Pinpics down?
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Pinpics down?
- Thread starter squidget
- Start date
- Status
This is form the pinpics fourm.
Hello All,
As you may have seen the site is currently unavailable, we were hoping to have an update of when this would be resolved,
but as of right now there is an outage with our hosting company. This is a larger issue than just our site and they are
working to resolve the issue.
It's seems as though timing was great, this time of the year 4 years ago we had some scheduled maintenance, an old
facebook post said it was planned. Unfortunately this is not the case.
Thanks for your patience while we sort this out,
&
Here is the latest update regarding our unexpected downtime:
**PinPics Servers are Still Down**
Currently our servers are still down. Our hosting company suffered a major outage that affected many websites. At this point we are waiting for our hosting company to get us back online. We understand not being able to access PinPics is frustrating. At this point we ask you to be patient. Also, as of this afternoon we have not received an ETA from our hosting company for when we will be back up. When we do get back online we will post it on all of our social media pages and email all users who have opted in to our mailing lists.
Thank you for your patience!
PinPics
Hello All,
As you may have seen the site is currently unavailable, we were hoping to have an update of when this would be resolved,
but as of right now there is an outage with our hosting company. This is a larger issue than just our site and they are
working to resolve the issue.
It's seems as though timing was great, this time of the year 4 years ago we had some scheduled maintenance, an old
facebook post said it was planned. Unfortunately this is not the case.
Thanks for your patience while we sort this out,
&
Here is the latest update regarding our unexpected downtime:
**PinPics Servers are Still Down**
Currently our servers are still down. Our hosting company suffered a major outage that affected many websites. At this point we are waiting for our hosting company to get us back online. We understand not being able to access PinPics is frustrating. At this point we ask you to be patient. Also, as of this afternoon we have not received an ETA from our hosting company for when we will be back up. When we do get back online we will post it on all of our social media pages and email all users who have opted in to our mailing lists.
Thank you for your patience!
PinPics
i use PP daily, still frustrated with the new search engine, so hoping for improvments but i doubt it since the site isnt down for updating. This is a great reason though to see why its important to have other data bases. Not just for trading but for pin information. I use mine or have the comfort of having the data base for insurance purposes God forbid. So day three of limbo.....and its cold and Id love nothing better than to chill in bed and pin trade! dang it.
Oh my god yes I agree! Why is there only one site like pinpics? I'm new to trading and it so frustrates me because it's not overly user friendly especially for newbies and I find it so hard to actually make trades on there! And it's so frustrating that there isn't another database! And I know someone posted a link to another new startup but it has like 45000 pins which is good but then they don't have the same pin numbers associated with them that they did on pinpics (at least I don't think they do as I looked up a pin from this year and it was like pin 246) so then it's super confusing! Random question, has Disney ever put out like an official pin trading guide book with like pin listings and such. They really should!
Because PinPics will do anything to stop people making any other sites. Someone created a PinPics-like site a while ago that focused on easier use and purely for the hobby instead of profit. It was a success until PinPics opened a case against that site after which they took over the site and closed it. PinPics is really shady, or they're at least questionable, you'll probably come to notice that the longer you're involved with pins.
How does pinpics make a profit? Also I don't see how they can have a monopoly on pin trading or databases. they don't own the Internet. Ugh they make no sense! Who runs pinpics? Why don't we all just rebel against them?
Robins Hood
:)
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People ARE rebelling against them. A lot of people dont use pinpics at all..
As an old timer in the pin trading game, let me give you a little bit of history. When pinpics was started it was started by people in the pin hobby to be a not for profit database and as such everybody in the pin trading community could and a lot did contribute to the site. Since it was community based there was at the time no need for another database since pinpics was for the people by the people.
Then from what I understand the people who actually "owned" the domain decided they could no longer afford the time and energy to run it any longer. At the time I don't remember anything about them wanting to get out, all of a sudden it was sold to a group called lansam (I think that is what they are called) and the fiasco that is now pinpics began. While I have no ill will towards the previous owners, it would have been nice if they had mentioned what they were thinking and not sold to a group who would try to turn it into a for profit website. I don't think pinpics is actually making money or at least that was the last I had heard. From what I have seen and heard it was poorly planned and I believe the original group doing the coding quit. Which is why it is a hodge podge that it is now.
While I have met and really like one of the owners, it seems they got in way over their heads and instead of turning to the pin community for help they have listened to some very poor advice and done things like ban people for checking out their beta site when it was available to anybody who googled it. They didn't password protect the beta site and when people were looking around they took their ip addresses and just banned them outright. Nothing says customer service like banning the people who would be your customers for a problem that they pinpics created by not putting in password protection.
Ryan does have a database that is growing daily and no the pin numbers do not line up with pinpics. I know Darris (Rasputin) is also working on a pin database that I am looking very forward to seeing get up and running!!! The more options out there the better. There is a lot of catching up to be done for the new databases, but as the one that pinpics sued into submission (they did just import all of the pins and descriptions instead of creating new ones) proves that if there is a good easy to use database out there people are more then willing to use it instead of pinpics.
I believe it is a matter of time until pinpics falls as the database of record. Their business practices and hard to navigate website will be their downfall in my opinion.
If I missed anything or have anything wrong please feel free to let us know. But I think this is pretty accurate.
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^ One other piece of it is - the new owners claimed all profit and ownership rights to the photos and descriptions that all contributors over the years had posted to the original PinPics for use of the community for free which made most of those regular contributors stop posting any information to PinPics, which means that a LOT of pins are missing from their database from the last few years, so it is no longer comprehensive like it used to be when everyone would keep it updated literally hourly.
But no one wanted their work and property claimed by others, so many pins are simply not listed in PinPics and will likely not be added to the new databases if no one has kept track of them, leaving the entire pin community at a loss for information, which is really a blow to the hobby. I miss the days when PinPics was the one best resource for this community, but I don't think there ever can or will be such a source again sadly. And so many new folks just use social media and pics of what they have and want that I suspect PinPics use - and frankly, even this message board which seems to get far less use than in years past - is falling by the wayside. Not sure how much longer either site really has left - a year, maybe? - before social media is all that's left.
But no one wanted their work and property claimed by others, so many pins are simply not listed in PinPics and will likely not be added to the new databases if no one has kept track of them, leaving the entire pin community at a loss for information, which is really a blow to the hobby. I miss the days when PinPics was the one best resource for this community, but I don't think there ever can or will be such a source again sadly. And so many new folks just use social media and pics of what they have and want that I suspect PinPics use - and frankly, even this message board which seems to get far less use than in years past - is falling by the wayside. Not sure how much longer either site really has left - a year, maybe? - before social media is all that's left.
Wow that's really sad and too bad as i just found this site and started trading. I don't use social media and I'm only at the parks once or twice a year and when I'm there I only trade with cast members. I feel like I'm getting in to the hobby too late and I'm out of luck I don't know what to do it's quite discouraging!
I don't know what to do it's quite discouraging!
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- 2,233
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- Auburn, Pennsylvania
Me I prefer this site or pinpics when I need to look or add something to my collection.
WHOA Whoa whoa..... thats crazy talk. :lol:
- Messages
- 2,233
- Location
- Auburn, Pennsylvania
wanted to do trades but have way too many pins to take pics so trade went bye bye
leaving the entire pin community at a loss for information, which is really a blow to the hobby. I miss the days when PinPics was the one best resource for this community, but I don't think there ever can or will be such a source again sadly. And so many new folks just use social media and pics of what they have and want that I suspect PinPics use - and frankly, even this message board which seems to get far less use than in years past - is falling by the wayside. Not sure how much longer either site really has left - a year, maybe? - before social media is all that's left.
I am not as pessimistic about the fate of the new databases or even this site as you are. There will always be people who do not use the social media sites so there will always be a need for sites like this. Plus sites like DPF allow people from all over the world come together and discuss pins both old and new. I do believe that what pinpics has done will lead to it's demise. There are too many people who they have pissed off. I am glad you mentioned the people put in the work on the old pinpics which is why it was "the source". Yes the new databases will be missing pins but the new pins will be added and there are enough of us old timers who do have the older pins that we can add to them to get them current. No it will not be an over night thing, but then again neither was pinpics.
It is a huge shame that what the new owners of pinpics have managed to undo in 2 year what it took a decade to make. Plus the "new" site still doesn't work correctly. It is clunky whereas the old site was easy to figure out and use.
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- 2,524
When I really decided to fully focus on pins many years ago, there were exactly two resources: DizPins and PinPics and literally that was all you needed to find out absolutely everything going on with pins. DizPins was the news and message board and PinPics was the database that everyone helped build and keep constantly updated. Folks would race to be the first to add new pins as soon as word of them popped up. We were one focused community.
Nowadays, in order to *try* to keep up with pin information, I need to read this site, both PinPics - old and new - because different info is posted on each site (though I agree the older site is far easier to read and navigate), various official Disney sources such as odpt.com, the park blog, and DSF's Facebook page, other social media sites and pages, and ebay, and hope that people I run into locally share any info they hear - and I'm still likely missing information though I try to keep up with all of these sources regularly. And I don't even know of or belong to plenty of social media pin groups/pages, etc.
The community has fractured, particularly since DizPins closed, but worst in the last two years or so. PinPics seeming to distance itself from a lot of collectors rather than reaching out to them was probably a part of it. As was the sudden secondary market value explosion on certain pins (yes, a lot at DSF). And the general overtaking of social media pulling people away from community message boards everywhere. I suppose it's all some form of progress, but I don't see any way to re-group the community when it's all scattered to the winds. I don't see people returning to using databases or everyone in the community posting on one message board or the kind of worldwide trading we had in the early days when it all seems to just be about buying and selling whatever the newest, hottest pins are.
I so appreciate the efforts people are making to keep all databases up and running and continuing to grow, but I think in the long run, it's a lovely but futile cause. Already most newbies have no clue about older pins - and who can blame them? Who really would want to go through 70,000 or however many actual individual pin listings there are? It's an exhausting thought and makes me glad that when I started there were a lot less to learn about and try to find - even if all these years later I'm still looking for those last few elusive older ones I'm missing. Not to mention so many of those pins have either been in permanent homes for many years or long-forgotten in a closet somewhere - so why would a newbie bother to try to learn about them or find them when they're not even out there? And that doesn't even begin to address how fake pins have flooded the market badly over the past few years and how seemingly impossible a task it is to avoid all such fakes.
So am I pessimistic? I think more just practical and sad. Though maybe that's the same thing. lol All I know is, despite the fractured present and future that I see, and despite the fact that collecting pins seems more challenging than ever, I still have wonderful friends in the pin community who enhance my life by being in it and I still want to be around, working on my collection as long as I possibly can because it still makes me happy to do so. So I'm not jumping ship any time soon. But some days, the ship seems to be sailing without me - and I can't swim fast enough to keep up!
Nowadays, in order to *try* to keep up with pin information, I need to read this site, both PinPics - old and new - because different info is posted on each site (though I agree the older site is far easier to read and navigate), various official Disney sources such as odpt.com, the park blog, and DSF's Facebook page, other social media sites and pages, and ebay, and hope that people I run into locally share any info they hear - and I'm still likely missing information though I try to keep up with all of these sources regularly. And I don't even know of or belong to plenty of social media pin groups/pages, etc.
The community has fractured, particularly since DizPins closed, but worst in the last two years or so. PinPics seeming to distance itself from a lot of collectors rather than reaching out to them was probably a part of it. As was the sudden secondary market value explosion on certain pins (yes, a lot at DSF). And the general overtaking of social media pulling people away from community message boards everywhere. I suppose it's all some form of progress, but I don't see any way to re-group the community when it's all scattered to the winds. I don't see people returning to using databases or everyone in the community posting on one message board or the kind of worldwide trading we had in the early days when it all seems to just be about buying and selling whatever the newest, hottest pins are.
I so appreciate the efforts people are making to keep all databases up and running and continuing to grow, but I think in the long run, it's a lovely but futile cause. Already most newbies have no clue about older pins - and who can blame them? Who really would want to go through 70,000 or however many actual individual pin listings there are? It's an exhausting thought and makes me glad that when I started there were a lot less to learn about and try to find - even if all these years later I'm still looking for those last few elusive older ones I'm missing. Not to mention so many of those pins have either been in permanent homes for many years or long-forgotten in a closet somewhere - so why would a newbie bother to try to learn about them or find them when they're not even out there? And that doesn't even begin to address how fake pins have flooded the market badly over the past few years and how seemingly impossible a task it is to avoid all such fakes.
So am I pessimistic? I think more just practical and sad. Though maybe that's the same thing. lol All I know is, despite the fractured present and future that I see, and despite the fact that collecting pins seems more challenging than ever, I still have wonderful friends in the pin community who enhance my life by being in it and I still want to be around, working on my collection as long as I possibly can because it still makes me happy to do so. So I'm not jumping ship any time soon. But some days, the ship seems to be sailing without me - and I can't swim fast enough to keep up!
sweetalissum
New DPF Member
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It's a shame to think there is no need or want for a pin database in the future. I've been buying pins at my rare trips to the parks for a decade or more and all I'd ever wanted was a database for pin trading. I didn't know much about the hobby until recently because I was bewildered trying to find official information on pins. Without being close to the parks, pin releases were impossible to follow to me. I was relived to finally find PinPics a few months ago. I loved being able to organize my collection and that I could finally track down pins that had eluded me over the years. New to the fandom, I had no idea there was drama with the PinPics site or owners.
I don't mind the Instagram and Facebook popularity for trading, but I find I don't know how it could replace an archive. I can't tell how to make a fair trade or sale without a database on the history on my pins and the others I want. It's a shame any attempts at databases have had to be fan run and thus suffused with fandom drama. If Disney actually archived their historic pin releases, it could be a lot simpler. I suppose the argument is they have little incentive to do this when fans share a lot of the information. It also helps add to the mystique of the hobby - that you have to hunt down other collectors and fan-run sites to fully understand it...
I don't mind the Instagram and Facebook popularity for trading, but I find I don't know how it could replace an archive. I can't tell how to make a fair trade or sale without a database on the history on my pins and the others I want. It's a shame any attempts at databases have had to be fan run and thus suffused with fandom drama. If Disney actually archived their historic pin releases, it could be a lot simpler. I suppose the argument is they have little incentive to do this when fans share a lot of the information. It also helps add to the mystique of the hobby - that you have to hunt down other collectors and fan-run sites to fully understand it...
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Disney used to have their own archive, of sorts. And kind of still do. ODPT.com would announce the dates for US releases, and they started doing it early/mid 2000's, so you could use their website as a way to find out what pins had been released. But then the search started breaking, and wouldn't get fixed. They ran a blog, with a lot of info too, but then stopped updating it. But then end of 2012/start of 2013, Disney "redesigned" their pages and all of that stuff went "poof." Just another body blow that the hobby took. Their archive only goes back to Jan 2013 now. And then in Sept, they stopped posting updates, and the latest batch of pin announcements was a simple flier format, that didn't list everything.
Soda Fountain used to have their own archive buried deep on their website too, pins going back to 2008 or so. But during the changeover and renaming, that went poof too.
Do you think Disney would do away with pin trading? Or they just have no interest in supporting the hobby? I don't personally know if they have archives on any of their other collectibles so maybe asking them to have a pin database is expecting too much.
I just joined the Facebook groups yesterday but I find its all a little overwhelming and there's no sense of community on there. Also I feel like everything is more about selling pins than making trades. Like I said I'm new and just found the fb groups but I feel more comfortable on here or before trying to find trades on pinpics.
I feel that there will always be a need for a pin database because there are so many pins out there!
it seems like the hobby isn't really "trading" anymore, so much as buying what you want and then selling. And for us who don't live near WDW or Disneyland I feel we will always end up paying more/ being gouged trying to get new release pins.
Its all such a shame
while I know people don't love pinpics I still hope it comes back up soon. And I really hope that if pinpics dies, another site will take its place.
I just joined the Facebook groups yesterday but I find its all a little overwhelming and there's no sense of community on there. Also I feel like everything is more about selling pins than making trades. Like I said I'm new and just found the fb groups but I feel more comfortable on here or before trying to find trades on pinpics.
I feel that there will always be a need for a pin database because there are so many pins out there!
it seems like the hobby isn't really "trading" anymore, so much as buying what you want and then selling. And for us who don't live near WDW or Disneyland I feel we will always end up paying more/ being gouged trying to get new release pins.
Its all such a shame
while I know people don't love pinpics I still hope it comes back up soon. And I really hope that if pinpics dies, another site will take its place.
speedwaystar1
UK Disney Fan
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Just received an email saying the site will be back up on Monday . Apparently not a server shutdown but a "clerical error" , sounds suspiciously like someone didn't pay their bills !
disneypinqueen
~Villainous Diva~
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Funny, I thought the same thing!
If it was a only a clerical error as they say, they should be able to bring it right back up with a press of a button. Yes it does sound like somebody forgot to pay their bill and now need to get it to go through.
mickeymousje
Super Active DPF Member
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- 10,765
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Got this email
Hello PinPics Members!
Here is the latest update regarding our unexpected downtime:
** PinPics Will Be Back Up Monday! **
We do have an update to share with everyone today. We have received word from our hosting company that we will be back up Monday morning. Our hosting company initially told us technical problems lead to the PinPics being down. They have now admitted today that a clerical error was made. Unfortunately they can't bring us back online until Monday morning. We apologize for this unexpected downtime. We are working with our hosting company to make sure this doesn't happen again.
PinPics
Hello PinPics Members!
Here is the latest update regarding our unexpected downtime:
** PinPics Will Be Back Up Monday! **
We do have an update to share with everyone today. We have received word from our hosting company that we will be back up Monday morning. Our hosting company initially told us technical problems lead to the PinPics being down. They have now admitted today that a clerical error was made. Unfortunately they can't bring us back online until Monday morning. We apologize for this unexpected downtime. We are working with our hosting company to make sure this doesn't happen again.
PinPics
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