Ending support of public folder

[ae2rigc]

Just heard from dropbox that support for the public folder is ending.

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As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Pro users will be able to use the Public folder until
September 1, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox.

If you’d like to keep sharing files in your Public folder, you can create new shared links. Just make sure to send the new URLs to your collaborators.

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It is one of the most useful features of the service for me as I use it to get links to single files that I can send to people without setting up shared folders and requiring them to have dropbox accounts.

(Save file to my public folder locally, syncs, right click, get publick link, paste. Doesn't get any easier than that.)

It's also useful for bb style forum posts where you can link to images with an easy tag.

With the public folder support being removed, is there going to be an alternative solution to allow easy public sharing of single files?

[gbm]

Dropbox gives these instructions for sharing a link:

"Share a link

Sign in to dropbox.com.
Hover your cursor over the file or folder you'd like to share and click Share when it appears.
If a link hasn't been created, click Create a link.

If a link was already created, click Copy link.
The link will be copied to your clipboard. You can then paste it to an email, message, or wherever people can access it."

Well, this last sentence is not true. If the link is used to post a link to a bulletin board, the picture does not appear. If it is used as is it doesn't bring up just the picture, but a web page with options to comment etc.

I just don't get it!

[gbm]

Did some testing with One Drive and G-Drive. The links will not open in vBulletin forum software when embedded ( [IMG] link [/IMG] So no Joy there either.

If Dropbox don't accommodate us, we appear to be screwed unless we get our own web hosting site or are there other options?

[Oskar_M]

Hola!!

gracias por el ofrecimiento. Te he mandado un correo.

Saludos,

Oskar.

[TaraKM]

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@Mark wrote:
This isnt exactly new news I'm afraid.

And it was replaced a LONG LONG time ago by shared links which are pretty much Public Links BUT allowed in any location within your Dropbox: www.dropbox.com/help/167 (as per the link in the email)

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I received this email too a few days ago, and the instructions implied that the links would be changing, so we'd need to swap them all over before March of next year. I went in to start changing the many links I share publicly for my courses, and found that they were exactly the same as the ones I've already got in place. 

Are you saying that clicking the 'share' button on the right of each file already generates the right link? And that these will not be changed? Because if that's the case I'm not sure why Dropbox sent the email.

[fmv38]

Hi,

I have an important problem with the ending of the public folder.

I edit a scientific electronic journal which I send to its subscribers using the public folder. But I don’t send the link of the folder: each subscriber receive a personal link with his personal copy watermarked with his name.

With the public folder it is easy to build the appropriate link automatically for each subscriber, knowing the name of his file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/000000000/FileName. This abled me to create a script with which I can send individual emails to each subscriber.

The problem is that out of the public folder it seems to be impossible to create the individual links automatically. Here is what I get with two files in the same folder:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uusutcqs9myc4/FileName1?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b73x1bj6t9fd1/FileName2?dl=0

The result is that I should create links individually for each of the subscribers: approximately 10 hours per month (just impossible) instead of 5 minutes today…

Any solution?

Thank’s

[Chris R.]

Dropbox's words "pretty much the same as" need to be challenged. Shared links are actually notremotely like direct links. The clue is in the word "direct". This means you can embed one of your - e.g. - images direct into another forum's post, and they can be seen there without having to leave the site and go to Dropbox's own site.

And there is the reason I believe : Dropbox wants everyone to suffer the inconvenience of leaving the topic they're browsing somewhere, and to go to the DB site where, I imagine, they are supposed to "sign up" for the service if they haven't already. This despite everyone already knowing who Dropbox are and unlikely to sign up to them when irritated at being diverted away from the webpage they were browsing.

[ahtiandr]

but the main question is, will this affect direct links generated not from public folders ?

[Chris R.]

Is there such a thing? I thought all links not from the Public folder were 'shared links' not direct, and if so, will not be affected.

[drbob]

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@Mark wrote:
And the issue isnt the BB links. Its the fact Public folders can host HTML pages at present. They've also been a depreciated feature now for many years. Its hardly an unexpected move

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This is wrong, public folder support for hosting web pages was already removed a while ago.

There is no technical reason that links web hosting and individual file hosting on dropbox. One of my uses for dropbox was to host forum images and videos. Now all those links will be broken. 

This is a greedy customer hostile move that will cost far more in bad publicity than you can even begin to imagine. I'm moving back to a web host like nearlyfreespeech on my own domain so this can never happen again. 

[george_graves]

I'm just now starting to share this with fellow bloggers, friends and forums. Dropbox - do the right thing and reverse your stance. One upset customer can undo the Cost per acquisition for many. Business 101.