Blogging Technical Difficulties

Resource Bait and Switch

Grace, Haley, Kaya, Kirsten, Lanie, Lea, Melody, Xyra

Hi! We're certain you've seen this phenomena all over the Internet by now.
Pages where once brilliant photos appeared replaced with an ugly box.
You know, this one!

It raises a lot of questions. Does this mean me?
Am I not up to date on something?
Where did the photos go?
Does the blog author know this happened?
Well, we can tell safely tell you, our readers, that this "upgrade your account" note is not for you.
Photobucket, a very popular photo editing resource, has changed their policies. 
Any photo edited on their site and shared in another form...
On a blog or forum, etc.
Has been changed to look like this because their policy is now only paid account members can share photobucket edited photos on other sites. 
So everyone who created a button for their blog...
Like we did.
Or edited photos for their blog are no longer allowed to share and must redo their photos another way or pay a membership fee to unlock their items.
As the internet blogging community continues to grow, many of the free resources we rely on are starting to charge a fee. 
They get you hooked on a great free product, then they turn around and take it away unless you pay.
We noticed a lot of the things we liked on picmonkey are now only available to regal (paying) users. But we've adjusted our designs to incorporate only the free options. There is still a lot to work with.
I understand the reasoning behind it. There is a large demand for what they are supplying and they want to profit off it. They have designers and code writers to pay. However, it would have been nice for their programmers to leave the existing photos alone and have the new rule apply to new projects. 
You know, leave our button or photos published and shared before a certain date alone, but if we changed it, the new button photo wouldn't work unless we paid the fee. 
We will be redesigning our button in the very near future to get rid of that grey box. :( 
Until we have found instructions that do not require going through Photobucket, please bear with us.

Best wishes and many hugs to all the frustrated blog authors and readers out there.