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.]

(to the Web o.)

But that's the whole point! Using the "dl=0 to dl=1" creates a DIRECT link in another forum, and bypasses interaction with the DB site. And it works for all Dropbox content, not just the Public folder. I've tried it in another forum, and managed to get images to display (i.e. a direct links) there - no clicking of url involved.

As for "public folder links ... just ARE!", that's what our beef with DB is all about. Ok, let them end support for the Public folder if they want, after all they have done it for new users for the last few years. But this topic is all about getting DB to grandfather existing Public direct links, of which there must be 000,000s if not millions, all over the internet.
They could do this quite easily (if they are competent) by making the Public Folder 'read only' and changing their software to issue a warning if you try to add something to it locally: "WARNING - any item added to the Public folder will not be uploaded / sync'd. Please put it somewhere else inside your Dropbox folder if you want this". In that way, the Public folder couldn't be added to anymore, but existing links within it would still exist, be readable, and useable.

[narikaa]

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@Chris R. wrote:

(to Dima R)

The problem with that is that - I suspect - Dropbox will end support for any link beginning "dl." as soon as the Public folder stops.

It's worth pointing out that the 'dl=0' to 'dl=1' method still works in other forums, though not here. (DB obviously have control over this one, but not others).

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In a nutshell....THIS  ^ ^ ^

And it is exactly this that their Support Monkeys catagorically REFUSE to return an answer on !!!!!!

.

[Ed]

Hi all,

I just wanted to jump in to share a bit more of how we moderate threads here in the Dropbox Community forum.

You may have seen that the thread 'Don't kill public folders' has "disappeared" and some may be thinking this was censored or so. Please note that this has not been deleted nor censored. The thread was instead merged to this one, making it a bigger but also more centralized thread for the discussion around Public Folders.

This also allows me and other folks working here in the Community to easily escalate, moderate and report back to our engineers. The lesser the information/discussions get dissolved, the better for all of it and also better to communicate to all of you and share updates.

I hope this helps clarify a bit more about the reason why you may see threads suddenly doubling in size and others 'disappearing'. 

You can read more about our guidelines here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Announcements/Community-Guidelines/m-p/190245 and you're welcome to share feedback about the overall Community forum operation and platform enhancement requests here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Community-improvements/idb-p/101002024

Thank you,

Ed

[SolitareLee]

Funny, I don't really see anything in the community guidelines about editing other user's posts for critical content, and yet I've seen that happen at least three times... and I wasn't even paying attention for about 15 pages of this.

And despite any shiny spin you put on it, choosing to remove the entire thread from the suggestions section and merge it here into the "discussion" section makes it seem as though there was no organized, hugely upvoted and very reasonable outcry. If you were going to remove one of them, why the highly upvoted suggestions thread full of reasonable ideas? If you were going to make a bewildering, confusing clusterf*ck out of one of the threads by combining two only-tangentially-related conversations, why the one we can't really do much with? Hell, this thread never even shows up on "trending discussions" on the front page, despite being basically the only thread being seen and used; just compare the numbers on it to the numbers on literally any other discussion thread.

Have you ever heard the phrase about putting a hat on a pig? Just because you say "it's not censorship" doesn't really make it so. So instead of only showing up to maintain you're not doing something you are; why don't you or "the other folks working here" actually answer some of these people's questions? I mean, do you guys actually work for Dropbox? There's been essentially no response to any of the complaints or questions about what this means. It's been radio silence. There's been no "shared updates." Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

[narikaa]

The 'radio silence' from DB extends too (as Ive said) to their support people too who will tacitly ignore the crucial questions when put to them. Happy only to regurgitate the canned babble speak email releases - which as we know says much but answers little at all.

[DavideProfe]

We're missing the point.
We don't say it is not possibe to share documents, pages, etc.
We say that if public links embedded in blogs and so on will stop working, we will have to change all of them in order to keep the documents visible.
This mean to edit all embedded links in all sites we have embedded our archives in. One by one. No way I can do that: it will take weeks of dedicated work. They are hundreds, and just almost impossible to track.
Yes, I know there are "security issues": a smart person can just discover other archives I didn't embed by changing the url ending. But this is foolish: public archives are not -by definition- private. I wanted them to be public. That was known from the start. And that's why I don't have any really sensible information in any of my pubic archives. In any case, it's far easier to remove sensible archives from the public folder than to change all links in external sites.
I don't care if I can have then stored in another cloud storage system: the issue will be the same, I'll have to rewrite all the links.
I'd do it just to "punish" Dropbox for such a silly decision, but the amount of work will be just about the same.

[Chris R.]

Dear Ed

Thank you for your post.

Now, please explain to us all here WHY you - and your email ticket responders - will not answer the question about preserving existing Public folder links, when it could easily be done by making Public folders 'read only'?

I can only think that it has been discussed at Dropbox and rejected. Why? It would recoup at least half of the goodwill you've already lost through this refusal.

[Ambientguitar]

I think we have all been banging our heads off a brick wall. I for one have voted with my feet. Found a solution that suits me on Google drive. 15GB free. Happy days! I wonder how many more customers they will lose and of course, there is no way of computing the potential ones that would be put off because of this nonsensical decision.

[Chris R.]

Do you get direct links with Google Drive?

[dw s.]

@ Chris R

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1Y77dv7BxpcYkFmMi1weVJnNHc

Right-click on file in G/Drive, click on 'Get shareable link', a link is generated for you, you quick double-click on it to highlight it and Control + C copies it to your clipboard.

If you click on 'Share' instead of 'Get shareable link', then you get a box that gives you extra options such as changing from 'view' to 'can edit' etc and facebook link option etc. Might need to click on the 'Advanced' button to do this, can't recall exactly as I almost always use first method.