Arina Artemis, Codecrafter

@artie-codecrafter

xe/xer, they/them

Arina Artemis, Codecrafter @artie-codecrafter8/3/2023, 6:47 AM

artemis system @arty

Tom (tired of the computer)@masklayer8/2/2023, 3:14 PM

Ok we Need a way to upload images for inline use in code so people stop hosting parts of their cool html posts on fucking DISCORD though

Lupi @lupi8/2/2023, 3:15 PM

and NOT the clumsy draft trick

apparently imgur doesn't work either for some folks so i can't even use the image hosting site to host images????

Ackart @Ackart8/2/2023, 3:17 PM

I’ve used Imgur in the past for my posts, but I didn’t like it

Staff please :(

Wobbly Python @WobblyPython8/2/2023, 4:21 PM

Until then, discord's workin fine >:3

#The Cohost Global Feed

Tom (tired of the computer)@masklayer8/2/2023, 4:28 PM

Until discord makes some change to how direct links to your images work which doesn’t mess up any of their stuff but does mess up any external embeds, which they could totally just do at literally any time

Or until they decide they’re going to delete old files if you’re not a nitro subscriber or something

which they also have no reason not to randomly just do at any time

kata 🌊 aqua!@kadybat8/2/2023, 8:51 PM

Please do not use Discord as file storage. It is a terrible idea.

I say this as a Discord employee. My opinions aren't my employers but also

Discord is not a file host. It is a chat app. It is not designed to host files for use on other websites. It will fail, without question, more often than not, and you need to use something else.

Jackie💿@ArcadianRhythm8/2/2023, 10:21 PM

EDIT: Jessica @ticky points out a potentially even cheaper option than my suggestion

https://cohost.org/ticky/post/2333526-did-you-know-that-st

EDIT 2: Down in the comments of this post, Steven Tanzi took my advice and ran into some roadblocks. It seems Wasabi has changed some policies lately, with some clarifications and stipulations regarding the use case I originally described. It seems I've been grandfathered in on some of those changes, and how I'm using their service might not be available to a new user right away without contacting their customer support. It may also, under certain conditions, lead to account termination.

That being the case, I'm not erasing the post but am I hiding my particular Wasabi experience below the fold. My points about being less reliant on capricious free services and learning how to share self-sufficiently online still stand, though.

Original post with Wasabi experience snipped out

Instead of betting on platform features that may or may not materialize in the future OR being reliant on conditional abuse of a chat app's CDN...

...and if you see yourself either doing lots of html posting here or just want a way to host and share files with friends and family without bringing google/onedrive/mega into the picture...

it wouldn't be the biggest waste of time or money to:

Register a cheap domain name.
Sign up for a cloud storage service with publicly-accessible buckets
Point said domain name to said bucket

You don't have to buy a big Godaddy hosting package, you don't have to Build A Website with Squarespace, you don't need to mess with CDNs or templates or any permission wrangling besides making things private/public. You just need a dumb name pointed to dumb storage. And even then, depending on which storage service you choose, you might not even need the domain name!

tl;dr: scumming off free, public hosting is cool and good until they decide to take it away (see imgur wiping out anon uploads), so consider building your own hosting solution for cheap! Learn life skills and digital enrichment for pennies!

This section was part of my original post, but see EDIT 2 for why it's hidden away here. i.e. Don't follow it, it probably won't work anymore. YMMV as always.

Before mp3 uploads, I was hosting music and video uploads on my Wasabi cloud storage (not a referral link). It's $6.99 per TB per month (it went up a dollar just yesterday after many years), and they only charge for stored data at rest. That is to say, you're not charged for traffic up or down no matter how viral your post gets. And if you wanna share your 300GB of zipped touhou FLACs with your friend in Canada, you won't rack up a huge bill when they decide to post the link on a public forum. Links which you can revoke or rename at anytime, btw. Dead simple drag-and-drop file uploading, then two more clicks to make it public (things you upload are private and obfuscated by default, unlike Amazon Web Services).

And if you do decide to go with Wasabi or another Amazon S3-compatible cloud storage service, that means Steps 1 and 3 from above are optional! If you're fine copy/pasting/sharing discord's gobbledyguk URLs, then something like https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub/weirdos.jpg ought to seem sane in comparison. Being S3-compatible also means that if you wanna veer into more data hoarder/self-hosted shenanigans or off-site backups, you've got a solid foundation to build on.

#The Cohost Global Feed #not an advertisement

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in reply to @masklayer's post:

Charlotte the Useless Ghost @confusedcharlot8/2/2023, 3:21 PM

currently you need to use drafts to do that?

shork @shork8/2/2023, 4:00 PM

we can a) use drafts, though I think it wouldn't be hard for the website to have a "upload this file and paste the url into the body text" button or ~~b) you could put an inline base64-encoded image (which makes the post lorge)~~ (not currently supported)

Charlotte the Useless Ghost @confusedcharlot8/2/2023, 5:33 PM

base64 encoding sounds silly enough to become a defacto standard around here

shork @shork8/2/2023, 5:49 PM

hm nope, I was thinking of something like

<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAAFCAYAAACNbyblAAAAHElEQVQI12P4//8/w38GIAXDIBKE0DHxgljNBAAO9TXL0Y4OHwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" />

but that gets stripped completely (see https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-display-base64-images-in-html.html)

Tom (tired of the computer)@masklayer8/2/2023, 5:59 PM

.. I swear I used base64 in a poast before..

signal eleven @widr8/2/2023, 8:00 PM

i think you can use it inside styles, as for example the background property of an element, but not an href

shork @shork8/2/2023, 10:21 PM

oh! yes that's probably it

\phi @phi8/2/2023, 11:12 PM

If u want the image to be the body of an element instead of a background, use the context css property, then it's about the same as jusf an inline <img>.

e.g.

<img
title="alt-text"
alt="alt-text"
style="
content:
  url('data:\
  image/\
  png;base64,\
  iVBORw0KG\
  goAAAANSU\
  hEUgAAAAU\
  AAAAFCAYA\
  AACNbyblA\
  AAAHElEQV\
  QI12P4//8\
  /w38GIAXD\
  IBKE0DHxg\
  ljNBAAO9T\
  XL0Y4OHwA\
  AAABJRU5E\
  rkJggg==')
">

(sorry for the narrow formating, I jusf wanted it to fit in the comment, hehe (edit: and then it didn't anyway, hehe))

signal eleven @widr8/2/2023, 11:15 PM

oh my god there's a content property in <img>?

\phi @phi8/3/2023, 2:09 AM

yesh, hehe

did a little test/demo here: https://cohost.org/phi/post/2335250-svg-test

Tom (tired of the computer)@masklayer8/3/2023, 11:29 AM

Ah Neat..

in reply to @Ackart's post:

shork @shork8/2/2023, 4:50 PM

imgur recently updated their terms and started deleting old, unused, and inactive content uploaded anonymously so unless you like link rot they are not an alternative

in reply to @masklayer's post:

belgianwaffle82 @belgianwaffle828/2/2023, 5:49 PM

hosting in unlisted folders on some gallery sites (Itaku) works fine too until admins discover you've been uploading memes to their website.

in reply to @ArcadianRhythm's post:

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose8/4/2023, 12:02 AM

Do you know of any tutorials or anything to setup the wasabi with a domain name? I've been having issues with imgur recently, and this seems right up my alley! I've worked with domain names before, but largely just pointing them at my own network. I'm unfamiliar when it comes to something like file storage

Jackie💿@ArcadianRhythm8/4/2023, 1:58 AM

I'm sorry I don't have a tutorial to point you to, this is something I just kinda figured out on my own. I'll type something up here if you'll bear with me.

I've worked with domain names before, but largely just pointing them at my own network.

It's pretty much the same thing! It's as simple as a domain forward, once you figure out the target address you need.

On wasabi, you establish a bucket (storage device) on a region (server) of your choice. In this first example image, below all the redactions, is a bucket I've called robram set up on us-east-1.
https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub/wasabi1.png

And because I didn't want to make the entire bucket public, I've made a folder in that bucket called pub and made that public. NOTE that any files you add to this folder still need to be made public individually after uploading.
https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub/wasabi2.png

If you noticed the example image addresses, wasabi URLs are structured

s3.[region name].wasabisys.com/[bucket name]/[folder name]/file.ext

So in my case, the forwarding address I need is

https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub

and this is what I'll tell my domain manager to forward my domain robotsrampant.com to. (I'm on Google Domains still, I need to migrate away)
https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub/wasabi3.png
https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub/wasabi4.png

So now I can upload files into the pub folder and use either the unwieldy wasabisys address or my custom domain as link addresses.
https://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/robram/pub/lilravergirl.gif
https://robotsrampant.com/lilravergirl.gif

I hope this makes sense and is helpful!

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose8/4/2023, 9:29 AM

Yeah this is great! Seems straight forward enough. Do you grab the link "https://robotsrampant.com/lilravergirl.gif" from anywhere, or do you just type that out when you send it to people? Also, my main goal would be to just use this as a place to put images i'm going to embed or share on places like CoHost. In that case, then I could just keep wasabi's URL naming scheme right? It would still work?

Jackie💿@ArcadianRhythm8/4/2023, 7:21 PM

In my example, the wasabi bucket/folder address is what I'm using as my domain name's forwarding destination. So yes, the lilravergirl.gif addresses are effectively equivalent. Any object uploaded into the pub folder, as soon as it's made public, has that as its address.

And yes, you could absolutely keep the wasabi (or aws or whatever storage provider) URL scheme if you wanted. It's all a matter of if you've got a vanity url burning a hole in your pocket or care about branding or you're sharing things with groups of people who are (rightfully) wary about clicking on strange links.

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose8/4/2023, 9:42 AM

Oh, also, how do you make an individual object public? I see this tutorial on making a bucket public, but I'm having a harder time figuring out how to do it for individual files

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose8/4/2023, 9:51 AM

Sorry for the multiple messages, but sending things as I figure them out. It looks like Wasabi has disabled public access unless you contact customer support

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose8/4/2023, 10:30 AM

So, just heard back from the Wasabi Support team, and it seems like they've updated their policies to try and move away from this sort of set up (if I'm understanding them correctly)

This is the link to their egress policy, specifically step 8 there.

Jackie💿@ArcadianRhythm8/4/2023, 7:11 PM

All the messages are fine! Don't worry about it.
You're a bit further into the weeds on it than I am, and I guess I've been grandfathered in / immunized to some of the recent policy changes. I'm also using wasabi as off-site backup for my home computers, so the things I'm sharing here are way less than my total storage there. I'm probably not in violation of the egress policy.

Still, very glad to be made aware of this! I'm going to edit the post based on your experiences. I hope it hasn't been too much of a boondoggle for you and you can still get some good use/experience out of it.

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose8/4/2023, 7:48 PM

No not at all! It was interesting to see and led me to researching a bunch of stuff this morning. Someone in this post (or... somewhere) mentioned neocities which I think will be the best option for me right now. Nearly free speech.net seemed really interesting and I liked being able to access it via SFTP, but I became a bit lost on how to actually get a url for the files. That and variable costs scares me a bit lmao So, still overall a very educational experience!