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?

[Pablo f.6]

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

[DolphinNoMore]

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 P.]

Thanks Chris

[hungxd2992]

Why do not you keep the existing links in the public folder and close the "copy public link" function, why break that link. WHY WHY?

[Ed]

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!

[BradJohnson]

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,

Image already added

[Bodrimir]

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.

[Alastair L.]

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?

[Bodrimir]

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.

[Alastair L.]

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.