A Solution for Image Hosting Woes

[Nicolas King]

With imgur being naughty we seem to have entered a fifth era of image hosting on HNZ. As TinyPic, ImageShack, PhotoBucket, and now imgur have fallen we can be grateful that it's not as bad as tinypic (where random images would load in place of what should have been your signature!) but still the pattern has become clear and relying on even the most beneficent of third party image hosts can no longer be assured.

Specifically, imgur appears to be blocking HNZ's server from caching images for users. If we turn off the image proxy (as I have just done temporarily to allow you to save images easily) the images load, but this is not ideal for a variety of reasons and the only long-term solution remains moving away from imgur (even if they unblock us, their fickleness seems to be increasing over time!).

Since hosting images ourselves seems to be the only way to guarantee longevity, this is the course the admin have decided to take and a new page where all members of HNZ can upload images is now accessible. It is very simple, but will do the trick and give longerterm peace of mind that when you host (or rehost!) your graphics they won't go anywhere.

There are some ground rules which are outlined on the upload page:

• You may only upload image files.
• Maximum size per upload is 600kB (this is 200kb more than the maximum size allowed in signatures!)
• Images uploaded must be exclusively for use on HNZ
• Images uploaded must adhere to all Board Rules

Since this is a basic uploader it also only accepts one image at a time (and this will not be changing) and when you upload an image you must save the URL yourself as there's no way for you to go back to retrieve it later. (Might I suggest using your personal notepad?)

If you do have images which are not displaying on the board from imgur, opening the URL that you put in your signature directly will show the image again. You can then save that image to your device and upload it afresh to HNZ's server. (Please reuse recent signatures and don't bombard poor graphics makers with requests!) Mia will soon post a how-to guide if you need assistance on that.

That all said, without any further ado:

[The Graphics Upload Page]​

A link to this page is now a subforum of the Graphics Requests forum so you can find it with relative ease going forward.

If you've any questions or concerns feel free to let us know, but we hope this will solve some of the frustration you've been enduring and also prevent a future sixth era of abandoning another image host (if you don't think tumblr's days are numbered, friends...).

On behalf of the HNZ Site Staff,

Nick

 

[Nicolas King]

Specifically, imgur appears to be blocking HNZ's server from caching images for users. If we turn off the image proxy (as I have just done temporarily to allow you to save images easily) the images load, but this is not ideal for a variety of reasons and the only long-term solution remains moving away from imgur (even if they unblock us, their fickleness seems to be increasing over time!).

On this note - my disabling the HNZ image cache/proxy may or may not have solved the issue for you, imgur also seems to have some rate limiting in effect as well.
So this is an attempt to make a transition easier, not a long term solution either way - the long term solution is rehosting and rehosting on our own server gives us peace of mind!

 

[Amber Chou Wilson]

Omg Nick TY for this!

Question, is it just meant for sigs or also allowed for Bio graphics and stuff? I don't want to overload it. For me I think this is a good time to limit the amount of images I use in bios

(Might I suggest using your personal notepad?)

????!! How have I never found this?? I've been using editor templates but I've never seen this, what is this wizardry

 

[Nicolas King]

Question, is it just meant for sigs or also allowed for Bio graphics and stuff? I don't want to overload it. For me I think this is a good time to limit the amount of images I use in bios

You're welcome to use it for bio graphics as well, as long as they all stay within that size limit. Really anything for exclusively HNZ use is fine to upload to this page for.

????!! How have I never found this?? I've been using editor templates but I've never seen this, what is this wizardry

 

[Professor Elvera Le Fey]

Okay. so you really liked your old graphic and don't want to lose it but unfortunately, you don't have it saved on your computer.

Thankfully there are a few ways to get around that

1. edit the post/sig. The image should still display. which you can save. or you can toggle to BB code, copy it, and paste the URL in a new tab/window
   
2. contact the graphics maker. They may have it saved or be able to find it in their Imgur - but please be mindful of graphics makers time. they have a lot of graphics to look through
   
3. now, this one is a little convoluted, so stick with me and I will break it down.
   
   • find the image you want on a post, right-click it and open it in a new tab.
     
   • you will probably get he little no image image. don't worry that is what you should get.
     
   • look at the url and you will probable see something like this https://hogwarts.nz/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FbmqqYs4.png&hash=f28d99f0e724ccf6d4292bd50ff9ac20
     
   • delete everything from Hogwarts to https%3A%2F%2F and everything after the .png
     
   • change the %2F to a /
     
   • aka get rid of everything in red and change what is in blue to a /
     
   • https:// hogwarts.nz/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FbmqqYs4.png&hash=f28d99f0e724ccf6d4292bd50ff9ac20
     
   • and you will be left with https://i.imgur.com/bmqqYs4.png
     
   • hit enter
     
   • you should have a picture, that you can save
     
   
   Hopefully that will help.
   

 

[Elliot Briar]

This fantastic, thank you Nick and staff for putting this together for us! Also is the personal notepad new or have I just never noticed it before cause that's super cool as well.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Thank you so much for setting this up Nick, you're an absolute lifesaver. (And so quickly too hot DAMN I was expecting to be waiting a while!) Time to start porting... several hundred images over...... oof.........

I can't speak for other people, but if this winds up driving HNZ's hosting costs up substantially, I know I'd be totally keen for some kind of donation system to keep the lights on - spend your money where you spend your time, and I've spent a LOT of time here over the years

 

[Samantha Jacobs]

Thank you so much nick and staff for setting this up!! this will defs help for sure! And i’m on board with what Rowan said with the donation system, i’m happy to help with that too hehe

 

[Alexis Kramer]

Finally managed to save some of my character's banners except for the ones being hosted to nickpic. Anyone has a solution for this?

 

[Harper Alston]

Finally managed to save some of my character's banners except for the ones being hosted to nickpic. Anyone has a solution for this?

I'm pretty sure I was the only one using Nickpic to host graphics, so you're going to have to PM me a list of the banners you need, and I'll reupload them and send them to you. (Nickpic went down completely, so there's no way to retrieve those images).

The same goes for anyone else who was using one of my graphics — you need to PM me for new copies of those images.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Same offer goes for me - if I've made you a graphic in the past and you aren't able to access it for whatever reason, feel free to message me and I'll send it over to you. I save everything forever, so I guarantee I've still got it backed up somewhere.

 

[Alexis Kramer]

I'm pretty sure I was the only one using Nickpic to host graphics, so you're going to have to PM me a list of the banners you need, and I'll reupload them and send them to you. (Nickpic went down completely, so there's no way to retrieve those images).

The same goes for anyone else who was using one of my graphics — you need to PM me for new copies of those images.

Oh yay! I'm currently making the list so once I'm done, I'll PM them in one go. This all goes the same to everyone else that I might have requested graphics from. Thank you!

 

[Professor Killian Borisyuk]

If any of mine are lost, feel free to reach out to me. I should have mine saved, depending on the age (if the graphic is over 3 years old, just ask for a new one at that point because I doubt my old laptop will be worth the hassle).

 

[Cyndi Kingsley]

Archived​

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It's time for some new news, so we're archiving this to get it out of the way.

Please make sure to check out the news and updates section for the most up to date site news. If you have any questions about this piece of news, please reach out to an administrator.

~The HNZ Site Staff