Photobucket (preserving the past)

[DrFrankenstone]

When searching this forum to find mods or projects that already exist, I usually end up with screenshots like:



I've recently learned there are plugins for Firefox and Chrome which bypass the Photobucket P500 paywall, so I've installed one and now all is good... for me.

However, the real purpose of this is post is to mention there are also scripts enabling forums to salvage these images, because I worry if Photobucket ever closes the loophole these plugins exploit, this Minetest information will be gone.

Disclaimer: I don't fully understand how they're bypassing the Photobucket paywall (I think it involves meddling with the referrer), so I can't actually judge the risk of Photobucket countering it. People have been doing it for ages so no reason to assume imminent danger.

Anyway, here's a script I came across which migrates a forum's photobucket links to imgur: https://github.com/pastudan/photobucket-imgur

I imagine there are many others too. It's a judgement call though - it looks like a bit of work for the maintainers of the forum - not a turnkey operation, especially given the size of this forum.

[paramat]

Best just use the forum's own image hosting feature.

[Wuzzy]

Good point, paramat nailed it! I fully agree, forum attachments should be used more where they make sense. Just click on the button “Upload attachment” when you are writing a post. It's that simple. :-)

Generally would be cautious about any external hosting service. Please only use these for thowaway images, like in the just-for-fun threads and the like.
History has shown again and again no service is safe from being shutdown for good; we have lost a few mods (but none of them were really important) because people trusted external services, then they disappeared. Also it's important to remember that many “one click” hosting services usually have a timer policy which auto-deletes old files.
One big shutdown was ompldr. Another one was Ubuntu One. Luckily, I was able to warn most of the community before the Ubuntu One shutdown happened, most of the community has reacted appropriately.
I'm not saying all hosting services are bad or evil, but you should be aware of their limitations and policies.
Trying to find a workaround for Photobucket is just a temporary hack and not a real solution, who knows who long it will take until Photobucket hits the bucket? ;-)

About forum attachments: This raises the question: How much storage space do we have? Is there a chance we will run out of space anytime soon? Or are forum attachment really our safest bet?

[rubenwardy]

The server the forum is running on ran of storage a few weeks ago, but this was because the MySQL instance was taking up an excessive amount of storage and needed to be vacuumed. So there is a finite amount of space, but it's the database not the files which is the issue

[Linuxdirk]

However, the real purpose of this is post is to mention there are also scripts enabling forums to salvage these images, because I worry if Photobucket ever closes the loophole these plugins exploit, this Minetest information will be gone.

Since the actually relevant stuff is either hosted via the forum itself or is on imgur (who are absolutely fine with “3rd party hosting”) I don’t see any issue here.

[Wuzzy]

Note that even Imgur deletes old images. It rarely happens, but it does happen. Don't trust Imgur 100% to host everything.

[DrFrankenstone]

Since the actually relevant stuff is either hosted via the forum itself or is on imgur (who are absolutely fine with “3rd party hosting”) I don’t see any issue here.

New stuff may be hosted via the forum or imgur, but I meant if you're searching for prior mods/work/examples, you end up with threads like this, and not being able to tell what a thing does.

It's possible to migrate all that stuff into the forum's own image hosting feature, should it be considered worth the effort by someone in a position to do so. If not, there are browser plugins.

[Linuxdirk]

It’s the mod author’s job to update their forum thread if something is missing or broken – not the forum’s job (and by no means via illegal circumventing of a view protection installed by a commercial file hosting service).

[Reedych]

I suggest ipfs.pics because anybody can host images and they will stay available.

[Fixer]

We should use forum's image hosting feature. Imgur can go down the tubes too, and iirc they don't allow hotlinking etc.

Main point: DO NOT RELY ON THIRD PARTIES

[Linuxdirk]

Imgur can go down the tubes too, and iirc they don't allow hotlinking etc.

Of course they do.They even provide code snippets for hotlink uploaded images.

Main point: DO NOT RELY ON THIRD PARTIES

^this