Changes to Dropbox for Image Hosting
Aug. 20th, 2021 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodanI don't know if anyone here uses Dropbox as their image host, or if they do and have been confounded by the recent and unannounced changes to their URL and file link structure, which basically has borked up all of your image links.
In the beginning, there was the "Public" folder and all you had to do was copy the link and attach it to the "img src=" tag. About 5 years ago, DB got rid of the Public folder (allegedly for security reasons), but people quickly found a workaround, by replacing the "www.dropbox..." with "dl.dropbox..."
About two months ago, that seemed to go bye-bye, and all of my hosted images disappeared. Except they didn't - if I right-clicked and selected "load image", the image showed up just fine.
It took a while to figure out the changes. Dropbox actually supports image hosting, but the instructions they've provided are not correct (I'm not going to repeat them here as they will confuse anyone who finds this useful).
What you need to do when hosting from Dropbox is to change "dl.dropbox.com/s/..." to "dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/" on all of your existing and apparently borked up links, and when you host a new image, replace "www.dropbox.com/s/" at the start of the URL to "dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/".
I've spent the past few hours updating stuff on AO3, but I'm not going back and fixing old journal entries here. Not enough traffic, sorry.
In the beginning, there was the "Public" folder and all you had to do was copy the link and attach it to the "img src=" tag. About 5 years ago, DB got rid of the Public folder (allegedly for security reasons), but people quickly found a workaround, by replacing the "www.dropbox..." with "dl.dropbox..."
About two months ago, that seemed to go bye-bye, and all of my hosted images disappeared. Except they didn't - if I right-clicked and selected "load image", the image showed up just fine.
It took a while to figure out the changes. Dropbox actually supports image hosting, but the instructions they've provided are not correct (I'm not going to repeat them here as they will confuse anyone who finds this useful).
What you need to do when hosting from Dropbox is to change "dl.dropbox.com/s/..." to "dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/" on all of your existing and apparently borked up links, and when you host a new image, replace "www.dropbox.com/s/" at the start of the URL to "dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/".
I've spent the past few hours updating stuff on AO3, but I'm not going back and fixing old journal entries here. Not enough traffic, sorry.
