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Thank you, Bob.

Here are the instructions from Photobucket:

On Mac OS X:

Type lookupd -flushcache in your terminal to flush the DNS resolver cache. (ex: bash-2.05a$ lookupd -flushcache)
Once you run the command your DNS cache (in Mac OS X) will flush.
Once the above suggestions have been tried, please try logging into and using your Photobucket account again.

If the problems persist, please click the contact us link below and provide a detailed description of the problem you are experiencing. Please be sure to include details for any steps you have already attempted to resolve the problem.

I don’t even understand WHERE in my “terminal” I’m supposed to start typing.

In any event, I’m afraid my Mac which has run without ANY problem or breakdown for about 7 years will be “terminally” dead.

Unless you have problems getting to photobucket when you type photobucket.com in the address bar, that won’t solve any problems. That command clears your local domain name service cache on your computer.

DNS stands for Domain Name Service, which is the internet protocol for resolving a website’s name to the numeric i.p. address that your computer can use.

It would fix a problem where they numeric address for photobucket had changed, but your computer was still looking at the old address. A big site like Photobucket has many different servers at different ip addresses.

The command they gave you shouldn’t hurt anything, but I’m not sure it will solve the problem. You can get a terminal in the applications/utilities/ folder. That’s where you learn that OSX is just a pretty graphical shell for BSD unix.

On Mac OS X:

Type lookupd -flushcache in your terminal to flush the DNS resolver cache. (ex: bash-2.05a$ lookupd -flushcache) Once you run the command your DNS cache (in Mac OS X) will flush.
Once the above suggestions have been tried, please try logging into and using your Photobucket account again.

If the problems persist, please click the contact us link below and provide a detailed description of the problem you are experiencing. Please be sure to include details for any steps you have already attempted to resolve the problem.

I don’t even understand WHERE in my “terminal” I’m supposed to start typing.

I do not own an Apple Mac and never have and I have never even had the chance to even try. But I plan to ! ;9 None-the-less, I have used Linux since the very early 1990's. Before that, I used Unix.

I recognize the instructions you mentioned above. The "terminal" on your Mac is a DOS like text window where you type. You issue commands directly to the operating system or run text based programs within the terminal window. There are even windows types programs that can be started from the command line in the terminal window.

My guess is you LAUNCH the terminal window from a program LAUNCHER in your Utilities Folder, which you should already know how to access.

After you launch the terminal, you will see a flashing cursor called a command prompt. The name of the command line environment shell or just shell, is BASH (Bourne Again SHell after the author, J.(?) Bourne) Other shells exist, such as the Korn shell, the C shell and small ones such as Ash, etc. Commands can be written as scripts in text files and the commands are executed sequentially.

The bash-2.05a$ is likely the version of the BASH shell you are using. The $ character tells me its very likely the command prompt.

So, type exactly 'lookupd -flushcache' without the quotation marks on the same line as the '$' appears and press the [Enter] key.

Like your web browser, the cache will be flushed (cleaned out) and you will be able to access photobucket again.

When the command prompt returns, type 'exit' without the quotes and the press [Enter] to close the terminal window and return the Mac OSX windows environment.

You can read more about the bash shell and other shells by typing 'bash shell' in Google.

The reason you have these utilities and features on your computer is to GIVE YOU OWNERSHIP of the computer. You have the choice of using or not using a feature. ;9

Incidentally, this spring I have budgeted and planned to purchase an iMac Pro (the big 'un :) ) for use as my everyday computer. I've heard very positive things about Mac OSX and particularly the iMac Pro hardware running the Mac OSX.