Image Hosts?

Harper Alston

Harper Alston

off we go, into the wild blue yonder
 
Messages
1,823
OOC First Name
Ana
Blood Status
Muggleborn
Relationship Status
Single
Wand
Straight 12.5'' Flexible Larch Wand with Dragon Heartstring Core
Age
21
Finally taking Cyndi's advice and creating a topic about this

Does anyone have recommendations for a good image host?

Imgur seems to have started to crack down on hotlinking (which has always been against their TOS)**. I recently tried using them to host a photo for the Photo Challenge, but it would not load when I tried to preview the post. It's still visible in my account, so it's unrelated to the planned deletion of NSFW content and inactive content not tied to an account. If you're using Imgur, I'd highly recommend double-checking your signatures/bios because I've noticed a lot of broken images pop up in the last 12 or so hours.

Also wanted to use this topic as a sort of personal announcement that if anyone has lost a graphic I made for them, you're welcome to PM me, and I can send you another copy. All the old links to my graphics are broken, so if you didn't rehost, you likely now have a broken image in your signature/bio.

**Editing this because Rowan found a link that says Imgur allows hotlinking in forums. But their TOS does prohibit using them to host avatars (and I would assume they dislike signatures too since those take up more resources than a one-off post)
 
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It's getting so so so hard to find reliable image hosting these days, it suuuuuuuuuuuucks. I use imgur and so far I haven't noticed any issues, fingers crossed it stays that way. (Transferring everything over from photobucket when that bit the dust was a nightmare and i have 3x as many characters now 🫠 ) Them banning hotlinking seems pretty counterintuitive to me, since the original purpose of imgur was supposed to be as an image host for people to hotlink to reddit.

I've heard hotlinking from tumblr is fairly reliable - I don't tend to use it myself, but I know people who do and it seems to work for them. (Will probably be my go-to if imgur gives me the boot, but fingers crossed things stay good!)

EDIT: JK TURNS OUT I THOUGHT I WAS FINE BC MY SIGS ARE DISPLAYING BUT MY BIOS ARE BROKEN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Anyway I did a lil more digging, and this page seems to imply that HNZ may have been blocked by mistake - hotlinking to forums is explicitly allowed by their TOS, so if it becomes more of a HNZ-wide issue it might be down to the site itself being wrongfully blocked.
 
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I know that Imgur randomly blocked all forums on Jcink (a popular forum host for roleplays) a couple years ago. I think the ban was eventually lifted without explanation, but it doesn't really bode well if this is a sitewide block
 
Oh man, I didn't know about that. I think Xenforo works differently in that it's software rather than a host, so some kind of autoflagger may have registered HNZ as being a website instead of a forum? 100% speculation though, I don't know anything for sure.

EDIT: Said this to Ana on Discord but it felt relevant to bring to the thread; if it IS HNZ being blacklisted by Imgur, the reason some images are breaking and some aren't may be down to HNZ having some images cached. Doesn't mean those images won't break down the line, so I'd advise everyone to keep an eye on your stuff.
 
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:cry:
I also upload all the banners I make to imgur, but I have them all backed up, so PM me if you need me to re-upload one!

I realise a lot of my buttons are breaking too, I'll fix them ASAP
 
I am rehosting my stuff to tumblr.
I don't have access to any of my old banners, but if anyone does have a graphic from me, I'd need to know the timeframe when it was made because it might be on my old laptop that takes 30 minutes to boot up.
 
For the people using/planning to use Tumblr, how do you organize your images? Tags?

I have hundreds of graphics, so I'm trying to find a host that has an organization system of some sort. I've been eyeing Lensdump, but my main hesitation is that it seems to be one person's passion project, so there's always the risk of them suddenly shutting down if they can't cover costs.
 
Harper Alston said:
For the people using/planning to use Tumblr, how do you organize your images? Tags?

I have hundreds of graphics, so I'm trying to find a host that has an organization system of some sort. I've been eyeing Lensdump, but my main hesitation is that it seems to be one person's passion project, so there's always the risk of them suddenly shutting down if they can't cover costs.
Click to expand...

I use tags, usually first name of the character, sometimes by year if i'm uploading stuff for characters for the yearbook. If i upload things for other people, i just tag as 'other' .

Tumblr can be said to be nightmarish to search on, so unless you're really looking to put stuff out there, it's unlikely anyone will see it. For you own blog, i use the archive page to see things better so: https://emziess.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/mine which gives me an overview of things I've made, but for like a specific show/person/etc, like say Steve Harrington: https://emziess.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/steve harrington which gives me everything I've ever tagged with that, whether I made it or not (useful for if you want to look at gifs to use)
 
I noticed my bios yesterday and was sad

I am personally for now going to be in denial and hope it fixes itself somehow 🤞 I don't want to bother reuploading stuff just yet @_@
 
Amber Chou Wilson said:
I am personally for now going to be in denial and hope it fixes itself somehow 🤞 I don't want to bother reuploading stuff just yet @_@
Click to expand...

Sameeee, I'm just praying it gets sorted out. Rehosting all my stuff out last time took ages, and I've got substantially more characters now that would need sigs, buttons, bio images, old yearbook pictures, all rehosted and updated, plus my graphic gallery and all the tutorials. I'd be looking at weeks of work. Any old posts that can't be edited anymore will just be done for. I save backups of everything I make for HNZ but it's a task and a half to update it all individually.
 
One thing I do find interesting/hopeful(?) and at least useful if you're looking for images: if you edit your post that has them (or edit your signature) It does show up and you can re-save it.

Unfortunately re-uploading it to imgur doesn't fix it.
 
Amber Chou Wilson said:
One thing I do find interesting/hopeful(?) and at least useful if you're looking for images: if you edit your post that has them (or edit your signature) It does show up and you can re-save it.

Unfortunately re-uploading it to imgur doesn't fix it.
Click to expand...
That helped me find my images in my folder when I went through Imgur and saved them all. Just by the file name itself.

I'd offer to help if it push came to shove, but most of the work is editing the post itself.
 
No idea if it'll do anything, but I've sent in a support ticket to Imgur. I've done another scouring of their help docs and info, and everything in their documentation implies that use on HNZ is entirely within their TOS so I can't see it being any kind of deliberate crackdown on forum hotlinking. (If it wasn't allowed, they probably wouldn't provide bbcode links for images in the first place...) I included a link to this thread so they can see it's not a me problem but a sitewide problem. As I said no idea if it'll do anything, but contacting them directly seems like the way to go.
 
This image hosting issue gives me the push to go through my accounts one by one to check on their banners. I just want to make a list so that I can have them all ready in one go when I reach out to the people who made them. Damn, this is so frustrating.
 
If anyone also needs another source, I have switched over to using imgbb for hosting while imgur sorts itself out (i hope it sorts itself out)
 
Here we go, friends & fiends:
hogwarts.nz

A Solution for Image Hosting Woes

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...
hogwarts.nz hogwarts.nz
 
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