learned from this.
- Always have backups of important content on a local device
- Don't depend entirely on free cloud-based services
- Don't turn something off abruptly without giving your customers advanced warning; they will be much more receptive to changes
There's a good article about this on Fstoppers. I suggest you take stock of the web services you use, especially ones that provide you with income. If they suddenly went away, do you have an alternative? Do you have all that content backed up?
