Brickshelf has Gone Away

If you are browsing through backposts of the blog, and wonder where a lot of the pictures have gone, we apologize. Many of us used links to a image service called Brickshelf, which it appears has been removed. Please do not flame the owners/operators of Brickshelf - I'm not sure why this happened with no warning, but Brickshelf has proved free, high-quality image hosting for AFoLs for many, many years, and they should be commended for what they've done. Personally I keep all my own photos on my computer, but very sadly many folks didn't, so many of those great MOCs may be lost forever, including the accounts of people who have passed away and their Brickshelf accounts remained behind as epitaths.

If Brickshelf comes back, I'll be very, very happy... and if it is gone for good, I'll be very sad for the loss of a cornerstone of the on-line LEGO community. But I'll still be thankful for what we had, for a little while.

On a more proactive note, I'd like to request two things. First, if anybody actually stored all the screenshots that were in my "code snippets" folder, I'd love to hear from you to try to get copies (sadly these screenshots were things I did not have completely backed up). Second, I'm curious where you host your own LEGO images. Brickshelf was unique, to my knowledge, in that you could store text, video, still images, and LDraw files (again, many of which may simply be lost forever). Better yet, it was moderated (a tough job!), so we could link kids to it fairly confidently. Does anyone know of a similar service that offers all of those things? Or if not, what do you suggest?

Update: it seems Brickshelf may be still up, but migrating to a secure site. At least some people have been able to access it via https://www.brickshelf.com/ (note the "s" in https there).

--
Brian Davis

Comments

NXTFreak said…
Well, I am somewhat disappointed that Brickshelf is discontinued, but like you said, they did this service for a long time, and it was free. That was a very kind thing to take the time to do. As for another image hosting website, you could go to Maj.com, which is Brickshelf's sister. You can even use your Brickshelf account to log in. But the bad news is that when I logged in, my folder was empty, so I still didn't have any of the images that I had on Brickshelf.
Ethan Steckmann said…
BrickShelf was on of my favorit site and this makes me so sad i could cry i think it would be awsome if someone would contact brickshelf and start it back up i can but im sure some one could. lossing brickshelf is like loosing a good freind.

Ethan :( this is a sad day for all of us
Andy said…
This is truly sad! I loved Brickshelf (like TheNXTStep and NXTasy.org). Sadly our computers harddrive crashed so I lost the pictures I had of my NXT, but luckily I also had half of them on Brickshelf and 1/4th on NXTLOG. And now that Brickshelf is gone, I've lost half the pictures I had of my NXT(-robots). I hope that if the owners of Brickshelf don't open it again, they will dissapoint THOUSANDS of people. If they open again, I will be fine with only a few weeks, and that they send a mass email so all users get to know about it so they can download theire "non-backed up" pictures. And maybe upload them to Maj.com if they want too.
I just say, PLEASE open up Brickshelf again so I can back-up my pictures!

Andy :( I'm also sad...
Lou Morris said…
If they shut down due to financial issues, I can understand how they gave no notice. The service was free, and if users had warning about the shut-down, they may have incurred the site even more costs due to high bandwidth. ( everyone downloading their stuff off of the site )
By the way Brian, the https link has now been taken off too.

-Jonathan
Lou Morris said…
try your login here: http://www.maj.com/
Brian Davis said…
Yes, the secure access point was evidently just a glitch somebody forgot to close, and probably was promptly noticed and shut down shortly after it was discovered and the traffic levels shot way up.

As to logging into Maj.com, yes, the Brickshelf user/password combinations work there, but the Brickshelf content is not accessible at the moment through there. Maj.com and Brickshelf are, as another poste put it, "sister sites", very closely related - but not the same thing.

At this point, I'd simply urge patience - it may come back. It may not. Either way, it's likely a "wait and see" type situation for most of us.

--
Brian Davis
Peter Hoh said…
In the wake of Brickshelf's departure, I decided to donate a little cash (US$5.00) to one of the other unofficial LEGO sites that I rely on. I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to do the same, but in the past week, Peeron has made doing my job a little easier, and I wanted to reward them for it.
Peter Hoh said…
Troy, from Troy's Surplus LEGO, one of the big sellers on Bricklink, seems to know the person responsible for Brickshelf. Here's what he wrote earlier today:

Have no fear, all is not lost.

While taking the site down was intentional (as in it was not hacked) the reasoning behind it has not yet been
disclosed.

Be assured, however, that the pictures ARE NOT lost, nor will they be.

Exercise some patience, and this will all be worked out in the near future.
Eric D. Burdo said…
(more from Troy) From one of the BrickLink discussions...


Just be assured that things are being worked on and that BrickShelf is not lost. When more information is vailable, it will be presented.

http://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=209386

Looks like something is in the works, but no news yet.

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