damaquilts

I finally got them but not from the email they sent. I tried different ways to yet to my yahoo even rebooted just in case that helped. Well it does on some things. lol
Anyway I ended up going to the webshots /smile site and going through the help questions and the link there took me to the zip files. What a PITA it was. Well in the greater scheme of things maybe not but I just don't want to have to mess with it. Changing my drivers license over was enough to do for one day. LOL

damaquilts

Hmm just got an email from Webshots customer service. BTW I don't have Firefox, I don't want Firefox.


Thank you for contacting Webshots Customer Support. We're sorry that you had this trouble downloading your photos. If you have received notice that your photos are ready to be downloaded, you can use these steps to locate the zip file(s) and save your photos to your computer. Please note that we recommend using the Firefox browser (www.mozilla.org) to access Webshots to download and save your photos.
1. Go to www.webshots.com by typing the URL in the address bar of Firefox. Sign in to your membership.
2. Paste http://community.webshots.com/<WBR>features/downloads in the address bar of Firefox.
3. Click the "Download my personal photos" button. If your photos are ready to be saved, you'll see the zip file(s) after clicking the Download button.
4. Your photos will be bundled into manageable Zip files. Your videos and Picture Show videos will be listed as individual links for download.
5. When you click on the link for a zip file, winzip will open. This will show the albums (folders) included in the zip file. Select a folder and then click Extract. Now, choose a folder on your computer to save the photos to and click extract at the bottom of the window. Repeat this process for each folder in the zip file.
7. If you have more than one Webshots membership, you will need to log in and initiate the download process within each of your Webshots accounts.
SPECIAL NOTE: The files you download in this process will be available for 2 weeks. Please DO NOT DELETE OR MOVE YOUR PHOTOS AND VIDEOS from Webshots until you have downloaded and saved all the files to your computer or other storage media! If you miss the two week window, you can initiate the download process again, but ONLY IF YOU HAVE NOT DELETED YOUR PHOTOS from Webshots.
PLEASE be aware that once photos are deleted, we are unable to recover them! DO NOT DELETE any personal photos or videos until after you have securely downloaded and saved them to your personal computer or storage media.
Eventually, the Webshots site will completely close and all photos and videos will be deleted from our database. After the closing date, personal photos or videos will no longer be available. Please save your personal photos as soon as possible!
Thank you,
Dennis R.
Your Customer Support Representative
www.Webshots.com

MTS

Huh.
And I was using Firefox when I tried and it didn't work for me.
Go figure.

Well, at least you have your photos.

eta: Here's a more detailed explanation of what and why the changes were being made.
It does explain a lot.
This is a webshots community set up on Flickr:
The email from Penny Adams starts a bit further down.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/wscommu...7631725916517/

MaggieLou

I'm glad I never uploaded any of my pics to webshots. I just used them for the wallpaper and screensavers. Does anyone know if that will still be available and if there will be a cost?

MTS

I would suggest....reading the posts in this thread.

KalamaQuilts

I was shocked to see last week that webshots will be closing, but thrilled that the original crew would be taking over.
Then reality set in.
Their Smile site ideas are based on photosharing in social websites. If you want someone to see something you have to upload it there from smile.
Nothing on Smile will be open to the public.

Fine by me, I don't have time for social networking sites. But when I downloaded the Smile software to capture the images off Webshots (I have about 20 albums and over 1K of photos, and a paid subscription) I was appalled.

It pulled everything off my computer too, as mentioned above without any option not to, and what I keep on my computer is ebay and temporary use images, I certainly don't want them cluttering up photo or wallpaper software.
And then the software doesn't work anything like the website examples, there aren't any options to set wallpaper, or delete...And they've said there will be 4 new wallpapers sent to the software every day (expiring in 60 days) but i haven't gotten any.

I expect those complaints are from releasing software that wasn't ready. But I will surely miss Webshots.
So far my webshots software is still working, keeping my fingers crossed as I have so many gorgeous wallpapers stored there.

edited to add a little later...Webshots just uninstalled from my computer ...automatically, along with millions of other peoples.
All those wallpapers...

MTS

Yeah, there's a difference between downloading to the webshots software and downloading a regular .zip file loaded with .jpgs.
You pictures should still be on webshots.com so you can use the alternative download procedure (the one referenced upthread).

I had never reinstalled the software after my laptop crashed a couple of years ago.
I can't believe it just uninstalled off yours.

Is the file that contained the pictures within that software still on your hard drive?
I read about a way to convert it to .jpgs - it's on the webshots/smile blog.
It didn't pertain to me so I bypassed it.

Pollytink

I discovered this last week when I went to WS to check something. Unfortunately I clicked on the link for more information and apparently they downloaded something onto my computer. It removed my WS desktop and kept trying to install the Smile desktop, which I didn't want. Every time I'd boot my computer that msg would come up that it was looking for Webshots. I finally realized they'd installed something and went looking for it. Nothing under Smile but under Webshots I found a Webshots Supplant folder and a Webshots Supplant Launcher.exe. I deleted both those and the popup stopped. I was furious that they put something on my computer without my knowledge or permission. I'd had a lot of WS pics that I'd downloaded over the years and when my computer crashed and we had to reinstall everything, I'd saved all the Webshots Data (with the pic files) onto an external hard drive. So apparently they couldn't get to that. I went in and found them all intact. Of course they're all .wbz files but I'd downloaded a free program. Ultimate Webshots Converter, last year that someone had told me about. It converts the WS pic files to .jpgs. I went into all the WS pic files and converted all to jpgs. I found that I can still use them as wallpaper by opening a jpg in the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and right clicking on it, you can set it as the desktop background. When they initially zapped all my WS data, suddenly my wallpaper disappeared! A slight shock! There's one particular pic I love....a sea/beach scene, and I had saved it elsewhere so was able to reinstall it as wallpaper.

I was so mad I could have throttled them! I posted it to Treadleon, one of my sm lists and people there started trying to get their pics off. If you haven't, check out the Smile blog.....on the WS page at the top. There have been over a K of very upset WS users screaming at them and threatening lawsuits etc. As many said on the blog, I don't want to use WS as a photo storage space....I have 2 external HD's for that and there are many other sites for that too. WS was a community in many ways....on TO we could post pics of our quilts, sm's etc. and share them, make comments etc. I also used it to post pics of things I was selling on e.g. Craigslist and put in a link to see more pics of the item. Those original owners may think they're doing something special but they don't seem to have any idea of how people were using the site. I did find that I could go in and delete my pics and albums and since I didn't have a lot there and have it all on my computer, it was no loss. But there's a woman on TO who does research on White sm's who had an enormous presence on WS and is having a hard time getting all her stuff off it.

Hope everyone gets their stuff off before it disappears!!

MaggieLou

I have read the posts. I don't want to use it to store pics. Just use it for wallpaper and screensavers. I know they will charge for storing pics.

MTS

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