My WP go blog is now open to the public once again

[tchan001]

Just wanted to announce that my blog is now once again open to the public. Hope you enjoy the info on Asian go books, go sightings, and tidbits, but don't expect it to be updated much.

[alphaville]

Just wanted to announce that my blog is now once again open to the public. Hope you enjoy the info on Asian go books, go sightings, and tidbits, but don't expect it to be updated much.

Thank you, it looks very interesting!
Just curious, why was the blog closed?

[tchan001]

Let's just say I had some unpleasant experiences in the past but decided to reopen it now.

[schultz]

I remember when you made it private. Glad to see it's back. Thanks.

[gowan]

Let's just say I had some unpleasant experiences in the past but decided to reopen it now.

If the unpleasant experiences involved comments by readers, is it possible to make it possible not to allow comments but still keep it open for reading only?

[schultz]

Let's just say I had some unpleasant experiences in the past but decided to reopen it now.

If the unpleasant experiences involved comments by readers, is it possible to make it possible not to allow comments but still keep it open for reading only?

This was a combination of things that happened quite a few years ago, and was not because of responses on the blog (they were actually external, to the blog, events).

[tchan001]

So far my blog still seems to be ok, but as I host my images currently on photobucket, do be aware that in the near future, changes by this free image host could affect my blog tremendously.
See this article for more info on why I am concerned. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40492668

Thousands of images promoting goods sold on Amazon and other shopping sites have been removed after a photo-sharing service changed its terms.
Ebay and Etsy have also been affected, in addition to many forums and blogs.
The problem has been caused by Photobucket introducing a charge for allowing images hosted on its platform to be embedded into third-party sites.
The company caught many of its members unaware with the change, prompting some to accuse it of holding them to ransom.
Denver-based Photobucket is now seeking a $399 (£309) annual fee from those who wish to continue using it for "third-party hosting" and is facing a social media backlash as a consequence.

Meanwhile, does anyone have any good suggestions for an alternative free image host which could work well with my WP blog just in case it is needed in the future?

I was only aware of this potential problem today and it has nothing to do with my decision to reopen my blog.

[LocoRon]

Denver-based Photobucket is now seeking a $399 (£309) annual fee from those who wish to continue using it for "third-party hosting"

Wow, that is insane. I'm guessing Photobucket won't be around much longer.

You could try out imgur. I haven't used Photobucket in years; whenever I want to share an image now, I either self-host, use Dropbox, or put it on imgur.

[tchan001]

Just got a letter from photobucket asking me to upgrade my account so looks like the blog will need a lot of work to transfer photos to another site and fix links. Meanwhile enjoy what you see as long as you can as I might not have that much time to fix everything.

Also need a good suggestion for a free alternative to photobucket which allows free 3rd party hosting.

[tchan001]

The pictures I use are small sized so I have decided to just upload them directly to wordpress which has a total of 3G free space for my blog. I have checked the size of all my photos together and they should not take up too much space. Will take a while to fix all the links.