Google Drive Image Hosting?

[avoice7]

truthspirit.freeforums.net/

I originally used Photobucket to host my images. When they changed to pay only, I wanted to try a different way.



I got a Google Drive account to host them there, but couldn't get the links to work.


I then tried several direct link generators to use w/ Google Drive w/ no luck.


I am trying this one now. www.wonderplugin.com/online-tools/google-drive-direct-link-generator/



It is sort of working in that, If I am in a thread & click on VIEW ALL SMILEYS it shows the little running dog that I added to the array from my Google Drive>link generator.



If I click on the dog though, it posts a code to the thread & not the dog.



This has been so frustrating. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you


Anna

[Craig]

Hi

As it may help, could you provide the link to your forum please

[Retread]

May 5, 2020 5:42:07 GMT -8 avoice7 said:

I got a Google Drive account to host them there, but couldn't get the links to work.

Google Drive makes it very difficult to get direct links to the images. The "shareable link" they provide goes to a page where the image is displayed, but that isn't useful as a URL to the image itself.

For instance, this is what a "shareable link" to and image I have on my google drive looks like:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1geu2aouDvVkb0LF1qUkruC1b1yhMj3De

A link to that will display the image on a page:
drive.google.com/open?id=1geu2aouDvVkb0LF1qUkruC1b1yhMj3De

But to get a link to the URL itself, I need to shift+right-click, then copy image location, which gives me this:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9L1nAZXq1yjdLF9VU-YdKmZ6PeIfsIuzZiFH1kRVZHmU2556OVvzTXPamEZ_P1liH0kAfSeBL3xLhsI18Vy8=w1724-h944

That will work for the Image URL when using the insert image button and result in this:



But honestly, that's a horribly convoluted way of doing things and I don't know of a direct path. I don't recommend going through all that.

Personally I think you might prefer to use one of the image hosts listed in the External Resources Help Guide article.

[Kami]

for whatever it's worth tho, I can't see the picture you embedded so it may only work for you since you have it cached 🤔 don't know for sure

but to kinda loop back: google drive is not an image host. yes, you can upload and store images onto drive and share them with others, but it is meant to be done through the google drive space so it is not inherently set up to make it easy for you to embed images on other sites.

unlike most places, google has the resources to handle unintended usage but bear in mind that unintended usage may be against google's tos and if it is could result in actions against your account—especially since google has its own CDN (content delivery network). i don't 100% know if using drive as a CDN is disallowed, but it is worth looking into just in case.

i would echo retread's recommendation to find a free image host from the external resources link and abide by their terms.

[bartlesby]

It's a pain, but if you must, it is doable.

What you need is the ID of the file. You can get this by right clicking on the image in Google Drive and selecting "Get Shareable Link". This will copy it to your clipboard.

From there, you paste it somewhere (Notepad, search bar, etc.) and it will look like this:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wkN-tMwvmLvnjca99SeLp0itQz5rx6KgWhat you want is everything behind the equals sign in the link, which is your file ID. In this case:
1wkN-tMwvmLvnjca99SeLp0itQz5rx6KgFrom there, you want to use a different function of Google Drive in order to get a direct link to the image. This is what it looks like:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id={your file ID}So again, in this example, it would be:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1wkN-tMwvmLvnjca99SeLp0itQz5rx6KgUse that for your image link and voila:

Though, like they said, it might be easier to just transfer images to an actual sharing site when you want to share them. Google also has bandwidth quotas so keep that in mind, as well.

[Michael]

I think it would be fine to use Google Drive for image sharing if you're only sharing an image in a post, however I would absolutely not use it to host files that are requested on a regular basis. For example avatars, or anything related to your theme, smilies, etc. should not be loaded from Google Drive, as that amounts to use as a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Those images should be saved as a part of your theme.