Problems with images
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Hello,
My site (https://hoodcp.wordpress.com/) has suddenly developed a problem with images.
When I go to edit a page – e.g. https://hoodcp.wordpress.com/2021/01/28/photographing-the-shinkansen-in-and-around-morioka/ it shows that a load of images cannot be loaded. But when I publish the post most of the images actually appear. When I then checked another post linked to this post (https://hoodcp.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/the-ana-flight-nh58-memorial/) all but the map image had stopped showing. I don’t understand why this change has happened as I had no problems until now & there seems to be an inconsistency with why some images show & some do not.
Any ideas what may have happened? -
Hey there, it looks like these images are hotlinked from some other site. Sometimes a host will block that to save on bandwidth.
Are you authorized to upload them directly to your site rather than linking them from another site?
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I don’t think that can be the issue. All pictures are on another site so it doesn’t explain why some load and others don’t. Even in editor view they don’t show, but some do after publication.
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That could still be anti-hotlinking, especially if the images that show are in your cache, or if some of your hotlinked images are hosted on one site with hotlink protection and some are hosted on another.
Even the preview issue could be explained by that: their host would just have to say “Don’t show the images if the request comes from wordpress.com” but they might not have protection in place if the request comes from your own site. So the editor would not work, but the preview would.
I’d advise against hotlinking anyway: should the site owners change their directory structure, all of your images will break. It’s best to add them to your own media library unless you don’t have permission for that.
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I still don’t think this is the problem. All of the external images are at a site I own (hood-online.co.uk) (so there’s no concern about images changing location and it’s easier and cheaper to maintain than the WordPress media library). That some images work and some don’t, and that this is something that has become a problem with new posts points more to an issue with WordPress and how it handles images.
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Hi there,
Even if those images are on your own server, there’s still the issue of hotlinking. I recommend contact your hosting provider and ask them if they have implemented an anti-hotlink or bandwidth limitation to your site.
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I have done further investigation about this. It is a very bizarre situation.
There is no problem with the site where the photos are stored and there is no problem with using tinyurl.com
The problem may actually be with my internet provider.
Even after clearing the cache on my PC (on either browser I use) certain pictures don’t show (the tinyurl.com ones appear to be a particular problem).
But when I use a browser on my phone & use data rather than WiFi, it looks like most (if not all) pictures load regardless of whether the link is direct or using tinyurl.com (which I started using as my posts seem to have problems with hotlinking to pictures which had a long file address).
How and why the WiFi would be such a problem and why it is a particular problem in the editor mode (where the pictures don’t show at all, even if they show when the post is published) I do not understand. But I suppose the next step is to contact them and see what they suggest.
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Hello there,
That’s some good investigation work conducted there and I’m glad to see you’re nearing the end of that issue.
As you are getting issues across connections – it would be advisable to contact the ISP to rule them out.
I hope this helps.
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Yes, I am going to try contacting the ISP and see what they say. I suggest that we keep this problem page open for now so that I can (hopefully) provide an update… or maybe others can provide suggestions about what the problem and possible solutions could be.
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So I tried with the ISP. After 45 minutes, the conclusion was “Our checks suggest the issue is with the website itself, as the internet connection to your router looks good and we’ve not been able to find any set up problems. You should contact the website for further help”.
So I am no further forward.
Could there be any hidden settings in browsers that stop it from working? I’ve tried both Edge & Chrome (and tried clearing the cache) and the problem is there with both.
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OK. I just installed Firefox. Everything works fine there. So apparently there is a problem with Chrome & Edge. No idea what the problem could be, but for now I guess I will have to use Firefox. Mystery not solved, but a work around found, so I can live with that.
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Hello there,
Many thanks for getting back to us.
That’s interesting – it’s probably been covered, but are these browsers both up to date?
Secondly, are there any extensions running on these browsers, for instance, any ad blockers or anything of that nature?
Many thanks in advance.
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Yes, both browsers are up to date and there are no extensions or ad blockers running. In fact, if anything, I would say that the problems I have seen have coincided with when I did update to the browsers recently – there have been 2 updates in the past week or so. So it’s possible one of them caused the problem and the other hasn’t fixed. For now, I’ll be using Firefox for WordPress. This has the advantage, I’ve just discovered, that I can have two (or more) tabs open at once (one for editing and one for viewing, for example) without having problems of not being able to update the editing page as it detects that I am logged in another window & having to reload the post again (and hope that any editing I’ve done up to that point isn’t lost).
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Hello there,
Many thanks for that detail.
Yes, both browsers are up to date and there are no extensions or ad blockers running. In fact, if anything, I would say that the problems I have seen have coincided with when I did update to the browsers recently – there have been 2 updates in the past week or so.
Would you be able to share your browser details as per these website please: https://www.whatsmybrowser.org/ so that this can be checked across versions please.
Many thanks in advance.
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Whenever hotlinking is involved, issues like this can occur. Currently, they’re all loading for me, so I can’t confirm specifically which issue it is, but these are common:
1. The site hosting the image may be down when the site serving the image is accessed.
2. The site hosting the image may be too slow when the site serving the image is accessed, thus our CDN gives up trying to fetch the image.
3. The site hosting the image may be blocking hotlinking. This is typically a server-level setting, not a site level setting.
4. The site hosting the image may be rate-limiting hotlinked files. This is typically a server-level setting, not a site level setting, and may be imposed by the hosting provider.
5. The site hosting the image may be blocking our CDN. This is typically a server-level setting, not a site level setting.
Hotlinked images randomly not working is a common thing across the entire web, not just here. It is strongly recommended that you host the images either yourself on the site being visited or via a reliable image CDN.
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