Hi Folks, I have a weird question about image hosting and the pics I've posted in the forums, and what happens to them in cyberspace.  All the images I've attached to my posts have been hosted by my old eBay auction listing service, Channel Advisor (CA).  I happily and successfully used CA for 7 years and had all my pics stored there, and when I wanted to put pics here on a posting, I used a link from my CA image archive.  No problem.  Well CA shut down their operations the other day for good (I had plenty of warning and saved everything off there I needed, although it was a HASSLE!). 

Anyhow, I sort of expected that when the CA services shut down, that the images I had in my posts on these forums would disappear (since they were posted with urls from CA image archives), but they're still here.  So I'm curious as to what happens when we post something and put the image link in it here on the forum.  Does the forum make a copy of that image from the image hoster and then the image stays with the post on the forum in the archives?  Are my images still in my postings just because CA hasn't yet shut the image archives down on their end?   I'm not too worried about the images disappearing from my old posts (I'll start new ones!), but I'm curious as to how the systems work on the BB forum end.

 Also, I currently am using Auctiva to run my ads and host my pics.  I'd like to create a photo archive SOMEWHERE in cyberspace that I could use as a kind of gallery of the 4,000+ images I have of all the work I've done over the past 8 years (organized in folders by stone type, etc).  I thought it would be nice if I could use Picasa, Flickr, or Photobucket to store and share those images, AND also use a url link from those sites when posting here on the forum.  I don't quite trust Auctiva's FREE auction service to be around forever hosting my images either.  Problem is, yesterday when I experimented with those services and tried to attach images to a posting here, NONE of those service's url's were working to post pics here on the forums! 

 I''ve certainly posted a fair number of images here so I feel like I do pretty much know what I'm doing, but not sure why links from NONE of those services are working here.  I tried leaving the html prefixes and suffixes in AND taking them out (the < & such characters before the http), neither worked.   But my main question is whether the pics from my old hosting service, CA, will eventually disappear from my posts here.

 Thanks much folks!  I really appreciate this forum!   I work alone in my studio 99% of the time with only my greyhound McGuire for company, so it's nice to have an online community of bead and jewelry artists to turn to. 
 

Hello DVHdesigns, Thank you so much for being part of the fourm! The reason the old images are still appearing is probably because they are cached on your browser. New visitors to the site or users who clear their cache will most likely see the old images as broken links. To answer the second question: Yes it is possible to use photo bucket to host images and post them in the forums. When placing them in a forum post the user must either use the "direct link" code from photo bucket inside the "Post Image" icon tool from the edit bar at the top of the post or the "Image Link" from photo bucket directly inside the text of the post without using the "Post Image" icon. Hope this helps! -Tea Benduhn, associate editor Bead&Button magazine

P.S. I forgot to mention that you're correct about the images still appearing because CA hasn’t yet shut off their server. The images are still resolving from the old site. Once that server is turned off --- then your images will no longer appear.