Ending support of public folder

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.

---

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.

 

 

---

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.

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?

---

Alastair L. wrote:
I found this Dropbox alternative comparison site, they want your email for the tabulated comparison data but its all there for free in the long analysis.

https://www.cloudwards.net/top-10-secure-dropbox-alternatives/

---

Or, if you don't want to provide your email address:  https://www.cloudwards.net/comparison/

Alastair L., In Dropbox I hosted my static site with hundreds of files (images, javascript and css).

In the index file the path to the files is relative so there wasn't any problem with that.

I simply moved to pCloud, extracted my backup file and my site was live again! ;)

About embed pictures on forums, yes, this won't work, you have change them somehow.

I don't use this, just host my static site and in forums I post only link to html, so I need to change only one link, not every related image in file.

Hope that makes a sense.

Take care,

And if you check this comparison you will notice pCloud is the in the top position!
Check the review - https://www.cloudwards.net/review/pcloud/

And as far as I know - only they provide Public Folder functionality, same as it was in good old Dropbox...

With the loss of the Public folder's benefits (I pay for Dropbox Pro!) I have a major problem. I use the Public oder to upload score sheets from car shows I run. I then publish links to these score sheets on my web site for attendees to see their's and other's sheets. Obviously I can't name hundreds of people to each individual file for sharing so how dos I set a folder and it's contents so that a simple link to any file will allow anyone to see it, in other words like it was the Public folder.

Now to be clear as this was posted in another forum and the answer given was incorrect then marked solved and closed. I do not want to make a fiolder public so that people need to go to the foilder and choose a file, I need to make all the files "public" so that a link I create in a table will bring the user to the individual file which is an image actually. To show you how it works here is a link to a table that uses the public folder which is about to expire: http://nyautofest.com/NYAF/rulesresultsscores/show-results-and-score/springwestbury.html Toy will notice in the right coplumn a link called SCORE SHEET, that is the file that anypone can see. Once the public folder is dead these will no longer work. I have transfered all over to my server to acomplish the same goal but I don't want to do this, I prefer to keep using Dropbox (or equivalent) as it's easier to just dump new files into the folder. I did payt for this ability after all!

This loss of the public folder is a very bad thing by the way, why not just prevent people from using it to host web sites and leave the rest alone?

You can still get this to work because those Score Sheet links can point to any file in your dropbox, public folder or not. The new, improved (not IMO) dropbox allows you to link files from anyhere not just the public folder.

My public folder no longer works (not a pro user) nonetheless, I do not like the idea of sharing links from all over my dropbox. I like to have them all in one place so that they are easier to keep track of, so I created a folder called (as you would expect) "Links". Everything I share is in that folder, and further within folders inside that folder so that I can keep track of where I shared them e.g. all the images I have posted on XYZ Blog are in dropbox/links/xyxforum

I think you'll find that you can leave the Score Sheets in the Public Folder (which will become just an ordinary folder in dropbox),  and simply  change the links in your html master sheet to the new type of link url

e.g. the top link on your page is currently

.....dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18728859/ScoreSheets/2017/Spring125.png

it will have to be changed to something like

.....dropbox.com/s/owcjw6pgdp6sybb/Spring125.png?dl=0

I presume you now have the capability to link from anywhere in your dropbox (they were phasing that in befiore doing away with the Public Folder) Just do a test... try copying a score sheet image from your Public Folder into another folder (outside of the Public Folder) , create a link and paste the url into your html master sheet. (you may have to change the "dl=0" into "dl=1" or "raw=1" to get the client mouse click behaviour you want)

If you don't have that capability yet, I would be happy enough to drop that Spring125.png image into my dropbox and give you a link so you can see what it looks like and test it on your html master sheet.

Leo, I was in the same boat man!

I can't understand why there is no exception for current files/folders - so they can continue to work, so there won't be huge broken files and images around the web...but the decision was made and we have no choice.

Personaly, I've tested pCloud Public folder functionality, it's a ironic competitor implemented Dropbox abandoned feature, which was one of the best unique things... Take a look and try it.

It's now 1st September, 10:15 am here in the UK. As a Pro user, when exactly should I expect my old Public folder links to expire please?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Well, that's it. My Pro subscription expired right on time. By far the most pathetic, ill-conceived decision Dropbox has ever made, to invalidate public folder links and replace it with an inferior feature. I will not be renewing.

Respectfully request so called "super users" do not to reply to this post. I don't want to hear your "justifications" and "workarounds" just you can appease Dropbox management for e-cookies. Every shared link I have on the internet no longer works, and all for what? All for nothing. 

Thanks Mark. They duly expired yesterday afternoon, presumably soon after 00:00 SF time.

(BTW, I replied yesterday but I don't see it here.)

Matthew, I can feel your frustration man!

Just let you know, ironicaly Dropbox competitors (pCloud) started to offer same functionality (Public Folder), if you are interested, just check for yourself.

Take care,

So far I'm liking the Public Folder on pCloud. Direct links, images, and I can even run HTML from it like the good old days. You get a 7 day free trial with the free 10Gb version. Worth a paid sunscription I think.

Here is a company that has capitalized on the mistake made by Dropbox. A good lesson perhaps.