The linked topic is a couple years old, but exactly described the problem I ran into with a member in our new community. While attempting to use imgur for hosting an image, with the proper formatting, the embedding appeared for a moment before it was replaced with a broken link symbol from imgur.
The suggested reasoning is that imgur is rate-limiting images. However, this is a brand new install with no import occurring, and while I haven’t tracked how many imgur links have already been posted, it can’t be higher than a couple dozen in the last week.
With a limit so low, what can be done to alleviate the lockout on imgur’s side? Other than telling users to host elsewhere?
For now, I’ve turned on uploads again. I prefer that not to be a long-term solution, however.
Why had you turned off uploads? Do you not understand that the default is for Discourse to download the images from Imgur (which is why you’re rate limited) so you’re not saving any disk space by disabling uploads unless you turn off the Download remote images to local site setting?
If you want people to link to images that will no longer be available and leave broken images in your forum, then you should turn off Download remote images to local so that Discourse won’t download the images from Imgur to store locally.
This rate limiting occurred even when imgur was exempted using disabled_image_download_domains, it was not hotlinking or downloading at all.
Uploads were turned off to promote third party hosting of images, hence the exemption added for popular image sites that my members are using.
This does not explain discourse somehow hitting imgur’s very low threshold. As stated, there have been few images posted already and most have not been hosted on imgur. Offering an upload is one solution but not the one my members will first seek out, and I’d like to avoid using it long-term.
It’s as easy as upload on discourse as it is on imgur. You can drag and drop, paste from the copy buffer, and click the upload button.
I without try disabling all downloads, not just imgur for testing. I don’t think it should be… Hmm. Wait. I bet you need to disable oneboxes, not downloads. I would remove everything from Allowed onebox iframes and see what happens and then add back things that you do want to have oneboxes for.
It’s possible that I was missing a step after exempting imgur from downloading. Attempting to edit the post with the imgur hotlink was not working until I hit Rebuild HTML on the post with the exemption in place. After doing so, the hotlinking is working.
I don’t need the hard sell on Discourse’s upload/auto-download hotlinked images feature. I’ve looked at it, it’s great for some use cases. Mine is not one of them. I do want my members to be responsible for hosting their own images, there are many reputable image hosters on the internet and most of the members have years of experience with them. This method works and now that imgur hotlinks correctly, it’s what I’m most likely to pursue.
It’s worth noting that the issue of imgur’s aggressive rate-limiting has not been resolved or addressed at all. The auto-download capability by Discourse is rather crippled in this manner, and there’s been no suggestions here of how to fix or alleviate that. The lack of help there is disappointing.