Final Death of Dropbox Public Folders - Alternatives?

[heedpantsnow]

Dropbox stopped giving new users Public Folders access a few years ago.  This is a folder in your dropbox that you can link to any file from the web, directly.

Many people used it for sharing images on this and other sites, and even a few used it to host a small static website.

Dropbox is about to kill all those links on March 15th.  So any images I've ever posted on any forum will no longer work, since this is what I've used for...forever.

It was so convenient to just right click on an image in my public folder and get a link to it. 

Are there others in the same boat?  What are you going to use going forward?  I have Onedrive and GDrive, but "sharing" an image from those only gives you a link to another page where you can download the image, not a link to the image itself.

[romevi]

Imgur.

[dgneo]

Imgur.

[gallowgeek]

I would also add Photobucket to the list. Although I find Imgur easier to work with. You just need to sign up for an account.

[heedpantsnow]

Are there any cloud storage services that offer similar functionality?  I've used photobucket for years, and Imgur is similar, but there's no local folder for me to export a bunch of photos to from Lightroom.

[dgneo]

Are there any cloud storage services that offer similar functionality?  I've used photobucket for years, and Imgur is similar, but there's no local folder for me to export a bunch of photos to from Lightroom.

You could use Flickr, there's the option to Export directly to Flickr (rather than needing a local folder): https://lr.tips/lightroom/lightroom-publish-flickr/

[heedpantsnow]

Are there any cloud storage services that offer similar functionality?  I've used photobucket for years, and Imgur is similar, but there's no local folder for me to export a bunch of photos to from Lightroom.

You could use Flickr, there's the option to Export directly to Flickr (rather than needing a local folder): https://lr.tips/lightroom/lightroom-publish-flickr/

OK I'll check that out.  Does Flickr allow direct linking (link goes to actual image instead of webpage of image)?

[dgneo]

Are there any cloud storage services that offer similar functionality?  I've used photobucket for years, and Imgur is similar, but there's no local folder for me to export a bunch of photos to from Lightroom.

You could use Flickr, there's the option to Export directly to Flickr (rather than needing a local folder): https://lr.tips/lightroom/lightroom-publish-flickr/

OK I'll check that out.  Does Flickr allow direct linking (link goes to actual image instead of webpage of image)?

Yessir, you need to pull the link out manually, but it does work (Share Image > BBCode > Copy URL of image from there).

[happylacquer]

been sharing a mega acct with friends for years, works fine.

[rowdy]

Imgur.

Does Imgur still have a pitifully small limit on the number of pictures you can upload with a free account?

[fohat.digs]

Does Imgur still have a pitifully small limit on the number of pictures you can upload with a free account?

I have been happy with Imgur, but I usually clean out obsolete stuff on a regular basis.

Is the definition of "a pitifully small number" a dozen or a hundred or a thousand?

Likewise Dropbox, I have never gotten close to filling up my limit.

[noisyturtle]

Imgur.

Does Imgur still have a pitifully small limit on the number of pictures you can upload with a free account?

And a really low maximum file size

[bmmcwhirt]

Google Photos.

There is an app for ios, mac and windows and built in to android that lets you sync photos.

https://photos.google.com/apps

[davkol]

Imgur.

Does Imgur still have a pitifully small limit on the number of pictures you can upload with a free account?

And a really low maximum file size

Still too high. Some people don't have common sense, when it comes to bandwidth. Crippling them by design helps.

[dgneo]

Imgur.

Does Imgur still have a pitifully small limit on the number of pictures you can upload with a free account?

Sounds like it's been a few years since you've been there, seeing as it's unlimited now. Also a limit of 20MB per picture.

I think you'll be okay.

[henz]

i thought dropbox was dead

[digi]

Glad I have an old dropbox account!

[bmmcwhirt]

Glad I have an old dropbox account!

Doesn't matter how old it is, on Mar 15, 2017 all Basic(free) shared/public folders become private. You only get the public folder on paid accounts until September when that will also go away.

https://www.dropbox.com/help/16

[rowdy]

Does Imgur still have a pitifully small limit on the number of pictures you can upload with a free account?

I have been happy with Imgur, but I usually clean out obsolete stuff on a regular basis.

Is the definition of "a pitifully small number" a dozen or a hundred or a thousand?

Likewise Dropbox, I have never gotten close to filling up my limit.

I seem to have 347 images in my account, but it kept telling me it was "hiding" older images (or something like that - been a while since I used it) as I had too many images.

[Coreda]

Just for clarity this doesn't affect directly shared files, only those in the dedicated Public folder, from everything I've read about it. So one can still share/link files publicly so long as you use the Share link for individual folders/files (which is what I do).

The only thing you need to change to make such shared links embeddable is the URL scheme:

More

Original:

Code: [Select]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/<charactershere>/<filenamehere>?dl=0
Replacement:

Code: [Select]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/<charactershere>/<filenamehere>

[Krakob]

Just for clarity this doesn't affect directly shared files, only those in the dedicated Public folder, from everything I've read about it. So one can still share/link files publicly so long as you use the Share link for individual folders/files (which is what I do).

The only thing you need to change to make such shared links embeddable is the URL scheme:

More

Original:

Code: [Select]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/<charactershere>/<filenamehere>?dl=0
Replacement:

Code: [Select]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/<charactershere>/<filenamehere>

I think it's better to do ?raw=1 as that should give the same results as a file directly linked from public. I've tried messing with the dl parameter but ran into some issues, if I recall correctly.

[heedpantsnow]

Just for clarity this doesn't affect directly shared files, only those in the dedicated Public folder, from everything I've read about it. So one can still share/link files publicly so long as you use the Share link for individual folders/files (which is what I do).

The only thing you need to change to make such shared links embeddable is the URL scheme:

More

Original:

Code: [Select]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/<charactershere>/<filenamehere>?dl=0
Replacement:

Code: [Select]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/<charactershere>/<filenamehere>

I hope no one will be naive enough to expect Dropbox to keep file sharing the same for the foreseeable future.

They already broke their word from when they told us they were doing away with the Public folder feature "but existing files and links will continue to work". Why would I trust them to host my files now?  I have hundreds of images linked many hundreds of times to forums across the web. It's too much work to go and edit all those links; so those worklogs and such will just be broken.

Dropbox has made no effort to provide a way forward for existing files or links and has just said "they will have to be re shared". There are many people affected by this but anyone complaining about it on Dropbox's support community gets their post deleted.

[Coreda]

I hope no one will be naive enough to expect Dropbox to keep file sharing the same for the foreseeable future.

You could honestly say this about any free hosting site. My post was simply clarifying that this doesn't affect non-Public folder shared links (which I have always used). Whether or not this gets changed in the future is unknown. The already dropped live HTML linking support prior to this so they're clearly cutting back on direct public links.

The only way to be in control of a host is to run your own tbh.

Does Flickr allow direct linking (link goes to actual image instead of webpage of image)?

Flickr has been around a while so it's a decent choice. Direct linking requires you to also add a link back to the original Flickr page however, according to their ToS. Some ignore this but it's worth highlighting.

[heedpantsnow]

I hope no one will be naive enough to expect Dropbox to keep file sharing the same for the foreseeable future.

You could honestly say this about any free hosting site. My post was simply clarifying that this doesn't affect non-Public folder shared links (which I have always used). Whether or not this gets changed in the future is unknown. The already dropped live HTML linking support prior to this so they're clearly cutting back on direct public links.

The only way to be in control of a host is to run your own tbh.

You are correct, but I would point out that I was a paid subscriber.  When you are receiving something for free, it's hard to complain when it gets broken.

When you are paying for something, things change quite a bit.  Obviously my hobby forum images are not that important, but at work if we paid a company for a certain feature, and invested in training, workflow, APIs, etc., and then the company mothballed it (and then refused to even grant legacy access), there's no way we would continue to work with them.

For example, Bitcasa did something similar to its non-commercial customers (including me) in 2014.  When its corporate clients saw this, they gradually started moving to other providers.  They've been on a downward spiral for the last two years, and there are now rumors they are shutting their doors.

[snsr]

Definitely one of the best Dropbox features.

Similar: Cloudapp, Dropshare or an ftp/sftp/webdav program that makes a remote server (incl. S3, Azure, Google) work like a local drive e.g. Transmit.

[zslane]

I used to just upload to my website hosted by Godaddy, but last year all direct links to my website stopped working here and I have no idea how to fix it. At first it seemed like it had something to do with security certificates or some such (GH's certificates expired last Fall), but even though that's been remedied, links to my website continue to fail.

I am also leery of trusting that direct links to "private" DropBox content will continue to work. I'm thinking of checking out imgur.

[digi]

I use Dropbox to host illegal music repositories for the general public.

[bmmcwhirt]

It all comes down to what features you want/need/can do without.

Here is a pretty good article on some alternatives.

https://www.cloudwards.net/top-10-secure-dropbox-alternatives/

Imgur is pretty good for images but I've been playing with google photos for the past week and it's a viable alternative.

For other things like sharing PDF or OOD files I've not found anything I like as much as dropbox yet but I'm not finished reading the above article yet. I'll probably be giving some of their recommendations a try to see what I think over the next week.

[Zombii]

As a fellow poweruser of Dropbox for quite a long time I recommend using ShareX. It's an open source monitor capture/uploading tool that you can also use to upload files. You can configure all of the upload destinations yourself but I recommend imgur for images.

[tp4tissue]

I use Dropbox to host illegal music repositories for the general public.

/thanks for the tip

//NSA appreciates your cooperation

//Forwarding confession to RIAA..

[Boskr]

ShareX can do right click uploads to Imgur, which automatically puts the link on your clipboard.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[iLLucionist]

I use Dropbox to host illegal music repositories for the general public.

/thanks for the tip

//NSA appreciates your cooperation

//Forwarding confession to RIAA..

See? Telemetry is not needed. We have other means of hunting people down. Hehe