Alright... I am safe thru 2018. That is... I already pay Photobucket a few bucks to banish advertising from my screen, and I suppose that's what they call a Plus Account.
All I have to do is renew the Plus thing, which is a dollar or two per month. To the end of 2018.
So.... $40.00 a month! There is a name for that: Blackmail.
As for having a website instead of a home server.... I have a website on GoDaddy. Their do-it-yourself software is horribly buggy, but I have a website.
But I seem to remember running up against a limit on photo storage space there. Of course, that's probably only a matter of only a few more bucks. Or a less goofy hoster.
But $40.- a month?! Some folks will pay it, because it is little money to them, and they don't have endless amounts of time to re-do everything.
I live on $1,294.20 a month. Grand total net income. And I am grateful to President Roosevelt that I have this, after my complete-financial-wipeout-years-of-illness. $40.00 to Photobucket ain't happenin', Bucko.
Also, there is the matter of convincing the Admin of various forums to let me in so I can change all the links. And those Admins will be swamped with such requests.
And the hours and hours and hours of work it would take me to.... Frankly... that's where it will stop for me. That is... I won't even begin.
If The Millicent Chronicles is to be available to future bus-converters past 2018, it will have to be thru a book printed on paper.
My crystal ball says... an entire new industry will spring up to solve this -- for hecka less than $40 a month.
And yes, Photobucket is surely dead. In fact, they have been half dead a long time, with their frequent and large outages. They have gone dark for a much a two or three days straight. This $40 a month is a "Hail Mary pass" at an epic level of desperation.
Guess number 1: Somebody will buy them any day now, relieving the Photobucket brass of the whole mess, which I bet said Hail-Mary-throwing brass will welcome with tears and hallelujahs.
