Broken Images on the Illusion Vale Site

Good evening.  Over on Illusion Vale, we've recently encountered a problem with images displayed on forum posts not appearing, except as broken image links.  I browsed through the help topics here, and those covered issues with images hosted by Imgur, hosted by Imageshack or uploaded to the forum site itself.  What makes this issue somewhat different is that most of the images on Illusion Vale are hosted on Tritonius, my own personal Yahoo website (which, nowadays, I use for file hosting — mostly images, with some audio files and a few miscellaneous files — and email, and not much else).

When I go to edit the posts with the broken images, I see that the website has scrambled the links, even after I entered the link correctly, typically by Copy-Pasting the image link directly from Tritonius.


http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages01.png

But when I remove the bad URL and replace it with the correct one...


http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages02.png

...the images are still broken.  The only difference that I can see is that the replaced image URL is in white text (in this example, the broken Al-Shadan_Foreword image under the title post), while the original, automatically altered image URLs are still in the post's original buff text (in this example, the broken Al-Shadan_Skeleton image one post below).


http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages03.png

For whatever it's worth, the images for embedded videos display as they should.


http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages04.png

I've been a good website admin as far as paying Yahoo's dues, so the images hosted on Tritonius are still intact, and their links still work.  So the issue has to be related to Forumotion somehow.


http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/Al-Shadan_Foreword.jpg
http://mypetdungeon.tritonius.com/Al-Shadan_Skeleton.jpg

Might this be anything to do with Illusion Vale's recent change from a "Forumotion" URL to an "RPG-Board" URL?  I assume that RPG Board is a subdomain of Forumotion, seeing as Illusion Vale's "Free forum support" link leads here.  Or could my problem also be related to the demise of TinyPic, even though my images are linked directly from Tritonius as far as I know?

Any help would be well appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

...oh. Well, poopy. The images seem to be broken here as well.

Let me go back and edit in some clickable image URLs to accompany the broken links, just for clarity's sake.

I am having the same problem on all four of my Forumotion-hosted forums, so it's definitely an overall Forumotion related issue.

kaykay wrote:I am having the same problem on all four of my Forumotion-hosted forums, so it's definitely an overall Forumotion related issue.

Just for completion's sake, how are the images on your Forumotion sites hosted?

hello

i have the same isssues with servimg on my personal forum (broken images/host images problem)
this seems to be global please wait for more information 

thank you

hello

the problem seems to be fixed
can you please confirm that you are ok

Hello @The House of Ainsley and @kaykay

Thank you for your report of broken Images.
It seamed we had a problem with our servers and this was fixed as soon as we found out.
If you are still having a problem please Clear your cache & Cookies in Your browsers
also note The House of Ainsley your forum is HTTPS address and your links are not HTTPS they are HTTP this is a problem when Google try and find your site as safe.

My Advice:
I would change all your HTTP addresses to HTTPS by maybe re-hosting them so they become all HTTPS

Regards.

APE.

APE wrote:Hello @The House of Ainsley and @kaykay

Thank you for your report of broken Images.
It seamed we had a problem with our servers and this was fixed as soon as we found out.

..................

Regards.

APE.

All is now back to normal on all my forums.
Thanks, guys for the speedy fix.

@The House of Ainsley (OP) - I hope everything has now been sorted for you too(?)

Thank you for replying so quickly, everyone.  

@kaykay @skouliki and @APE  Well, I just cleared my cookies, data cache and browsing history (which, contrary to the help page linked back there, is a different process if you're using one of the latest versions of Google Chrome; now you have to click [three vertical dots] -> More Tools -> Clear Browsing Data and ensure that all boxes are checked, or you can simply mash Ctrl+Shift+Del while in Chrome).  But unfortunately, after a browsing data purge and a quick Refresh, the broken images are still broken.

Perhaps the HTTP-versus-HTTPS detail could be responsible.  Is Forumotion set to ignore HTTP image links, perhaps?  At times, I admittedly get lazy and Copy-Paste one of my posts among the various forum sites that I also visit, with slight edits to suit each forum site's text editor formats; I just checked the most recent one of those copied posts, and its Tritonius-hosted images are still broken on Illusion Vale...

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages05.png
(Direct page link: https://illusionvale.rpg-board.net/t546-fun-with-dungeons-dragons#9743 )


...but working normally on the Create-a-Forum-hosted forum site that I also haunt.  So I'm not sure if Google alone would be the culprit here.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages06.png
(Direct page link: https://kissmet.createaforum.com/totally-off-topic/full-frontal-silliness/?message=1043 )


I'm also not sure how I might switch my hosted files (or the Tritonius site on the whole) from HTTP to HTTPS; I'll see if Yahoo has any answers.  It's worth a try.  

I'll be back to keep everyone posted.  Thanks again.  

hello

are you using servimg?

Hello Right i know what you can do to try and see if the HTTP is the problem.

ACP >> General >> Forum >> Forum address >> SSL Certificate Tab >>
Turn your forum to HTTP and then save.

Now look to see if your Images are showing.

If yes then you will need to host them gain making sure you have the address set to HTTPS on all your link's

This is what our tools say.

Note that :

• Passing your forum in HTTPS requires that all external resources (images, JavaScripts, CSS, ...) to be called in HTTPS. For more information, read this tutorial.
  
• Since the SSL certificate is directly linked to the forum URL, you will not be able to modify the basic internet address of your forum as long as your SSL certificate is active.
  

@skouliki  After poking through the ACP, it looks like Servimg is hosting some of the stock forum images (ie. the dark forest image in the forum's background), but most of those forum images (ie. the images for the "clickie" buttons) are hosted by Illiweb.

@APE  Curiously, it looks like the ACP >> General >> Forum menu for Illusion Vale doesn't have a Forum Address menu under it for some reason or another.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages07.png

I'll poke around these menus and see if I can find an SSL Certificate option elsewhere.  If I do find it (assuming that I can), I'll see if I can change the setting to HTTP and try that test.  I'll be back!  


EDIT:  I still haven't found any way to switch to HTTP yet, but I see that our "Disable the display of Photobucket pictures on the forum" setting (under ACP >> General >> Security) is set to Yes.  I don't believe that anyone on Illusion Vale hosts their images with Photobucket (which is just as well; Photobucket is horrible), but that setting could be interfering with something else in the inner workings, something not immediately evident.  Should I try changing that setting to "No" and see if anything changes?


EDIT 2: Okay...curiouser and curiouser. I still haven't found that SSL Certificate setting, but while I was poking around the Admin Panel, I took a detour into Display >> Skins >> Choose a Theme. Illusion Vale is set to phpBB2, and after poking around with the various other versions, it seems that phpBB2 works well enough for Illusion Vale. But then I started poking around with the Preview, and it turns out that those images show up exactly as they should, so long as I'm viewing Illusion Vale through that Preview pane.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages08.png

What might this suggest?

Apologies for the double post, and I'm not sure if I should hold my breath here, but I think that I may have accidentally fixed the problem...somewhat.  

I went ahead and clicked Save for that Skins menu (after opting to keep the site on phpBB2, at least for now), and suddenly, formerly broken images all around the Illusion Vale forums started popping up!

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages09.png

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages10.png


I dug around the forums some more and was concerned to see that some of the images are still broken.  But then I noticed something: the broken images all seem to have been posted during the same time frame, ending some time around the October of 2014.  Images posted after that time frame are showing up now, as are images which were posted before that time frame.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages11.png


One or two of the threads helped me narrow this time frame down.  Images which were posted up until around the February of 2014 are now showing again...

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages12.png


...but after that point, I find post after post with broken images...

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages13.png
http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages13-2.png


...until some time around the October of 2014, at which point the images start showing up again.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages14.png


When I edited that title post in that Al-Shadan topic, I saw that the URLs for the images in that topic (which were also originally posted around that time frame) had been altered, apparently automatically altered by the forum engine itself.  I corrected the URL for that image, and it's showing up now.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages15.png


But the other images in that topic (which were posted at the same time but have not yet had their URLs edited and corrected) are still broken.

http://www.tritonius.com/IllusionValeBrokenImages16.png


So it seems that I have my work cut out for me.  I expect to spend a bit of time going back through those posts from 2014 and fixing all of their image URLs.  But at least one problem seems to be fixed.  Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, everyone.  

But I wonder why the URLs for those images were altered in the first place.  Does anyone remember what may have been happening with Forumotion between February 2014 and October 2014?  

You can read this tutorial https://help.forumotion.com/t150650-ssl-certificate-guide-for-a-success-forum-migration-to-https?highlight=certificate

So the issue is about images posted by members in topics?  Were some of these images hosted by Photobucket and/or TinyPic?

Hello ^^

The House of Ainsley wrote:I'll poke around these menus and see if I can find an SSL Certificate option elsewhere.  If I do find it (assuming that I can), I'll see if I can change the setting to HTTP and try that test.  I'll be back!  

Only the founder can change the URL of a forum.
As far as i know account "The House of Ainsley" is not the founder's account, but just an admin.

SLGray wrote:So the issue is about images posted by members in topics?  Were some of these images hosted by Photobucket and/or TinyPic?

No, the recently broken images have all been hosted by my own website, Tritonius.com.

Neptune- wrote:Only the founder can change the URL of a forum.
As far as i know account "The House of Ainsley" is not the founder's account, but just an admin.

We're not trying to change the URL, just whether or not the forum allows images with HTTP addresses instead of HTTPS.

But apparently that's a Founder-only privilege too, and I've been trying to contact Wraith (IV's founder) on Facebook to see if she'll change that setting, even just for a moment. She lives in Australia, so her hours are a bit different from mine and she's taking a bit of time to get back with me. We'll see what she says.

Okay, I finally got our Founder to locate that setting and change it from HTTPS to HTTP. Every last image is showing up now. So I reckon I'll go ahead and mark this thread Solved.

So what are the drawbacks to having that setting the way it is? Will everything be fine as long as no one on Illusion Vale goes linking any questionable executables through HTTP?

The only problem is your site will not be seen as safe by all the main browsers my advice is change the links, images, and anything else that has the HTTP address to HTTPS then put your site back to HTTPS so it becomes safe again.

you will get a warning when logging in that your site may not be safe but don't worry it is still as safe.

Also most search engines gives https links importance.