dropbox removing the public folder

seth.

got this in an email:

Hi seth, We’re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience. The Public folder was the first sharing method we introduced, and since then, we’ve built even better ways for you to share securely and work together with your team. As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Basic users will be able to use the Public folder until March 15, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox. If you’d like to keep sharing files in your Public folder, you can create new shared links. Just make sure to send the new URLs to your collaborators. In addition to shared links, we have a number of sharing options designed to make collaboration easier and give you more control. To learn more, visit our Help Center.  The Dropbox team Does this mean that there will be a ton of broken image links floating around the forum? I know that I have linked from dropbox since I started here, and the idea of manually updating all my image links is not appealing...maybe the old links will still work, but not from what I gather in that message.

Joopson

From how it sounds, it'll break those old image links. Which is super inconvenient, and I wager that a bunch of useful images will be forever lost to the public as a result.

Blargh.

Revel

Yeah got that email as well. Just wondering how does "We’re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience" connected with "As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder"...

disanski

Yeah.. all my images here are dropbox links . Not cool dropbox, not cool. What other apps do you guys use similar to dropbox?

bounchfx

Revel said:

Yeah got that email as well. Just wondering how does "We’re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience" connected with "As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder"...

love how well language can be manipulated for shit like this Lol.

I used the public folder for TONS of shit. This is a massive disappointment, we'll see if they actually replace it with anything. All my posts on my dota thread and sketchbook thread are dropbox public links. RIP to both of those, I guess. Was it just costing them too much in bandwidth? I pay for their service, shit man. Haha.

roboy

It does mention "Dropbox Basic users" so I imagine paying customers will still have the convenience of keeping their links 

Definitely sounds like a bandwidth issue - there must be tonnes of inactive accounts with stuff in the public folder... easier way to weed them out this way

McGreed

Really a bad move by dropbox, that's not anything to do with improving it for users, but only for them, that text just sounds like pure bullshit.
But also, if its a bandwidth issue, even if it's inactive account, apparently the stuff is still viewed, so why remove it? Makes no sense.
I was wondering if it's possible to scan the polycount wiki for all dropbox links and maybe flag them for updating?

JEmerson

It would be fine if they ended the default state of the public folder as being publically accessible, but retained all files that had a "share" URL on them as being actively linked with the original public link given. Otherwise... yeah, not looking forward to relinking things.

Joao Sapiro

if they do this ill definately stop using dropbox, my whole site is directly linked...

roboy

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Sharing-and-collaboration/Ending-support-of-public-folder/m-p/197906

If you guys want some more information and make some noise

it seems that pro users will lose it as well

McGreed

How the heck do they justify it as an improvement for the users? I really don't see it. Can't read stuff from dropbox, because their site is blocked by company firewall.

Shiv

Damn, there is going to be a pretty sizable blank spot on the internet for a bit when this hits. 
I am still using the public folder because its so damn easy. ah well...

List of alternatives?

Google drive, onedrive? 
I am using onedrive for some stuff but it can take a while to load.

roboy

@Shiv - unrelated (or perhaps intentional!) but your portfolio links back to the current page

PolyHertz

So dropbox can't be used for posting pics/files online anymore? That's like 90% of the reason I use it.

notman

No, if I understood properly, you'll still be able to share pics/files, but you'll have to create a link, for each file. Apparently they can't convert the old links, to support however they will be sharing on the new system. I think they just want to kill public folders. Either way, it sucks, if you shared something, a long time ago, and can't remember, for tracking it down to update.

monster

You can still share non public folder images. It's just a few more steps.

1. Right click a file in Windows.
2. Pick Share.
3. Click Create Link
4. Click Copy Link
5. Paste link to Polycount
6. Change the ?dl=0 to ?raw=1

bounchfx

PolyHertz said:

So dropbox can't be used for posting pics/files online anymore? That's like 90% of the reason I use it.

Pretty much what notman said. You can still share images by doing right click>get public url or whatever. The main issue is needing to potentially re-link all of your old 'public links', which to be fair required the same freaking thing to link them. It's kind of funny how dumb and frustrating this will be for some of us. basically punished (strong word but you get the idea) for using their public functionality instead of just keeping our shit in normal folders and using the command they want us to use now. Lots of stuff will probably remain broken or lost due to this. I sure as hell don't have the patience to go through hundreds of links in many places to figure out what was where and correct them all. Oh well.

Lt_Commander

This is unfortunate, I've been using dropbox for public file and image sharing for years. Without that, it's no better then any other cloud service - I guess I'll be dropping dropbox and dealing with onedrive's convoluted direct image and file sharing systems again. 

Tekoppar

Nothing good lasts forever, already knew Dropbox was going towards the worse when they changed what happens when you click on the folder icon in the system tray.

Ravenok

Honestly at some point Dropbox just seemed so uptight and unfriendly that I dropped it from my life. Haven't missed it. Google drive works fine.

This is just one more thing that makes me want to use Dropbox less.

Eric Chadwick

We made an effort to make it easy for people to upload images here, partly to help us avoid this kind of problem. 

If you upload images here in the forum, we will never delete them. You can always edit your posts to remove/update images, whenever you want.

I know that doesn't solve it for your external sites, but at least it's really easy to drag and drop images here. No hassles.

Wolthera

I actually recall they'd been trying to phase out the public folder for a while(3 years or so...) now, I think it was because they wanted to be a cloud service, not a cheapo-webhost, which some people were using it as.
I was able to avoid using public links for that reason, but I thought I still had the public folder because I was an early user. Kinda shitty that they didn't warn people that the public folder was going to disappear sooner

EarthQuake

roboy said:

It does mention "Dropbox Basic users" so I imagine paying customers will still have the convenience of keeping their links 

Definitely sounds like a bandwidth issue - there must be tonnes of inactive accounts with stuff in the public folder... easier way to weed them out this way

No this applies to dropbox pro too, which I pay for. The transition is later for pro users, I think Sept 2017.

A pain in the dick.

bounchfx

I guess I was wrong. I can't seem to share on forums an image from a non-public folder and have it not be a link. Gross.

monster

bounchfx said:

I guess I was wrong. I can't seem to share on forums an image from a non-public folder and have it not be a link. Gross.

Read my post again. That image is not in a public folder.

bounchfx

nice! I was actually looking for this earlier, but skimmed past it. unfortunately without knowing this, it's still as good as not there. But at least we'll know! You and me, baby!

radiancef0rge

That share feature has been available for a while outside of the public folder

Froyok

radiancef0rge said:

That share feature has been available for a while outside of the public folder

As a long time user of Dropbox (pro) I found that their new sharing system is not that much convenient. The public folder was much more handy (and super easy to manage). I also had a lot of shared link with the new system that broke for no reasons, confirmed by some friends too. While with the public folder it never happened.

I can see why they want to break this "feature" (mostly for security reasons I guess), but the alternative system doesn't feel right. Especially since you have to tweak the links by hand to make sure they are direct download link and not a redirect to dropbox website (and so on).