Avistella Oh alright, thank you! I'll look into that website as well.
Edit: THE END TIMES ARE HERE!!! FIND A FILE HOST NOW!!!
Discord has officially put this change in place. As of 2/23/24, files hosted on discord will not be accessible outside of discord. I personally reccomend postimage for images and filegarden for audio, more details below.
IMPORTANT: i've been seeing a lot of comments about how this is a bad decision on discord's part. While discord DOES make a lot of bad decisions, THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM - while using discord as a file host for external websites was convenient, it was also abuse of their server space. Discord is a chat client with infrastructure made to bear the weight of messaging. It does not have the server capacity to act as a media host. Media hosting for other sites (the only thing this change impacts) is very resource-heavy, and not all services are equipped to bear that load. This change was put in place to prevent discord's finite server space from being misused, and this is something that websites have been doing in various ways since the 2000s for the same reason. PLEASE USE DESIGNATED SERVICES FOR YOUR FILES, "WELL IT WORKS FOR NOW" WILL ONLY HURT YOU LATER
- love, your friendly neighborhood netizen
anyway back to your regularly scheduled post, reorganized because this has happened now. sorry if it's a mess
more info in this tumblr post, i decided to share it here because i use discord for the audio files i use in my codes :( essentially, links to things hosted on discord will expire shortly after the link is made, so you won't be able to use links to discord messages (including images or text files) permanently outside of discord.
Now is a great time to find actual image/file hosting places because discord uhhhh was never for that anyway. I'll be working on ways to use audio files hosted on other storage sites so when the change goes out i can help people with my codes. There's a list of hosting sites in the tumblr post, I personally use imgur for most of my stuff! < don't do this. see update below
i might also repost this/a link to the thread here in service reviews bc i know a lot of people use discord to host proof screenshots 😬
Avistella has provided a nice selection of alternatives in this comment, and theglitzyhive has a bulletin here with his own list of alternatives and some offline content preservation tips you may find useful. please check out these resources!
moif made this tool that provides a discord-like interface for accessing files on your google drive like you've been doing on discord! Thank you so much for making this!
Thanks to ferdie for mentioning that the images themselves aren't lost! You can paste the image url back into discord, and it'll still work, so you can save them from there and reupload them somewhere else! THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED TO WORK BY OTHER USERS - HANG ONTO YOUR LINKS!
some clarifications for people reading this thread, who aren't that well versed in how image hosting works!
Will this effect images in your servers? No. The ONLY thing this will effect is links from other websites outside of discord to media in discord messages. Nothing in your servers or messages is getting deleted. We don't have enough information to know how this will effect things between servers, though, so I can't speak on that.
What is an image host? For people on the internet to see an image from your computer, it has to be hosted somewhere on the internet with a permanent web address, and whenever someone loads a web page with that image on it, the page on their screen has to be able to read that web address to retrieve the image from your host and display it. Most sites can host the images used on their own pages without issue, for example, toyhouse hosting the images in your characters' galleries and user avatars. For things beyond the scope of what the site allows their servers to store, an image hosting service outside the site is needed - for example, the images used in peoples' user layouts and character codes.
What is hotlinking? Hotlinking is when you take a link to an image hosted on someone else's server and use that link to serve the image on your website. For example, if I uploaded a picture to my own website on my own server, and you copied the same link to it on my server for your own website. Hotlinking from sites that don't have the server space for it is bad! Because you have to get the image from its host every single time someone loads the page it's on, hotlinking to a server that was meant for one website will put multiple websites' worth of strain on the server. This was a cardinal sin in the 2000s, but they don't teach this stuff anymore.
"ALTERNATIVES" THAT ARE NOT ALTERNATIVES: Imgur and neocities!!! I keep seeing people suggest imgur as neocities for hotlinking purposes. Imgur's TOS forbids doing this (and they make it super hard to do anyway) and they'll ban you from the site if they find out. Neocities blocks hotlinking entirely, which is what discord has chosen to do. THEY WILL HOST YOUR IMAGES, BUT YOU CAN'T HOTLINK TO THEM ON YOUR SITES.
2023 will go down as the worst year in internet history.
I say we all discard Discord in protest.
You are a hero mawibblap
dont use it for characters but rip all our mod comments regarding toxic twitch chatters, we use them to post screenshots for other mods to see :(
CometTheMountainLion I don't think discord doing something about the abuse of their server space is a reason to stop using it... discord was always meant to be a chat client, it's never been for image hosting. People just didn't know it was a problem to put image hosting strain on something that wasn't made for it until discord had to do something about it.
I don't mind offering my image hosting service at https://sx.nafc.link to anybody who wants access to it. It provides permanent links to images and files and could be used (in moderation) to reupload stuff from discord. Inbox me if you're interested and I don't mind doing an art/character trade in return for access to the site.
Discord was definitely super convenient although it does make sense for them to change this, fortunately I have a Dropbox sub so switching won't be too hard.
however, I did stumble across bandwidth limits for image views/downloads while looking up how to embed images from Dropbox that I'll drop in a spoiler box below with info in case it affects anyone's plans. Not likely going to be an issue for things like posting images to TH profiles, art games, and such. (Probably not an issue unless you're sharing massive files sized stuff, using free account, and/or sharing in high traffic places.) The limit does refresh daily as well.
link where I obtained info:
https://help.dropbox.com/share/banned-links
copypasted section:
Why am I seeing the message “We’ve interrupted your sharing activity because you’ve exceeded bandwidth limits”?
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred from your account when others view or download the files you've shared. This message indicates that your sharing activity has exceeded the allowed limits.
This can happen if:
- You share a link with someone who then shares it with a large number of people, resulting in numerous file downloads.
- You share a link with someone who downloads it multiple times.
- You request files and receive a large number of uploads.
- You request files and someone uploads the same file multiple times.
- You request files and the recipient forwards that request to other users, who all upload files.
To prevent abuse, Dropbox has established the following limits for accounts:
- Dropbox Basic and trials for Dropbox Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise: 20 GB of bandwidth and up to 100,000 file downloads per day.
- Dropbox Plus, Family, Professional, and Standard: 1 TB of bandwidth and unlimited file downloads per day.
- Dropbox Advanced and Enterprise: 4 TB of bandwidth and unlimited file downloads per day.
If you encounter this situation for the first time, your sharing activity and link/file requests will be suspended for 24 hours. You should receive an email with instructions on how to address the issue.
Anyone signing up for File Garden not getting the verification email? it's been a day or two and nothing is showing up in my email. I'm about to try something else on Avi's list
ermm me when ive been using discord for the past five years for file hosting :FUCK: guess ill hafta switch to toyhouse or smthn but im kind of pissed that literally every image link ive ever sent ever is going to break. i mean i understand the reasoning its just annoying!!