Photoclubalpha

Has anyone else seen what they have done to Flickr?

I hate what they have done, and it angers me that, as far as I know, there was no consultation, or warning that this eyesore was coming. There is also no option to revert to the previous layout. On the Flickr blog, there are (currently) over 1700 comments about the changes, the majority of which are negative.

I have just posted my final image (# 4,792), and will be looking for a new image hosting site, one that doesn't treat paying customers like doggie-doo.

Fortunately, my Pro account expires in a month, so I won't lose out by quitting.

It is easy to create your own photo website so that could be an option for you. That is what I do:

http://www.bakubo.com

I'm not crazy about the changes either. My biggest complaint is that the previews on my home page are too big. I don't have to click on anything to see it larger, and anybody subscribed to me doesn't have to either--this means I'm not getting the same useful page-view metric to see how attention-getting my latest compositions are. People might be stopping to look at my images closer, but I'll never know.

My next complaint is that the individual photo pages have lost a lot of useful formatting in favor of this Tumblr-esque nonsense. I used to be able to see an image, its camera data, tags, and comments, all without having to scroll. I moderate Sony's official group there, and part of that responsibility is making sure only images from Sony cameras are accepted into the pool. The new formatting multiplies the work involved when grinding through a pile of submissions all opened in individual tabs; click on tab, move mouse, scroll down to see image data, move mouse back up to navigation bar, close tab, click on next tab... (it used to be just the "click, click, click" of closing tabs).

Interesting that you mention Tumblr, they have just been bought by Yahoo, who, surprise, surprise, also own Flickr.

Does anyone know if Flickr has appointed any ex Sony management recently....?

Disaster ! +1 to KB's complaints and it also seems very buggy to me. IE8 will not load the Photostream at all. Firefox can not make the 'share' buttons work. I thought this worked on Safari, but it suddenly stopped. Avatars are not always showing next to comments. You can't get to the bottom of pages as it keeps auto-scrolling. Etc -aaargh! Someone should be getting a proper chewing out for this.

I can't share pictures here at the moment because of these problems. I hope Flickr sort themselves out quickly.

Well some of the 'features' seem to be working and I've managed to post some pictures across to here. However the whole thing is just grinding to a halt this evening. Oh dear.

Years ago I had a pbase gallery and then they made some sort of change I didn't like (don't recall) so I changed to another one and used it for a couple of years. After awhile I decided to just make my own because it gave me more flexibility. Also, I had spent a lot of time on pbase uploading photos and adding captions and then when I changed to the other site I had to do it all again. I have maintained my own website (easy and not expensive) since 2006 and I keep a mirror copy of it on my local computer so at anytime I can change hosts and just upload it to the new host without having to redo everything. I have been using the same host since 2006 with zero problems so I haven't felt the need to change.

LR, JAlbum, etc. allow you to create photo galleries with lots of options that you can upload to your website. No biggie. You can free yourself from being tied to some big corporation. Their goal is to make money, not be your buddy and do you a big favor. Also, Flickr and others usually seem to be pretty darn slow. To be honest, I usually give up looking at them after a couple of photos. At least from what I have seen accessing my photo galleries in many parts of the world and various times of day they seem to almost always be faster to load than those big name photo websites.

http://www.bakubo.com

Oh, I forgot to mention that before pbase I had a website with photo gallery on geocities. I created that website in 1997. It was a lot of trouble though because I had to code each html page myself and everytime I added a photo I had to add html code for that photo. Even though that website is long gone I did keep the html and photos for it. Most of it is just on my backup disks, but I have a few pages of it on my website. Here are a couple of the pages:

http://www.bakubo.com/Irian%20Jaya/irian-jaya1.htm

http://www.bakubo.com/Irian%20Jaya/biak.htm

Interesting....

I cancelled my Pro account today, so that they didn't try to take the 100% increased renewal fee next month. All of a sudden, I cannot get into Flickr.

Very suspicious.

I suppose for me it still works, I'm mainly putting up photos of local community events and now it is even better because there is no image limit (at least not the 200 limit). I had no intention of paying for something I had little control over so have the free account but I was over the 200 limit this year and could not be bothered creating groups to get around the issue.
I was considering doing a site myself since I have a domain with hosting but what to choose - WP, LR, hardcoded, CMS, my own scripts? And as for the adds I don't see those because I have used either proxies or add filters since these started getting too invasive many years ago.

So at the moment I will keep using Flickr.

Harvey

I'm a bit happier with Flickr today - a lot of the bugs are fixed. Not sure about the overall changes though.

Well, I can't get in, using both IE10 & Chrome.

Strange that it happens after I switch to the free account.

I'll probably get chased by hordes of angry photographers with torches and pitchforks for this, but I rather like the changes they made the website and the app. Although I admit the new app does have it's quirks, I like the way they are going.

I found the old website to be outdated in look and feel with controls not of this era, scattered around the place and not logically grouped. This was the main reason I left PBase. It was static without a logical, intuïtieve user interface, just like the old Flickr. Now, I see a nice tiled view of my own photostream and those of contacts, have a logically placed menu style that groups functions in stead of spreading them around like there is no tomorrow.

The app needs some work though. The interface isn't that great to work with on a smartphone, but the additions in options (especially managing your groups) is welcome. Haven't tried it on a tablet yet though. A good first release though and major upgrade from version 1.0!

I find the update on a whole pretty good. Looking forward to further developments!

Mark

What I am contemplating is downgrading to a free account, as a Pro account doesn't have that much benifits anymore. How do you guys feel about that?

Mark

Why should you downgrade when you have already paid for that "Pro" account?
In my case I paid for 2 years, so I still have a long time before considering Henry's suggestion (which I'll probably do).