Ending support of public folder

[ae2rigc]

Just heard from dropbox that support for the public folder is ending.

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As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Pro users will be able to use the Public folder until
September 1, 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.

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It is one of the most useful features of the service for me as I use it to get links to single files that I can send to people without setting up shared folders and requiring them to have dropbox accounts.

(Save file to my public folder locally, syncs, right click, get publick link, paste. Doesn't get any easier than that.)

It's also useful for bb style forum posts where you can link to images with an easy tag.

With the public folder support being removed, is there going to be an alternative solution to allow easy public sharing of single files?

[ym58]

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TonyProctor a écrit :

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I just received the email notifying me of this change a couple of days ago, but I'm very confused.

The email suggests that I can manually share these files by creating a public link and copying it. However, all my files already have a public link of "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/..." and they're what I already use. Where are these links "https://1drv.ms/..." coming from? All dropbox presents to me in the same links that I am using now.

This would be great, of course, if existing links were preserved, but am I missing something?

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Please read the pertaining post carefully : it was about finding 'alternatives' to DB to circumvent their new policy !

So, this post explained my difficulties using MS/OneDrive as a 1:1 alternative to DB.

[cdgoin]

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@ym58 wrote:

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Chris R. a écrit :

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5. If you're a paid user and use the Public folder a lot, cancel your subscription - there are alternatives out there!

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Can you enumerate them ?

For instance, I am currently dubious regarding MS/OneDrive that does not keep the picture's name in the generated Public Link making it difficult to batch-substitute link addresses in my Web Site !

To make a long story short, changing all occurences of :

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28826553/folder1/pictureXXX.png

to :

https://1drv.ms/i/folder1/pictureXXX.png

would be a piece of cake,

but changing them *** ONE BY ONE *** to a link like :

https://1drv.ms/i/s!Al1QJkdmK-njktgb1KKlvg0MgyFHHHvkZg

is another story !

Eagerly waiting for your 'alternatives' ...

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I have 97 posts with an average picture count of 4, on one forum alone.. thats 400ish pictures that will be dead links. 

[ym58]

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cdgoin a écrit :

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I have 97 posts with an average picture count of 4, on one forum alone.. thats 400ish pictures that will be dead links. 

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They ***simply*** don't care (at DB).

You're just supposed to make a sacrifice of your life 

Period !

[MadDogDJ]

No doubt, my subscription will be cancelled. If I had known this, I would have never, ever purchased a membership. I have thousands of links out there and this is going to be a monumental job just to get things back to normal .... ON ANOTHER SERVER, NOT DROPBOX. If it ain't broke, dont fix it. this certainly will lead to a substantial drop in ongoing subscriptions like mine.

[Hirato]

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@Ambientguitar wrote:

I am guessing they (Dropbox)  are being paid to do this.i.e. This now makes it impossible to share copyrighted material because if someone does, then whoever shares it would have to share the username and password. Which, I suppose,  makes it easy to pinpoint who shared what and when and no denying it. And yes I am a conspiracy theorist lol!

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The old public links contained the user ID in the URL, and those would be associated with a single person.

And the awful new shared links, despite using a different mechanism, are similarly tied to a single person's account.

Nothing really changes in respect to copyright infringers here, though with the awful new system, it is I imagine, much easier for dropbox to conclusively assess which other users have accessed the file.

[f-off]

Just dropping by to comment that this bull**bleep** is the final nail to Dropbox's coffin. This garbage isn't even worth the $0 it costs.

[River]

Thank you for all the comments and questions about the Public folder. We understand this

decision impacts many of your workflows, and requires time to update the links for your shared content. 

In many cases, our newer sharing features are an alternative for the Public folder links. You can ‘create a shared link’ for any file or folder in your Dropbox. Creating a shared link is similar to using Public folder links, with one key difference: links are not automatically generated. 

We recognize that this change may cause frustration. We want to help you understand your sharing options. 

[skoren]

Hello

It seems XML files only feed properly out of PUBLIC directory.

Is there any way to feed XML out of other directories. When shared in another directory an XML

file feeds as a webpage and doesn't work like it did from PUBLIC directory.

Is there any solution to this?

many thanks

[floris]

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@River wrote:

Thank you all for the comments and questions about the Public folder. We understand this decision impacts many of your workflows, and requires time to update the links for your shared content.

In many cases, our newer sharing features are an alternative for the Public folder links. You can ‘create a shared link’ for any file or folder in your Dropbox. Creating a shared link is similar to using Public folder links, with one key difference: links are not automatically generated.

We recognize that this change may cause frustration. We want to help you understand your sharing options.

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@River,

So you truly haven't read any of the posts in this thread, clearly ..
If this is the attitude towards the customers ...

Again, give me one reason how removing the way /public/ works right now for us pro users has a NEGATIVE impact or a POSITIVE impact for the dropbox company.

What has caused this uproar to be worth it all that dropbox as a company ends up being so much better if those who helped you grow get cut off by the knees when this direct linking or 'pure' use of our content on our online-harddisk gets replaced by some 'wrapper' feature of dropbox?

Convince us, because some 'we put your content in a wrapper because of eeeh eeeh eehh consistency reasons' is bollox excuses that nobody believes.

I am looking for DropBox, not for 'alternatives' to linking what has worked on my 60,000+ files for years just fine.

[rfdesigner]

Re River's comment

"Thank you all for the comments and questions about the Public folder. We understand this decision impacts many of your workflows, and requires time to update the links for your shared content."

fair enough..   but this is only the half of it.

"In many cases, our newer sharing features are an alternative for the Public folder links. You can ‘create a shared link’ for any file or folder in your Dropbox. Creating a shared link is similar to using Public folder links, with one key difference: links are not automatically generated."

This misses the entire point.  It's like picking your car up from the garage and finding they've broken it so now it has a misfire and them offering you a rail ticket.  No, not what I want, please fix the problem.

"We recognize that this change may cause frustration. We want to help you understand your sharing options."

No we want you to explain to us WHY you are REALLY pulling the plug.

The message you MUST take away is you are changing the rules on links already in existance for free and paid for accounts.  This is quite simply UNNACEPTABLE however you dress it up.

It's annoying and frustrating to tell us we will not have public folder in the future.  If the reason is legal say it's legal, if it's bandwidth, say it's bandwidth, if it's a wish to add advertising, say it's to allow advertising.

Big Company BS does DP no good what so ever, it isn't "new and better" it's a right royal pain in the "£$%.

If you'd said

"look folks, we know the public folder is very popular, but it's causing us real problems and we need to close this, migrating everyone to our alternative, so from date X you'll not be able to add anything to the public folder, but old links will remain in place for the time being" then you wouldn't be getting much if any backlash.

Doing what you've done is a great way to lose customers and get a bad name.