What's going on with Webshots?

“There's a "See all your stats" on my accounts now, and when I click on it, it says "Upgrade".

Instead of 10 Max free albums, I can get 50, etc, etc.....
all for $1.66/month.

Anyone else getting this?

I have 5 accounts, soon to be 6 accounts (Wyoming/Wind Rivers).”

“I got the same message, snow. it looks like they're trying to stick us with additonal fees once they get you hooked like Hotmail did. My oldest 3 albums show stats (that's part of the "free" service). They also only allow 24 photos per album for free.”

“I don't see it. My stats are listed at the top of the photo list in Myphotos. I have two accounts, the second will be full before too long.

Why pay for more albums when you can just get another account?”

“Looks like there's still the free option or you can pay money and get more space.. But at least the free option is still reasonable................. for now.”

“I've already got many more than 10 albums in each account.”

“Right, $1.66 isn't bad, but it'll be $19.95 before long. Maybe it's time to look for another site......”

“I'm with you...I want something for nothing.

But I gotta tell you, I don't see how Webshots can stay in business unless they get another revenue stream going. Yes, disk space is cheap, but they are providing a TON of "free" disk space to many many of us, with no return at all.

I'd rather pay a fair fee than have them disappear.”

“I've got about 3500 photos. ANd that doesn't include the 10 albums for the Winds trip that isn't out yet. (next week, I promise) It'll be a pain to move them AGAIN (I redid a lot of photo albums when I lost Photopoint). I'll probably pay AGAIN (like I did with Photopoint).”

“I'm using only 1% of my alloted disk space on my web site. I may have to learn how to use that for my photos. It was the reason I got it in the first place, afterall. Webshots is just so handy!”

“Pathman, I was just on that very same train (of thought.) I am in the same boat. I have 500MB each on a couple of different sites, most of that space is available, but as you said, with the Webshots software that is SO much simpler than creating custom web pages for each trip.

We should investigate setting up our own cooperative Webshots-look-alike just for us and people we know. It would cost, but at least we would know it was not going to go out of business....”

“You mean like leasing space from a webmaster who happens to run a board we all frequent?”

“I have 300 MB on mine, and already pay for it, much to the chagrin of my wife.”

“Yes, it appears Webshots is going the way of Photopoint!”

“Hey... we can get a 30% group discount for 50-99 memberships.
Isn't there at least 50 of us using webshots on thebackpacker?
That would get us down to 1.15 a month or so.”

“Path - Fritz - You may want to have a look at Thumbs Plus. It's an outstanding thumnail and image database program from 'cerious' software. It's not very expensive and I use it constantly for keeping track of my images. You should look at it, too Snow Nymph. It even lets you thumbnail images on CD, then promps you for the disc, when you try to access an offline file. It sure beats surfing through CD's

I haven't looked into the new features much, since I already use Front Page & Photo Shop, for web building, but the latest version look to have some excellent, and easy to use, features for editing and creating quick photos and galleries, for the web. Then all you need is an FTP program for uploading, and you're all set.

http://www.cerious.com/thumbsplus.shtml" target="_blank">Thumbs+”

“thanks, I'll check it out tonight.”

“I paid for one account for 2 years. I'll have to work my butt off to start transfering. Still haven't recovered from Photopoint.”

“I just got this message today from Webshots. I have 4 albums, only one with more than 24 pics in it. What the heck? Has anyone else seen this recently? Apparently its my first and last notice!



Due to the cost of web storage, on April 4, 2002, we began limiting Webshots Free members to 10 photo albums with up to 24 photos each. Webshots Unlimited members are able to create up to 50 albums with 60 images each.

As a Webshots Free user, we granted you a grace period for all of your photos and photo albums that exceeded our new limits. Unfortunately, your grace period is expiring in a few days.

In order to access all of your photo albums on Webshots, you'll need to upgrade to our premium membership, Webshots Unlimited.

If you do not upgrade your membership before March 31, 2003, you will lose access to any photos and albums above the free limit. You will still be able to access up to 24 photos in your 10 oldest albums. All other photos will be permanently deleted unless you upgrade your membership.

This is your last notice. If you upgrade to Webshots Unlimited, you'll also
get unlimited photo downloads, high-resolution downloads and more great
benefits!”

“uh,,,, Yep!”

“Weird. It sounds like they're just going to zap photos 25, 26, 27, ... from that one album.”

“remember peace is not needing to know waht is happening next! :)”

“Myself and several others have upgraded to Webshots Unlimited. I think it is a good deal. Also, Webshots has been around a long time and I doubt they will disapear like other programs have.”

“I have upgraded a while back and love it. Was tired of having too many photoalbums everywhere on the web. If you check yahoo or msn, their deal is not as good as webshots.

there is another one out there:
http://myphotowebsite.com/

I think the site is new (I designed it), but the company that is running it (cihost.com) is out there for a long time.”

“I got 61 photos in last weekends album. That scares me, because just before Photopoint disappeared, I got a few extra photos on one of the albums. I had that same eerie feeling last night that I got with Photopoint. I backed all 3 albums up when I got home tonight. I have 5,676 photos in 3 accounts right now, and some of them aren't labeled from the Photopoint loss. I will be bummed if I lose it!”

“I got the same e-mail. I decided to go on and get the 2 year deal. Having to delete albums just to add new albums was starting to suck. I hope they don't go belly up like PhotoPoint did.”

“ok, now I am concerned.”

“I think that's their standard deal Smiley. Went I got my free album, it was with the understanding that I'd be aloted only so much space, unless I coughed up some cash. Didn't they tell you the same thing?”

“Got the same email.
I went ahead and paid for a year.”

“I haven't gotten that email, but I only have 7 albums, and none of them are over the limit.”

“I had a couple of albums up before the 24 pix limit was made, those were in danger of being deleted.

Does anyone know how to combine albums? I have four TC-2 albums of 24 pixs each. I would like to put them all into one album, now that I have upgraded.”

“I had a free MSN.com photo account with three years of pix in it. The entire account disappeared one day and after sending a number of e-mails back and forth, I never found out who or how the account got deleted. I did start receiving advertisements about a month or two before the deletion, prompting me to upgrade to a paid "safe" account, but no mention that I was going to get deleted! No pix were lost forever, because I have backups of everything I post, but it was alot of time spent organizing and titling everything. BAN MSN!!!
So far, so good with Webshots. I looked at a number of photowebsites before I slapped my credit card down with Webshots, but I decided I liked their format and prices the best. BTW - the Webshots photo assistant does have a backup capability.”

“I have all my pics on CD. lost too much of my data before. Those pics are important to me, so I am not depending on webshots or my computer alone. Put them on cd's guys!!!!”

“Back to the top.
No one answered my question.”

“I think you'd have to save them to your hard drive and re-upload them to the other album. If there's an easier way (surely there is!), I don't know about it.







Webshots will kiss my bare a$$ before they'll extort money from me.”

“Answered my own question.
You can move pix from album to album. I just consolidated my pix into 7 albums. Max number of pix per album is 60, for webshots unlimited.”

“Be sure to back it up with MyPhotosAss. It's at the top, and it'll save your captions too.”

“I got the email, I'm trying to decide whether to pay or move photos to my webserver. I have backups of almost all.”

“For me, it was well worth paying the fee.”

“Whoa! New record for views in one week (they email me a bunch of stats each Friday): 13,000+ views!! Oh, wait a minute. That's minus13,000 views. Huh? The leader was my Tahoe Rim Trail album with minus 1,696 views. So I guess people are taking back having looked at my photos. At least none of my albums has a negative total yet, although a few are now in the single digits....”

“I just noticed the same thing....I lost over 5,000 views and 25 downloads.

I now have two albums with 1 view each. I just fired off an e-mail to support, I'll let ya know if i hear anything.

The only thing I can figure, is they had a crash and couldn't recover all the info...hope not.”

“Bowlderman- Geezrgirl and Aerogirl probably burned their eyes.”

“Well, at least it's not something I care too much about (the views, anyway; I DO care about the photos, of course....).”

“Ha! Not to mention Aeronymph!”

“My stats are screwed up too.

Does anyone know if WebShots will make a backup CD of all your photos for you?”

“Not sure about that...but if you are a "Premium" member you can back up all your photos to your own computer.”

“LOL, not an option at 56K dialup.”

“Ha, I have all my webshot photos backed up. there is no way I'll depend on someone else. Those pictures are priceless to me.

They normally should have everything backed up though.”

“I only have a very few photos on webshots but they seem to be intact--have you tried to look at yours again?”

“I got a response to my e-mail about the missing numbers, not bad response time actually....here is what they sent...


"Hello Steve,

Thank you for contacting Webshots Customer Support.
Our engineers are aware if the issue and are working to restore all the
original numbers. I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.


Sincerely,

Belynda"



Oh, about the backing up with a dial up...I use to do it before I went to bed, it was done by morning.”

“I have over 800 photos on WebShots. It will take a loooonnnnggggg time to backup.
I have all the photo's on my hard drive, just not organized like webshots.”