Man. I have ten years of BBQ pics on Photobucket sorted in folders. From Free to $40/month .... My image links in perhaps 8,000 forum posts around the web were all broken in one fell swoop. I can't say what I think and keep it 'G' rated *
Here are a couple of options in addition to IMGUR. IMGUR seems well suited to to the phone camera crowd with it's companion apps. I'll be honest, any 'for profit' or 'non-profit' scares me a bit after this Photobucket debacle. No reason the next 'free' service won't do the same thing or the next not-for-profit service will just go up in smoke too.
Postimage seems VERY forum user friendly.
Google Drive and
Google Photos are great for Google and Android users because your pics ultimately upload/synch/are accessible across devices and Google **might** be the best free solution LONG TERM despite their services being somewhat cumbersome to use in forums.
I think PB could have come up with something, anything, so much more creative that didn't have such a huge impact around the web, especially for (non-commercial) hobbyists. For example, even something as basic as a flat rate of $5/month plus a $/MB overage beyond an included amount of bandwidth used. The VAST majority of my PB content is barely accessed after 60 days, but pay-for-use is fair to everyone. Make a dollar off of a million people rather than ~$500 off of 2,000 people.
Postimage.org
Free (non-profit) image hosting:
Postimage.org
I'm liking it so far. Very forum user friendly. Ad free, not as fancy as PB but it works. You don't even need an account to upload files. But I signed up for one so I can create galleries (folders) and manage my stuff. You can upload multiple files at once, autoresize on upload and it spits out URLS for all pics uploaded to a gallery in one convenient box, no need to to put multiple pics in individually like with Photobucket. PB was so cumbersome that way, especially with ads it drove me nuts.
There is also a Postimage add on for PHPBB, SMF and other forums, though not VBulletin unfortunately.
http://postimages.org/plugins
It supports thumbs too:
Google Drive
Within your Google Drive library right click on a single picture you have uploaded to Drive and choose Get Shareable Link
In the window that pops up right click the link and copy it. It will look like this (https modified to h t t p s to prevent automatic url tags):
h t t p s://drive.google.com/file/d/1TzAVgJFU3TRSJskIin5ovBWMaOCUY0qCtw/view
Edit the link to look like this:
h t t p s://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1TzAVgJFU3TRSJskIin5ovBWMaOCUY0qCtw
Finally, wrap the new link in an IMG tag and you're done!
Resizing may be required before linking to Google Drive, but it works.
Google Photos
This one is a bit cumbersome as well but you can specify the image size within the tag.
Within your Google Photos library left click on a single picture so it opens up in it's own window (with the editing and sharing tools)
Right click the image and select Copy Image Address (Chrome)
Paste it into your forum message window. It will look like this:
h t t p s://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Kv2SilHcacJEgvsd3ZB0k-2nnkZr2hJWGSk6A6Oxs7quKb1ZHbXzGWoInkYjXlEq2iXX5u5VcX0LdPaQn86HXXAVsvuCwkJ7F3qGQlydDjeE6Ih12k0jZ6ADDNKZXfBEI9QdkLzJt_CozfVBNpJF5Ek38w2qGQp17WNpgz4IvV2iu-pfqfpV-Qd2vfBSIj6tzH_EcW1SBbwzM8ngK76WW5VVLDPQFUxlvIRDmdymb0gPCGdXXN1YolpIzN5AEHl9T9M4UXlt6EMH3IsWhc5baFytTGowT8tNVnf1XTW8q3TUxPTd6m7qY3HeDK95uSVR8FjWJQ4ynq4LeofUm5kRVnJDPZCJ5jgxz9G5xM21pj7M8dVeqRFSN3QmjhHlPOF5D53uQt2VRJUADM5xdn6vFZxv1KR8xc1gib7-GyPv4QWBdlQGC-3KpMAuJ2zjO3FSHTQpmXVTEwQU6fSNOHRLGnRdPe6u_MsNF4ZcP_oUOfS_XeryfHIB2f31IyT9jswWElN3a4iCY9r2V_j7wWkmsw19SWx4L_JzyfzJCsPpW01fiyx-B-radu_hML3iIREBgoZuiiAeL-25sEMtXT_GzEiv3TGpp2CRXAEOtjugqGms3423z_P5sx_b=w1216-h684-no
Add either -tmp.jpg or ?.jpg at the end of the link:
h t t p s://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Kv2SilHcacJEgvsd3ZB0k-2nnkZr2hJWGSk6A6Oxs7quKb1ZHbXzGWoInkYjXlEq2iXX5u5VcX0LdPaQn86HXXAVsvuCwkJ7F3qGQlydDjeE6Ih12k0jZ6ADDNKZXfBEI9QdkLzJt_CozfVBNpJF5Ek38w2qGQp17WNpgz4IvV2iu-pfqfpV-Qd2vfBSIj6tzH_EcW1SBbwzM8ngK76WW5VVLDPQFUxlvIRDmdymb0gPCGdXXN1YolpIzN5AEHl9T9M4UXlt6EMH3IsWhc5baFytTGowT8tNVnf1XTW8q3TUxPTd6m7qY3HeDK95uSVR8FjWJQ4ynq4LeofUm5kRVnJDPZCJ5jgxz9G5xM21pj7M8dVeqRFSN3QmjhHlPOF5D53uQt2VRJUADM5xdn6vFZxv1KR8xc1gib7-GyPv4QWBdlQGC-3KpMAuJ2zjO3FSHTQpmXVTEwQU6fSNOHRLGnRdPe6u_MsNF4ZcP_oUOfS_XeryfHIB2f31IyT9jswWElN3a4iCY9r2V_j7wWkmsw19SWx4L_JzyfzJCsPpW01fiyx-B-radu_hML3iIREBgoZuiiAeL-25sEMtXT_GzEiv3TGpp2CRXAEOtjugqGms3423z_P5sx_b=w1216-h684-no
?.jpg
Select your entire link then click the IMG button in the forum topic editor or manually type the opening and closing IMG tag at the start and end of the link
To resize inline to 400x300 for example edit the w and h parameters just before -no?.jpg
h t t p s://lh3.googleusercontent.com/aCLXO1G-GnAag7Ph2dFdlzmtBBVMQNQADOk1JPveeZyewtxjPYKA3ZcZD-pmnR6BnKyBaFZLiPO4tbaB-jeyXyVMvfFBX--KM5OjuQb-r0YIz1gKWYtJRrT-mrZf3qW6n8Ta_tRhqzISZnWqTkX3TTOd1gRgIKMaTw_qVbDKjRv6wyi4OcnrZC0J7OLJoWbAXZQI1l7E7rNiQ9RxNKVl7z_ULF0ChaX6F0EEb2BRsGC4GdWbihePqyUXSjawN46LWNbN3SYgUI6nI7jMBo4YLfFTKDp57oOXYGIm4fjLKwAgJShlcALtfONHqfYKhEQCy7Fvv5PJtpluq7edqP17tC7NVPh7XifHueps3lQABoMW7B0ZFrn0hAjmYF9j3lj0u79Khj_3ZjSmKd89k3RUHL4s7zMkA_yNqopFWWgZuF_r6aGYN30SDVlkLBVoh5dqzQBD3vqA3wVwwqnzG3y1AvQx0Jb7iokWLlBVoWWzuBkWI94aMCcAftr6UhYDYJqs_MMd7znSsg0_02uy2cE_qMSQ8YI-_nWcFNbpPjJpHl8wamWDGeYg4jCcU5pVB-VWTjUjNWmEezWx4BNyvCOjPIOsXaRaD8M7mEVIqBpZwT_rzN-23fSU0OnnSe08uxt0AjBqLlzhBsbR_xYExO19M7mXJi5Z_TJCWOYB5vzUt0VLqw=
w400-h300-no?.jpg
Google Photos info was found here (along with some more tag options for cropping etc):
https://sites.google.com/site/picasaresources/Home/Picasa-FAQ/google-photos-1/how-to/how-to-get-a-direct-link-to-an-image