Media Library As Replacement Dropbox Public Folder

  • Unknown's avatar
    albinger · Member ·

    Team Dropbox yesterday notified their users that the Public folder will no longer be functioning as of March of 2017. I have used that Public folder to store hundreds of images and documents whose links I have included via bbCode in my own WordPress posts and at other sites.

    What I am wondering is this – Can I use the my WordPress Media Library to store those images and documents? Each file in the Media Library has its own url so the WordPress Media Library would just take the place of the Dropbox Public folder.

    This morning I tried it with a couple of images. I uploaded them into the Media Library and then took their urls and using bbCode entered the links in a discussion forum post I was doing. The images appeared just fine.

    Is there any problem that I do not see in this solution to my soon-to-disappear Dropbox Public folder?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Yes, there are two issues that I am aware with this.

    One: The Media Library of any WordPressdotcom site whose privacy settings are Public will be crawled and indexed by search engines. So if there are things there that you do not want indexed by search engines, your site’s Media Library is not the place to store them.

    Two, and more importantly: according to the WordPressdotcom User Guidelines, your uploads to your site’s Media Library should be for the purpose of using it on your site and not for hotlinking to other sites.

    Hope that helps clarify and thanks for the heads up!

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