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?

[Chris R.]

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@Fe wrote:
We're trying (perhaps in vain) to get Dropbox to take notice.... Like our page and help us get them message to dropbox that as paying customers, we do not want to lose the Public Folder!

https://www.facebook.com/Dropbox-dont-kill-public-folders-1757807227875969/

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Plan of campaign:

1. "Like" the Facebook page above

2. Raise a ticket with Dropbox Customer "Support" about the Public folder

3. If you have a blog, write about this ridiculous 'breaking' of bits of the whole internet (broken links)

4. Be satirical and mocking - refer everywhere to "Dripbox" (or if you have better name, share it with us 🙂 )

5. If you're a paid user and use the Public folder a lot, cancel your subscription - there are alternatives out there!

6. Don't stop campaigning until we either win, or cause Dripbox no end of hassle, embarrassment and notoriety

Can we do it? Yes we can!

[ym58]

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Chris R. a écrit :

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5. If you're a paid user and use the Public folder a lot, cancel your subscription - there are alternatives out there!

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Can you enumerate them ?

For instance, I am currently dubious regarding MS/OneDrive that does not keep the picture's name in the generated Public Link making it difficult to batch-substitute link addresses in my Web Site !

To make a long story short, changing all occurences of :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28826553/folder1/pictureXXX.png

to :

https://1drv.ms/i/folder1/pictureXXX.png

would be a piece of cake,

but changing them *** ONE BY ONE *** to a link like :

https://1drv.ms/i/s!Al1QJkdmK-njktgb1KKlvg0MgyFHHHvkZg

is another story !

Eagerly waiting for your 'alternatives' ...

[Bob J.]

I just did a google search on "dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/"

I got 1.25 million hits

That represents a huge number of broken links.

By contrast the hits for "www.dropbox.com/s/" was 1.93 million

So by that token 40% of DropBox links use the public folder

I am still very hurt by this move

Bob JordanB

[Bob J.]

On doing further research I looked for my own public links. It only found 5 of the over 40 links I had created.

So that 1.25Million above may need to be scaled to 10million??

[Fe]

Would be great if everyone would like and SHARE this page - might just help to get us noticed in the longrun? https://www.facebook.com/Dropbox-dont-kill-public-folders-1757807227875969/

[kiaz h.]

The main question is, that dl.dropbox.com stays available, or not? As using the "new" sharing link, but changing the ww.dropbox.com to dl.dropbox.com makes direct download possible.

[ColinC]

No. That's not the most important point at all! The important point is all the millions of links that are going to become invalid in a few months time. And the damage that's going to do to business & the internet in general.

[Ambientguitar]

This has really screwed me over. I have been blogging for a few years now and used the links in my public folder for MP3's.

I will have to do years of work to get this resolved. Thanks, Dropbox. I was considering going to Pro but there is little or no point now.

Need to move to someone who will allow me to do this.

[Ambientguitar]

I am guessing they (Dropbox)  are being paid to do this.i.e. This now makes it impossible to share copyrighted material because if someone does, then whoever shares it would have to share the username and password. Which, I suppose,  makes it easy to pinpoint who shared what and when and no denying it. And yes I am a conspiracy theorist lol!

[TonyProctor]

To make a long story short, changing all occurences of :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28826553/folder1/pictureXXX.png

to :

https://1drv.ms/i/folder1/pictureXXX.png

would be a piece of cake,

but changing them *** ONE BY ONE *** to a link like :

https://1drv.ms/i/s!Al1QJkdmK-njktgb1KKlvg0MgyFHHHvkZg

is another story !

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I just received the email notifying me of this change a couple of days ago, but I'm very confused.

The email suggests that I can manually share these files by creating a public link and copying it. However, all my files already have a public link of "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/..." and they're what I already use. Where are these links "https://1drv.ms/..." coming from? All dropbox presents to me in the same links that I am using now.

This would be great, of course, if existing links were preserved, but am I missing something?