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Photos not visible in a thread

71K views 77 replies 24 participants last post by  53PL-50AAA-VW611BAN 
#1 · (Edited)
This post will be updated periodically.

Moderation Note - NOVEMBER 2018


There are three updates to the present situation, which is that almost all of the Phaeton forum's photos and diagrams are not currently visible in the browsers of many devices.

Firstly, Photobucket (who host many of the photos and diagrams in the Phaeton forum) have now revised their hosting policies and many of our photos are once again released for viewing but with a watermark superimposed. This is the 'good' news.

However, the 'less good' news is that Google Chrome and some other recently-updated browsers now decline to display most non-authenticated images. This includes most of our photos and diagrams when referenced in their current form.

Lastly, my own hosting site, used as a defence against Photobucket's former blackout policy, was off-line last week pending the provider's response to a repair ticket (s.l.o.w.). It should be restored shortly.

The net effect of this is that almost all photos and diagrams in the forum are not visible and may need to be re-hosted or their URL edited. This is a very large job but I will do my best. Please, as before, post specific requests in this present thread and I will action them on demand as soon as I can.

Chris




Moderation Note - JULY 2017

PHOTOS NOT VISIBLE
Some of the photos posted in Forum threads are currently blocked by image hosting companies such as Photobucket, who hope that free account holders will now take out a monthly subscription.

If you need to view such photos but see an image asking to upgrade your subscription then please post a request here in this sticky thread, quoting the thread name or URL link, and I will attempt to recover the images and photos and make them visible in that particular thread.

In some cases this may not be possible, but I will at least investigate and do what I can. The Forum techs are looking for a solution, but this might take a while. I will keep folks informed. It would be a very big job to reprogram all the posts in the forum but it may come down to that.


ARCHIVE SITES
If you are lucky then the pages and photos you need to see may have been cached on one of these web sites:
Copy the URL of the page you need from your browser address bar and paste it on that web site. If it has been archived then the pages should appear, however, coverage is patchy.


BROWSER ADD_ONS
There is a code war going on between Photobucket and its disgruntled users. Developers have created Add-ons for Chrome and Firefox browsers that can make the blocked Photobucket photos visible. These fixes may work for a while, at least until Photobucket disables the loopholes.
POSTING PHOTOS
Meanwhile, please continue to post photos using whatever publically viewable hosting you have available. This process should not be affected, and can continue as normal.


UPDATES
  • Nov 2017: The threshold of downloads above which Photobucket block the images has been raised. So more of the lesser-viewed photos are now available.
  • Jan 2018: Photobucket stopped the original fixes from working, but new browser fixes are available (see the updated links above).
  • Feb 2018: Try copying the URL of the Photobucket image you want to see and appending "~original" (without the quotes) to it in a browser address bar. The image may be made available.

Chris


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Number of photos re-hosted or updated to date: 586

So far, these threads have been reviewed:

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#31 ·
Hi Sven,

Glad to help. It sometimes takes a while to assemble all the blocked photos from various archives, so sorry for any delay.

I hope you get the water ingress problem sorted quickly. I am sure you have read here of the dangers of getting the KESSY controller wet (car self-starting when parked, potentially followed by a fire) and the KESSY is vulnerable to water because it lives under the left front footwell carpet in both RHD and LHD cars.

Anyway, Happy New Year! :biggrinsanta:

Chris
 
#32 ·
#34 ·
#35 ·
#36 ·
#43 ·
Hi John,

So sorry about the photos. Firstly, Photobucket has changed their hosting policies yet again, then my own hosting site was taken off-line last week pending the provider's response to a repair ticket (s.l.o.w.) and lastly, just to screw the knife, Google and other browsers now decline to display some non-authenticated images, so at some time in the future every photo reference in the forum will have to be edited or re-hosted.

Anyway, I just finished rehosting the photos once more in the thread Water in Front Footwell (Cleaning Air Intake Plenum and Sunroof Drains).

Unfortunately Photobucket has watermarked the content they deliver as being from their free hosting, but that seems a better policy than before (censorship) and it doesn't detract much from the information value to us while giving them a name credit.

Chris
 
#44 ·
Hi Chris,

Thank you so much :):)

Ouch, that is quite a perfect storm. As it happens I don't see any watermark on the photos, though as you say it wouldn’t matter much if they were there.

Thanks again, really appreciate you doing this so quickly in the circumstances :)

John
 
#45 ·
#47 ·
Was just looking at some older posts from Michael and the photos are there. Did photobucket change their policy or have you been laboring day and night to rehost these valuable photos? If the later, many thanks from all!
Hi Bob,

Well, a bit of both: I have re-hosted about 600 photos but Michael kindly paid Photobucket's ransom after they dropped the price from several hundred $$ a year to nearer $50. (They also fired the person who took them into this mess, as far as I gather).

The remaining issue is that Google Chrome and some other browsers now deprecate links that do not have an "https" SSL address which authenticates images. So there are still a few thousand Phaeton Forum images to have their links edited.

It might take me a while, but as long as folks continue to flag any particular threads they want to have visible (by posting a request in this thread) we'll get there in the end. I think the remaining Phaetons will last that long, they are doing very well so far! :)

Chris
 
#48 ·
There is a trick to access photos if the cached versions do not work.

Copy a paste a large chunk of text from the post and google it within quotation marks. The quotation marks limit a search to only text that match that text exactly. You can then go to images and it will show them. They are out of order so not great sometimes but it can be a backup if all else fails.

For example, if you search "I have always wanted to have the dual xenon headlamps on my Phaeton, not really for any functional advantage that they offer, but simply because of the looks. The front headlight is a key element in the visual design of the Phaeton, and I don’t think that the single xenon headlight (with the halogen high beam) that we get here in North America looks as good as the original dual xenon design." which is the first paragraph of Michael's Bi-Xenon Retrofit thread, you will only have pictures from that thread.
 
#51 ·
Hi Eric,

So sorry I missed your post from last March. I can't retrieve the old photos from Photobucket, but maybe a PM to Ole/Keirn would get results. He switched to imgur.com for the later ones which do work.

Chris
 
#53 ·
tomandjerry20004
Hi Chris,

Could you please make the photo's visible for the DIY: Timing Belt replacement for 2.0 AEG.

Thank you,
Well, I tried to work on that thread you gave and failed, scratched my head when it wouldn't play ball, tried different browsers, muttered rude things about VWVortex code, then finally realised that it's not in the Phaeton forum, it's in the Golf & Jetta IV forum. I have no control over that area.

I searched several web caches for copies of the photos, but had no success. I'm not sure you'll have much luck as the photos were hosted in 2011 on dubpix.com, which is a dead site nowadays.

Sorry I can't do any magic on this one!

Regards,
Chris
 
#56 ·
#57 · (Edited)
#59 ·
I tested to see if Jason's photos could be made visible to Chrome etc using SSL, but Jason's hosting server won't deliver them using SSL. The new policy of Chromium-based browsers won't allow them to be rendered.

So I left them 'as is'.

This whole aspect of security is developing slowly, so perhaps I can re-visit it in a few months and try again.

I'm glad they can at least be viewed with a small effort.

Chris
 
#60 ·
Hello All:

I have renewed my Photobucket account with their $75 a year "unlimited bandwidth" option - what Photobucket calls their 'intermediate' package - so hopefully the images that I posted on various threads between 2004 and 2014 will once again be visible.

I don't participate in the forum anymore, having sold my Phaeton in 2014, but I hope that being able to view the photos that I posted in the past will be helpful to current owners.

Photos that I have posted will begin with the URL 'http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae275/Paneuropean/... followed by the photo name after the last backslash. Hopefully all of these photos will now be visible.

Michael
 
#61 ·
Hi Michael,

thank you so much for keeping your photos online and available to see for the rest of us, it's very much appreciated. If I hadn't found this forum back when I bought my first Phaeton I probably wouldn't have built up the knowledge and confidence to tackle any issues with my Phaeton myself. So basically it's your fault that I ended up owning a fleet of 5 of them :)

Thanks again!
 
#62 ·
Hi Michael,

Your virtual creation of this forum in its present form has probably done more to keep the Phaeton alive among English-speaking enthusiasts than anything else on the web.

I had to re-host a thousand or so images, but the hosting site and browser security moves on, so I will now have to rework those same images once more and revert to the sanity provided by your subscription. Thank you so much for the continued support.

Chris
 
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