Ending support of public folder

awolff,

I don't see a reason as to why Dropbox would take any action against a script like this. This use case is fully within the scope of the API. With some caching (coming soon™) it will be almost impossible to hit API limits, which will make it more resilient than public folders.

I have some prior experience with the Dropbox API for automated backups and similar, and it's been working very well.

I have noticed something odd but I am not quite sure if I am mistaken or not, anyone to clarify ?

1- I understand that all ***OLD*** public links like :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29826503/Samsung-F/vacances_2017.jpg

won't work any more starting Sept. 1st, 2017

2- Instead, ***NEW*** links should now be phrased as :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg/vacances_2017.jpg?raw=1

or as :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg/vacances_2017.jpg

3- Nevertheless, I noticed that a link like :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg

(the same as in 2- but without the file name) works ***ALSO*** quite well as Dropcock AUTO-redirects it to :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg/vacances_2017.jpg?dl=0

So my question is : starting Sept. 1st,  do I have to change all my ***OLD*** public links (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29826503/filename.jpg)  to :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blahblaahblahblah/filename.jpg ?

or :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blahblaahblahblah/filename.jpg?raw=1 ?

or :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blahblaahblahblah ?

Needless to say that I have HUNDREDS of links to change in my web site and only 10 DAYS to do it !

You may not see a reason why Dropbox would change anything, but then that was also the case thousands of their users. Whether in the digital world or in the physical world, if you don't have physical possession of some valuable item, you don't really own it. If the bank, brokerage or government wants to take all your savings, stocks, etc, they can remotely do so with the stroke of a keyboard or pen. The same is true of your digital goods.

Keep good local backups of everything you value. Storage devices these days are cheap, especially in comparison to some of the valuable, often irreplaceable information that gets stored on them. I do this and also make sure I have the hardware and software which allows the retrieving of the data. Don't trust your data to the cloud.

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awolff wrote:

You may not see a reason why Dropbox would change anything, but then that was also the case thousands of their users. Whether in the digital world or in the physical world, if you don't have physical possession of some valuable item, you don't really own it. If the bank, brokerage or government wants to take all your savings, stocks, etc, they can remotely do so with the stroke of a keyboard or pen. The same is true of your digital goods.

Keep good local backups of everything you value. Storage devices these days are cheap, especially in comparison to some of the valuable, often irreplaceable information that gets stored on them. I do this and also make sure I have the hardware and software which allows the retrieving of the data. Don't trust your data to the cloud.

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All well and good, but what is at issue isn't the loss of data at all. It's the arbitrary mass loss of links to data, disseminated throughout the internet over years of input, with NO means of remedying save manually tracing all (if that were at all possible) and restoring them either with one by one convoluted restructuring to circumvent Dopebox's shenanigans or links to Data hosted elsewhere. 

Suggest you actually read the posts before issueing sermons awolff. You've completely missed the point. As a paying user of Dropbox I want to know why they cannot continue to support public folder for those using it already, i can't see how it's any skin of their nose to leave it there for those who want it as a legacy feature. I've been using computers since about 1980 and I really haven't come across a comerical decision like this that makes no sense to me at all.

As somebody just explained to you, we have the data still sitting in our Public folders, the point is that all the links on the web will now point to nothing as of September.

Exactly.

I'm just gone through one forum (luckily all photos ar ein one thread) and manually update about 60 links.

Meanshile I'm slowly syncing Amazon drive and removing from dropbox.

Why do not they keep the links that exist on the public folder, what are they thinking? I do not understand a big company like Dropbox doing such an act, so disappointed. :( :( :( :(

Just a few days ago I moved all but 5GB of files out of my Dropbox folder in preparation of cancelling my subscription. The countless hours I spent over the years creating student curriculum, lost. The thousands of links in countless blogs, lost. The trust I had in Dropbox, lost. My hard earned money going to Dropbox, lost! Kiss my ASCII Dropbox.

I canceled my sub because of this. Good bye.

This is my first post in this new consolidated thread. In December I posted this brief one:

"Shame on you, Dropbox, for letting down your loyal paying base of users in such cavalier fashion."

I recently had a reminder from DB of the imminent catastrophe when my many hundreds of links created as a Pro user will no longer be accessible. Many, probably most, are video forum posts to help others, with tutorials etc.

I'd appreciate a summary of the latest practical advice on a few technical points please so that  I can start preparing. I'm not a programmer or 'techie' but use a macro-writing tool (Macro Express Pro) for many purposes. I'm hoping that I can automate some aspects of the inevitable work due to DB's appalling decision to invalidate my links.

Q1:  Is the most sensible first step to make a new folder called say 'Previously Public' and copy all my Public content to it?

Q2: I've seen various suggestions within the 60 pages of this thread  about changing the syntax of the resulting links that will be assigned to these.  But it seems with occasional contradictions or footnotes about unreliability. What is the latest consensus from experienced users please? I want to get as close to my previous modus operandi as possible. Namely, include a link in a forum post to an image, PDF, video, zip, etc, and be confident that forum users or email recipients will be able to open it. IOW, the no-brainer approach for which I'm currently paying.

Any other practical advice would be much appreciated please.

Terry, UK.

Cancelled mine yesterday as well.

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Terry P. wrote:

 

I'd appreciate a summary of the latest practical advice on a few technical points please so that  I can start preparing. I'm not a programmer or 'techie' but use a macro-writing tool (Macro Express Pro) for many purposes. I'm hoping that I can automate some aspects of the inevitable work due to DB's appalling decision to invalidate my links.

 

All you can do to protect existing Public Folder links, is to re-link each and every one of them (if you can) using the new type of DB link. This is the real Dropbox crime - not to grandfather the existing links out there.

 

Q1:  Is the most sensible first step to make a new folder called say 'Previously Public' and copy all my Public content to it?

 

No - your existing Public folder is still a valid DB folder, but now it's just like any other. IOW you must get a url for any item in it you want to link to, then change the end from ?dl=0 to ?raw=1

 

Q2: I've seen various suggestions within the 60 pages of this thread  about changing the syntax of the resulting links that will be assigned to these.  But it seems with occasional contradictions or footnotes about unreliability. What is the latest consensus from experienced users please? I want to get as close to my previous modus operandi as possible. Namely, include a link in a forum post to an image, PDF, video, zip, etc, and be confident that forum users or email recipients will be able to open it. IOW, the no-brainer approach for which I'm currently paying.

 

As mentioned, change the ending ?dl=0 (which forces users to go to the DB site to download the content) to ?raw=1 which - on the majority of sites that allow it - will embed the content directly into a webpage just like the old Public links did.

 

Any other practical advice would be much appreciated please.

 

Terry, UK.

 

 

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My last days, I will cancel on September 1st, I hope you dissatisfied also cancel and say that for this reason

I remember I chose dropbox when it first came out because it seemed new, shiny and radical. I also remember seeing lots of dead forum images from stores like photobucket and thinking "I gotta choose wisely - something with integrity that'll last." 

Well, the inneviatble has happened and years of forum posting are full of dead links. Either they become:

a) a victim of being a success in a free-market economy (read: advertising, revenue, boards, corporate needs over customers) or

b) a success of being a victim of a free market economy (where altruism, creativity and humanoty never prevails!)

Rant over. Soultion: cut the cord. Sort your own home server (lot easier than it sounds - essentially just leaving a PC on 24hours) + download this app I made + voila! Your very own dropbox out of other peoples' hands.

https://sites.google.com/view/magoarcade/software/whosebox

Of course they will remove this, because they don't like anything that disagrees with them.

Hi ym58

ym58 wrote:

I have noticed something odd but I am not quite sure if I am mistaken or not, anyone to clarify ?

 

1- I understand that all ***OLD*** public links like :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29826503/Samsung-F/vacances_2017.jpg

won't work any more starting Sept. 1st, 2017

 

2- Instead, ***NEW*** links should now be phrased as :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg/vacances_2017.jpg?raw=1

or as :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg/vacances_2017.jpg

 

If you want the raw images, then you can add the?raw=1 at the end of the link as above. That’s the easiest way to get just the image in the link.

 

3- Nevertheless, I noticed that a link like :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg

(the same as in 2- but without the file name) works ***ALSO*** quite well as Dropcock AUTO-redirects it to :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1s1omyumx4jeg/vacances_2017.jpg?dl=0

 

So my question is : starting Sept. 1st,  do I have to change all my ***OLD*** public links (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29826503/filename.jpg)  to :

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blahblaahblahblah/filename.jpg ?

or :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blahblaahblahblah/filename.jpg?raw=1 ?

or :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/blahblaahblahblah ?

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If you use the link or just the /s/token then it will have the Dropbox iframe around the image.

Hope this helps!

Terry, I did the same, luckily I've seen an ad for pCloud Public folder functionality, then spent few minutes to figure it out how it works...well, it's the same! :) And the best part - they have Dropbox backup feature, so I simply extracted my Dropbox pub links index file and that's it, for a couple of minutes I've transferred 6GB files...

It's a pity, I'm (was) a huge Dropbox fan and paid user, but some decisions are disputable and unclear for all of us.

There are so many requests to keep existing public folders, so there won't be massive broken images in forums, but anyway Dropbox moved on. I do not even start talking about implementing some easy, but very useful features, which are requested again by thousands of us...but there is a silence. Well, there are other cloud storage providers and they will fill this gap, I highly recommend to check pcloud dot com and see for yourself.

Best,

Wow, Brad is it really possible and that easy to maintain existing links to images? I can't see how that could be done without updating urls in every single post on every forum we ever made?

hi there, actually I will disagree with you - lately I had moved ALL my data on the cloud, except movies and stuff, which I can afford to lose. And I use all my files directly from the cloud folder - way more secure. If you have encrypted folder included in the cloud service, you are protected and you can store all your work, personal documents and so on. Back up, a physical one, is not needed.

As we speak about Public folders, back to the topic, I was just investigating where is best to store my index and files... obviously now I have to lookup for another solution.

Dropbox only keeps files backuped for a month I think (a year at the most). I found that out to my suprise assuming all deleted/corrupted files were backed up forever.

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Alastair L. wrote:

Dropbox only keeps files backuped for a month I think (a year at the most). I found that out to my suprise assuming all deleted/corrupted files were backed up forever.

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Just to give links for that.

Recovery is available for 30 days for non-paying users and up to a year if you have Extended Version History - at the time of deletion.

Its one of the reasons I'm very vocal on not using Dropbox as a backup tool. Use something like Carbonite or Backblaze.