Image hotlinking has been temporarily disabled (UPDATE: PARTIALLY FIXED) [View all]

[EarlG]

This discussion thread was locked by Skinner (a host of the Announcements group).

Last edited Tue Mar 3, 2020, 11:48 AM - Edit history (1)

Update 3/3/2020: Image hotlinking has been partially restored -- however, please note that due to the nature of the fixes, some images will still not display if certain special characters are included in the image URL.

While we continue to work on this issue, here is a temporary workaround: if you attempt to post an image and it does not show up when you preview your post, try uploading the image to a different image hosting service (such as imgur.com) which will "normalize" the characters in the URL.

We are continuing to work on fixes for this issue. Thanks for your patience.

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Original post:

Unfortunately we are still having some issues with the fixes that were made earlier today to head off a problem with image hotlinking. (See this thread.) As such, we have temporarily disabled image hotlinking again. DU has not been hacked, and no data has been lost. We are doing this as a precaution in order to prevent future problems that may occur if the software is not patched now.

What does this mean?

Normally, to post an image at DU you simply post the URL of the image and it will be displayed in your post -- this is called "hotlinking." As of right now, this functionality has been turned off, so images will not automatically show up in your posts -- they will just appear as a plain link to the image. If people want to see the image you posted, they will have to click through and visit the source page.

If you are hotlinking images in your signature line, you will notice that those images also do not appear.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience -- we know that posting images is a big part of posting on DU -- but we need to make sure this issue is dealt with in a timely fashion. Bear in mind that although your images are currently displaying as links, when we turn hotlinking back on they should simply reappear as images again.

When will image hotlinking be back?

As of this moment we do not know how long this fix might take, but Elad is working on it right now, and as soon as we have an update we will let you know immediately.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

-- The DU Administrators