Imgur img links not working.

[Mon732]

Hi MetConst,

For some reason that I have yet to figure out, Imgur images don't want to appear on the forums.
[spoiler=Case in Point (It's gonna work now isn't it? :P)][/spoiler]

They do load after viewing the direct link though. I will have a look into it when I get some time, got a lot of real life stuffs (Uni) on at the moment.
For now if you do use an imgur link please put the link beneath the image so people can still view it.

[spoiler=Example]http://i.imgur.com/68DtbXw.jpg[/spoiler]

[Quietus]

Even clicking that doesn't seem to work here. I just get a black screen that says:
The image "http://i.imgur.com/68DtbXw.jpg" cannot be displayed because it contains errors.

Removing the "http://" from the beginning seems to do the trick:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

:^_^:

Edit: And now they just work normally.  :<_<:

[Mon732]

Yep, for me that image is not appearing at all.
Try pressing Ctrl + F5 to clear your cache, does the image stop appearing?

[Quietus]

After Ctrl + F5, none of them work. I'm still guessing that it's an issue their end.

[personitis]

I've found that removing the "s" from "https://" only makes the images load on the forum if you've loaded them on your end/directly from imgur. Safe to say, I'd agree it's more likely an issue on their end.

[Zero One]

So an update to this. It appears, though it's unconfirmed right now, that Imgur may have banned MetConst due to hotlinking. Hotlinking is actually a violation of the Imgur TOS - that's right, the image sharing site doesn't allow you to share images. Oh well.

This forum encountered a similar problem, and nicely, the administrator has identified several alternatives:

ULTRA IMG has mass upload capability, drag and drop function, encourages hotlinks, has albums, and has no bandwith limit/album limit/image limit either. Generally, the easier go to. The only downside is that you can't organize your albums themselves, so you're stuck in the order you've uploaded them. Particularly great if you want to share your icons and stuff with others.

IMG BOX has mass upload ability, drag and drop, doesn't encourage or discourage hotlinks. You can create albums when you upload, and you can also edit images too on the fly. The only downside here, is that albums have a max size of 500 images, and that you can't share the account for someone to see all the galleries. You can share individual galleries however.

CUBE UPLOAD mass upload, no bandwith. Doesn't have albums, but great for skin elements if you're not into using proboards/jcink's own.

POSTIMG I have not used this one tbh, so I can't really tell you anything apart from that a lot of people recommend it, so if nothing above catches your wants, this might.

I have not personally used these alternatives, so I guess it's a community experiment as to figuring out which is the better alternative for us.

I highly recommend NOT using any image hosting website that is known to recycle links. While some of us might like seeing the occasional bit of porn as we scroll through ROTW, it might ultimately be a bad decision.

[Mon732]

Welp, mystery possibly solved? I'd really like to know Imgur's logic behind the no hotlinking.

[snarfblam]

Simple. You're using their bandwidth and not looking at their ads. They might tolerate it on a small enough scale, but it looks like metconst tipped the scale too far.

[Mon732]

Yeh, I looked into it a little more after I posted that. Hadn't thought about the ad revenue though.

[Alukraid]

I found a great alternative to Imgur if anyone wants to give it a try.

https://uploadly.com

[Odb718]

The same thing happened at Mugen Fighters Guild.
The MFG admins talked to Imgur and Imgur decided to take them off the ban list. I feel that they'd probably do the same thing for MetroidConstruction.

If anyone can talk to them I bet they'd do it.

[Swadesh]

I would like to suggest an alternative - "Imgpile. com" I started it earlier this year when imgur blocked my forum for hotlinking and violation of their TOS.

Thanks for writing. Unfortunately that forum has been blocked from hotlinking due to abuse of Imgur's terms of service (Terms of Service - Imgur). Imgur's ToS prohibits using Imgur as a content delivery network, which means that website elements such as buttons, banners, avatars, frames, image libraries, etc. cannot be hosted on Imgur and served up as elements of other sites. Imgur's intended use is not as a CDN, but rather as a platform to upload, share and browse entertaining images, which is why using it to serve website elements or image libraries is not allowed.

Please also be aware, that any forum that has a section dedicated to selling, such as classified are also against the advertising portion of the TOS.

If you'd like to be unblocked, please take measures to undo the functionality that caused the terms of service breach, at which point we'd be happy to review.

Please let me know if you have any other questions; I'd be happy to help.

Best,
Isaac K.

I just need some actual users other than me to justify the server cost. Feel free to PM me or ask any questions.

[Flower]

So an update to this. It appears, though it's unconfirmed right now, that Imgur may have banned MetConst due to hotlinking. Hotlinking is actually a violation of the Imgur TOS - that's right, the image sharing site doesn't allow you to share images. Oh well.

This forum encountered a similar problem, and nicely, the administrator has identified several alternatives:

ULTRA IMG has mass upload capability, drag and drop function, encourages hotlinks, has albums, and has no bandwith limit/album limit/image limit either. Generally, the easier go to. The only downside is that you can't organize your albums themselves, so you're stuck in the order you've uploaded them. Particularly great if you want to share your icons and stuff with others.

IMG BOX has mass upload ability, drag and drop, doesn't encourage or discourage hotlinks. You can create albums when you upload, and you can also edit images too on the fly. The only downside here, is that albums have a max size of 500 images, and that you can't share the account for someone to see all the galleries. You can share individual galleries however.

CUBE UPLOAD mass upload, no bandwith. Doesn't have albums, but great for skin elements if you're not into using proboards/jcink's own.

POSTIMG I have not used this one tbh, so I can't really tell you anything apart from that a lot of people recommend it, so if nothing above catches your wants, this might.

I have not personally used these alternatives, so I guess it's a community experiment as to figuring out which is the better alternative for us.

I highly recommend NOT using any image hosting website that is known to recycle links. While some of us might like seeing the occasional bit of porn as we scroll through ROTW, it might ultimately be a bad decision.

IMGBOX seems to do work right, you can indeed organize the pics in albums and hotlinks are no problem (yet), so i give it a go!

first pic loaded:

[Quietus]

I have what I hope is some good news!

I decided to don my ambassador cap, and reach out to make contact with imgur in the hope of having MetConst whitelisted / removed from their blacklist.

AND THEY'VE AGREED! :cheers:

Here's a quote of my original message:

Hello:

I am one of the members regularly using http://metroidconstruction.com/ The site deals with modifications of the Metroid series of games. I understand that a large number of images on the forum are no longer working as imgur has chosen to blacklist them due to hotlinking. I understand that this has also happened to a number of other sites.

I am hoping that I can appeal to your good nature, and have this restriction lifted. I believe that the bandwidth used by this relatively tiny website must be minimal, and I am hoping that we can continue to use your service rather than having to look elsewhere.

Thank you for your time in reading this. =)

Regards,

Quietus

And here's their reply:

Hi there Issuethequietus,

Thank you for writing in. The team has taken the time to review the site further and agree that any TOS infractions have been cleared up and we feel unblocking the website is warranted. Please allow up to 24 hours for this change to roll over. We do apologize for any inconveniences.

Thank you again for writing in to look further into any issues with the website.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please reply back to this message and I will be happy to help further.

Best,
Isaac K.

In short, all imgur pics should be up and working over the next 24 hours. Fingers crossed! :^_^:

[Vismund Cygnus]

Quietus you legend! Thank you so much! You're the hero this forum doesn't deserve.  :grin:

[Zero One]

Shit, nice job, Quietus! We need somebody to fart out a trophy graphic for you now!

[Mon732]

Just wondering, do we know if future hotlinking would result in Metconst being blacklisted again?

[Lunaria]

It's weird that they are even disallowing hotlinks, I mean, from that perspective they should have blacklisted reddit ages ago, the number 1 source of imgur hotlinks.

[thedopefish]

Yay!

Edit: maybe not yay?

[Quietus]

Yup, that's working fine, as are the images in the OP. :^_^:

[Zero One]

It's weird that they are even disallowing hotlinks, I mean, from that perspective they should have blacklisted reddit ages ago, the number 1 source of imgur hotlinks.

Well, no, Imgur was designed to be reddit's image host. Doubt they'd ban them just because they got bigger than reddit.