[Solved] Linked original images from Zenfolio has stopped displaying

[Øivind Tøien]

I discovered that images originals that I have linked from my Zenfolio account have stopped displaying here if they do not reside in the local cache (for instance by opening an incognito window.) It also happens if new images are linked. Are anyone else who link images from Zenfolio experiencing this with their images?
The images display on the Zenfolio site, but those are the previews, not originals. The problem is also present at the UV photo site, also with Internet Explorer.

This seems to have started happening in the last couple of days, as new images I uploaded Saturday were OK at that point.  I always link to originals of final size as I do not trust the previews to always be available. Just to illustrate what happens (or rather not...), I include a linked image I uploaded today below. I can download the original from Zenfolio, so this is obviously a technical problem.

[PeterN]

No problems on my side. I usually copy and paste the img part of the BB-code and that works fine...so far.

[Øivind Tøien]

No problems on my side. I usually copy and paste the img part of the BB-code and that works fine...so far.

The last image you posted in the daily thread did not have a zenfolio URL but I assume you have your own site name:
https://www.visualcue.nl/img/s/v-10/p3872665592-5.jpg
It anyway looks like you are pointing to one of the resized image previews, not the originals. I can also make that working, but zenfolio will then try to do some processing with the resizing etc. that I do not have control over and they tend to delete those previews at regular intervals, so I have not used to link to previews, like this one:

(This image displays in the daily thread, but then as an attachment.)



Anyone else here who link directly to the Zenfolio image originals as below (typically resized by yourself) ?

[Øivind Tøien]

They fixed the problem so it is back to normal now. The invisible image in the original post above is now visible.

[Birna Rørslett]

Good. Another headache sorted.

Basically the NG Crew would wish all images to be stored on our website and not linked to external sources. That ensures they always are available. The downside of course is that eventually we'll run out of storage space and have to upgrade to a more spacious server. At present our VPS is well behaved and we have no immediate problems concerning storage.

[Øivind Tøien]

Yes, I am aware of the problem of course. One need to be very committed to stick to the image hosting site when linking external images and not move images around in a way that can break the links. (The problem in this case was a temporary configuration issue by the site, not on my end). Free image hosting sites that come and go are problematic and should be avoided; one really need stability and good support and backup routines by the site.

However external linking has the big advantage when making reportage style posts of allowing text to be mingled with images and not have to correlate text description with a number of images bunched together as attachments at the end. That advantage should not be underestimated with respect to contributing to quality of NG posts.

I personally keep all images posted in different fora separated in different galleries on the hosting site that are dedicated to the specific forum only. (Also I keep a parallel gallery for each forum dedicated to more technically oriented images.) Thereby I can easily see which images I have posted in a particular forum before. And it ends up as a nice collection of images by itself.

Images posted on a site as attachments or stored on the site are not necessarily secure, it depends. The owner of the Astrobin image hosting and astronomy site learned that the hard way fairly recently when a system crash caused a rather large proportion of the hosted images on the site to be permanently lost. (A big loss for the astronomy society - many members thought they were safe and did not have them backed up locally.) The backup routines that were thought to be in place were not there, as was confirmed when he read the fine print of his server provider's conditions. In the discussion that followed it was pointed out a number of big server and cloud providers that had default schemes without adequate backup routines.

[Birna Rørslett]

We are aware of those potential issues you mention. Regular backup is part of our VPS plan at our provider. Now and then I do an extra backup of the entire server, just in case.

Apparently it is our chosen forum software that puts the attachments at the end of the posts. Other software behave differently, e.g. at our "sister" site, UVP.

[pluton]

It is my observation over ≈13 years of looking at photo forums that it is much more likely that linked images will become unavailable at some point, as compared to forum-stored images. It is a pity that the forum software limits the text + photos layout possibilities...I understand why one would want to use externally linked files for that reason.

[Birna Rørslett]

Actually, you can "link" NG images posted elsewhere, for example this



and continue your post afterwards.

However, unless you have the image in your NG Gallery (for Supporters), it is a little on the convoluted side to manage

[Bent Hjarbo]

Birna you made me look for the gallery, but I am not able to find any picture, I know that I have not uploaded any, but it should be possible to see other, right?

[Birna Rørslett]

Hmm. Seems we have run into a database error that prevents the Galleries for showing up. I'll look into this tomorrow. Now it's getting late.

I might have to shut down NG for a short while to fix this. But as I said, tomorrow at earliest.

[Øivind Tøien]

We are aware of those potential issues you mention. Regular backup is part of our VPS plan at our provider. Now and then I do an extra backup of the entire server, just in case.

Apparently it is our chosen forum software that puts the attachments at the end of the posts. Other software behave differently, e.g. at our "sister" site, UVP.

I certainly did not mean to imply that inadequate backup problems would apply to this forum, for that I know that moderators are too careful to let that happen.

Congratulations with the duckweed book, look like quite an achievement!  Interesting with the possibility of internal linking. However I wonder what happens if a user then forget to keep up the supporter membership? I have unintentionally had several longer (months) or shorter (days) lapses because the reminder ended up in in my spam folder (fixed now) or I was late because the reminder came so early that I forgot about it  . If the restriction is on the uploading side of the gallery, it should not be a problem though.

It is my observation over ≈13 years of looking at photo forums that it is much more likely that linked images will become unavailable at some point, as compared to forum-stored images. It is a pity that the forum software limits the text + photos layout possibilities...I understand why one would want to use externally linked files for that reason.

Yes, that would be the case as images are linked from all sorts of hosting sites. A lot of images disappeared when Flicker suddenly restricted how many images were allowed to be linked from from the free accounts. The possibility that free sites change their conditions of use should always be considered. Except for temporary system errors like the one that initiated this thread, I cannot recall pay sites like Smugmug and Zenfolio have caused broken links unless user induced or caused by buffering problems by the software of a forum. (I had a couple of single image cases on DPR that was driving me crazy; the originals were still available when clicking the "original" link though).

However I am always careful to link to original images resized by me because Zenfolio as mentioned above is notorious for now and then deleting the auto-generated resized previews, and regeneration of those on the fly is sometimes quite slow. They have good backup routines for the originals though. Both companies seem to be reasonably stable economically.

When this happened, I started thinking that it would be a good idea to now and then archive .pdf printouts of the part of forum threads where I have contributed images (might be harder with the monthly threads though), in case of need to restore them + plus also a mirror of the gallery where I keep the resized images, so that they are all in one place locally too. This would make it more easy to remember which image was used, and find a copy to restore from.