INFO Image Host Discussion

Feel free to use this thread to discuss the image hosts (ex. Imgbox, Imagebam, etc) used here at Phun. Maybe you've had a persistent problem, complaint, or even praise of a host? Or maybe you have a host to suggest? This is just a central place to discuss those issues.

Keep in mind that this doesn't mean anything will come of these discussions. This isn't part of any planned host shake-up. We just realized that while mods sometimes discuss these things behind the scenes, there's no central place for phun members to do so. If months or years down the line we decide we need to add or remove a host, we'll (the mods and admins, not me specifically) have a record of opinions and maybe how they've changed over time. Or if we get a sudden influx of people reporting the same problem, we'll know something changed with that host, etc.

Before commenting, be sure to read the existing rules on image hosts so you understand what hosts are already allowed and the policies surrounding them. And there's no need force a hurried opinion of the current hosts because, again, this isn't part of a host reorganization or anything. It's just a central place to discuss such things going forward.

 

please add a photo hosting permitted pimpandhost

 

This is not an imagehost request thread.

 

I've been reading lots of posts complaining about Imagebam. I gave up trying to access phun on tablet and phone because of the behavior they are complaining about. If you even touch an image a phun thread, and the image is hosted on Imagebam, your device virtually explodes with cascades of half a dozen browser tabs, and app store windows. Usually it never takes you to the image at all. Most of the time, the original thread at phun is gone, too, by the time you get rid of all the viral screens.

After a while, I just gave up on it. It doesn't matter much to me, because I usually are at or near my computer when I'm at home (and I really shouldn't be browsing Phun at work anyway). However, some people here only have mobile devices; no traditional computer at all. That trend seems likely to increase. Most people come here for the pictures. If they cannot see pictures because of Imagebam, they may decide it's not worthwhile to come here any more.

Apart from their obnoxious behavior on mobile, Imagebam seems like on of the better imagehosts to me. So I'm not suggesting dumping it. Deprecating it, maybe—suggesting to people that they use one of the others if they want their posts to be viewable by mobile users, maybe. Just making some observations in response to the call for discussion.

 

Yeah I've been noticing an uptick in Imagebam complaints too. I never notice myself because I tend to only view Phun on a desktop with ad and script blockers enabled, but I know what you mean. Even if you considered ad/script blocking a solution (its not for everybody) even that's not always an option on mobile because browsers are missing addon/extension ecosystems of desktop browsers.

Yep, it's especially true for young and/or poorer people. A mobile phone is almost a necessity now, so if you can only afford either a phone or a laptop, it's going to be the phone. And even for people that have several devices, some just prefer to lounge on the couch with a tablet or phone.

 

I'm glad people are finally noticing the shit with Imagebam on mobile, as I felt like the only one for months. It's only gotten worse, too, which might explain the recent uptick in complaints. However, Imagebam is just the worst of them. I'm noticing it more and more with all the hosts. It's a minefield of pop-up ads and redirects, to the point where it seems like your device has a virus, or that the hosts don't really want you to view the pics at all. I've even gotten locked out of Safari on multiple occasions by pop-ups that freeze the screen. It's fucking ridiculous.

 

I access Phun via my PC only.

Imagebam works great for my multiple posts.

Imagescream and Picturescream for single posts of different sizes.
Regrettable the thumb size of these two sites is smaller than other sites.

I wish we could have more options like a couple of years ago though.

 

Also only on Phun by pc.
Mostly using ShareNXS.
Working fine for me.

 

Bump.

If you use Phun on mobile, which hosts do you prefer? Are there (adult) hosts that other sites allow that work well for you?

 

Imagevenue and imgbox work well for me on android. No popups or redirects from imagevenue and 1 popup for imgbox.

 

We've been getting a lot of reports about Imagebam being a terrible experience on mobile. It's a popular host around here and it would be pretty hard to just remove it. We can't guarantee any solution. But we'd like to hear about any problems using it or any of our other image hosts on mobile (phone or tablet).

If you'd like to help us out and describe your experience on mobile with our image hosts, there are examples of each below (courtesy of J3scribe). Try as many as you'd like to on as many mobile browsers as you can and report as much of the following as you can:

• The host
• The browser and OS (you can just visit https://aboutmybrowser.com and include the link it gives you)
• Any problems you encounter like tabs opening unexpectedly, redirections to an app store, etc.
• Your overall opinion of the host. (ex. Was it so bad that you'd avoid viewing pics from the host again?)
• Your overall opinion of all hosts on mobile. (ex. Do problems like this with image hosts ever limit how much you use Phun? Which host is your favorite on mobile? Which is your least favorite? )

Just provide whatever you can or have time to. And, again, while most of you are desktop users, we are only looking for feedback on mobile use right now. Thanks.

Disclaimer: Because ads are sometimes nasty, be careful what you tap on when getting redirected to some of these. Don't fall for fake cleaning things, don't install anything, etc.

imagevenue


imagebam


sharenxs


imgbox


imagezilla


picturescream


imagesocket


imagescream


xtupload


dumpyourphoto


postimage

 

For example: (but note that you don't have to go into this much detail to participate; whatever info you can provide is fine)

Android Browser on Android 4.4.4 - https://aboutmybrowser.com/_b_OpqCU

Imagevenue - No problems. A single banner ad.
Imagebam - A tap on the image to zoom in seems to stall then the page reloads quickly and a tab for "Well Hello" is opened in the background. Otherwise it's not too bad and not as bad as a previous attempt on iOS.
ShareNXS - A tap on the the image to zoom in opens a tab for the same "Well Hello" ad, but also another tab in the foreground that seems to be an ad for stubhub that didn't load.
Imgbox - greeted with "continue to your image" interstitial. Opens a "punish tube" tab in the foreground. The original imgbox tab in the background also has a modal window for a cam chat that you have to close with an "x". Then there's another "punish tube" gif ad that's as big as and directly adjacent to the intended image. Pretty bad.
Imagezilla - holy shit, be careful here. If you test this one, be careful of what you tap. I encountered a lot of nastiness and never got to an image.
Picturescream - Same, never got to an image. It was the same rotation as really nasty ads as Imagezilla. I would never visit either of these again on mobile given the choice.
Imagesocket - Asked to verify age on first load but not on subsequent loads. No nasty ads. Not bad.
Imagescream - Same as Picturescream and Imagezilla. Never got to an image, same nasty ads.
xtupload.com - Works just fine. The site itself (navigation, etc) isn't designed for mobile, but tapping the image itself zooms to full width. Best so far.
dumpyourphoto - Works just fine. Tapping photo just opens up the image directly rather than some lightbox. Even less hassle than xtupload.
postimg - starts fine. The initial image is full width. Tapping image to zoom opens up the full image but also opens a prompt to "watch movies now". This appears to only happen once.

I'm a pretty heavy mobile user, but I don't usually view Phun or any adult stuff on my phone. Overall, I found the smaller less commercial hosts to be more tolerable. But I was surprised at how bad a few of the hosts were. I came into this expecting Imagebam to be the worst being that I caught it redirecting to the App Store last week. But, Imagezilla, Picturescream, and Imagescream are just as terrible as a host could possibly be on mobile.

Best: Dumpyourphoto, Imagevenue, xtupload, Imagesocket.
Worst: Imagezilla, Picturescream, Imagescream.

 

Android Browser on Android 5.0 (Chrome 42.0.2311.111)

Imagevenue - An annoying lightbox window poped up that took a couple of clicks to close. Tap to zoom okay.
Imagebam - Tap to zoom opened a popunder ad in a new tab, clicking back tried to install an app. Had to pound back a few times to get back to the thread
ShareNXS - As soon as I tried to scroll, the damn thing redirected to a new chrome tab then went to the app store. Tap to zoom opened yet another advertisement tab/page.
Imgbox - "Continue to Image" ad came up. After continuing, a new chrome tab opened without even touching the screen. Tap to zoom okay, no additional ads triggered.
Imagezilla - "You must be 18 to enter" after clicking "continue", got redirected to pornoh******. Tap to zoom doesn't work very well...
Picturescream - Redirected to a new tab, never got to the image. Closed and clicked again, got sent to the app store. Had to pound the back button like hell to get through the spam. I was never able to view the image at all. NO.
Imagesocket - Had to verify my date of birth. No redirect ad spam at all. Tap to zoom worked well, no ads triggered.
<fapping break>
Imagescream - Again with the redirect hijacking shit. Javascript popups and made my phone continuously vibrate. What the fucking hell. Was never able to view the image.
xtupload.com - Perfect. No redirect spam, no ads triggered on tap. In fact, I don't see any ads anywhere on the page.
dumpyourphoto - VERY slow, but no redirect spam. Tap to zoom was extremely slow, but eventually did load after it changed domains.
postimg - Javascript popup on page load. Had to click back and go back into the image again. Taping seems okay. Tiny "hey there" chat box loads in the bottom-right corner.

ImageSocket/xtupload.com seem okay...

 

It's worth noting here that since my post above Imagezilla has changed their ads. When I reviewed it they were using those exact same ads as Picturescream and Imagescream which are pretty nasty and make viewing the intended image impossible.

I'm not sure how long that will last or how they will change in the future, but it's a step in the right direction at least.

 

Imagebam specifically is a mix of automatic redirects from just opening the picture, to touching the picture to enlarge it, to a combination of both. There ARE times when it doesn't do any of this bullshit at all. It's almost like it changes from thread to thread. For the most part though, Imagebam is unusable in any type of practical sense while on mobile, with a lot of the other hosts as not being a whole lot better. My experiences are mostly with Imagebam though, since it seems to be the most widely used. A typical experience using Imagebam on mobile is listed below:

iOS 8.3

Spiderswims Britt Robertson thread/Imagebam:

-First click on an image, a pop-up of *http://ad.directrev.com Dick's Sporting Goods--Shop anytime, anywhere. Receive personalized coupons and find a store near you. Download now!* appears in a window within the image itself. The image leaves the user with the options of CANCEL and OK. You have to select one to move forward, or close out the window entirely.

-Hit cancel.

-The same advertisement appears again when reopening the image a second time.

-Hit cancel again, then the image appears.

-Touched the image after 5 seconds, new tab opens automatically, then redirected to the AppStore.

-Go back to the image, touch it again, redirected again.

After this thread, I went to TDO's Kim Kardashian thread and had no problems with Imagebam at all. I definitely have problems with Imagebam on all of spider's threads, which would make sense if he's trying to get me back from smashing all his cd's.

 

Imageavenue - Clean
Imagebam - Clean
Sharenx - Clean
Imgbox - Clean
Imagezilla - hitting 'Accept' leads to a tab redirect
Picturescream - automatic redirect within the existing tab itself
Imagesocket - Clean
Imagescream - automatic redirect with existing tab and pop-up ad
Xtupload - Clean
Dumpyourphoto - Clean
Postimage - Clean

Going off the examples GB has provided, 'Clean' means that I experienced no pop-up ads or redirects of any kind, no matter what I did. I want to emphasize though that these experiences are NOT typical, especially with Imagebam. I went to an Ashley Tisdale thread right after doing this survey and upon clicking on an image, I was redirected into a second tab, with Imagebam. So, the randomness of when the fuckery occurs is something I can't figure out, but almost always occurs when surfing the Celebrity forums. Of course this is also where I am the most, so...

 

A couple questions, by iOS 8.3, I assume you mean Safari? My guess is that they are targeting all iOS browsers and it wouldn't change much by switching. But just in case it matters…

Also, do you visit the celeb section first? Like when you log on to Phun is that the first section you check?

It could be some cookie-based behavior that you are seeing. It sends you the ad and sets a cookie or something in localstorage marking that it's already shown you an ad and waits n amount of time before doing so again. That's what Phun's advertiser does and it's much more likely than them targeting images from specific Phun users or sections.

But I didn't see any or much of that in my quick Android tests. Most of them showed an ad of some kind and the behavior was repeatable by opening up the same image again.

 

-Yes, Safari.
-I never log out of Phun manually, I am always signed in. Generally, yes, I go to the Celeb sections first to unleash my trolling, then I head elsewhere to be more of an adult.
-The behavior of these ads and redirects are WAY more insidious than the Live Jasmin pop-up that appears when first entering Phun.

 

There is a 'time factor' involved in such a way that, if you click on an image and get redirected, it will not redirect you if you go back to the image quickly and view it. However, if you touch the image again after about five seconds, it will repeat the redirect. It will do this behavior repeatedly. It truly is a mishmash of exactly the type of response the user will get, but on the whole, the behavior is predictable in that some type of fuckery will happen. It's gotten to the point where I have completely stopped opening spider's images while on mobile, because I know he uses Imagebam and I know it's just a waste of time trying to view them.

 

1) Touch on Ashley Tisdale photo. http://forum.phun.org/showthread.php?t=1485969
2) A separate tab pops up once the image is touched to enlarge it (adcash.com).
3) Switch back to the original image QUICKLY, where I am able to touch the image with no redirects (the image behaves normally, enlarging and then shrinking, back and forth).
4) After continuing to touch the image after roughly five seconds, the same redirect to a separate tab happens again.

This is just an example of one TYPE of experience. Other times, the redirects happen all by themselves stemming from the original opening of the image, even BEFORE I have a chance to touch the image manually. Those are the worst ones and are also the ones that redirect to the AppStore.

Basically, there are redirects that happen automatically just from opening a pic, as well as redirects that happen by manually touching the pic to enlarge it AFTER the original opening of the image.