Photos in my Journal Keep Breaking

[That_Bug_Guy]

Hello, in the follow up to this post https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/tips-and-tricks-for-creating-a-journal-post/44855, my journal post is up and running. However, the photo links I’m using have broken twice for no obvious reason. I’m hosting the photos in Google Drive and I haven’t changed their privacy settings. This issue has only affected this one specific journal post, not the other ones which also use photos hosted in the drive.

Does anyone have a solution? Are these links just expiring and if this is a specific issue to Google Drive, what are some more reliable image-hosting sites I could use?

Thanks in advance!

[That_Bug_Guy]

Oh, and here’s the post in question:
https://inaturalist.ca/journal/that_bug_guy/84001-guides-to-lady-beetles-coccinellidae-of-the-world

[cthawley]

It looks like this is a Google-side issue:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/project-journal-photos-linked-in-post-no-longer-showing/48553

[That_Bug_Guy]

Yep, that looks like the root of the problem. I need to use another image hosting site, huh. Any recommendations?

[ddennism]

I don’t think this is the most future-proof solution, but fwiw you can get around this for now by using:

https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=XXXX

instead of

https://drive.google.com/uc?id= or
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=

the thumbnails will typically be low-res, but you can force them to be high(er)-res by appending &sz=w1000 to the image URL (immediately after the id).

(I don’t know how long this will work, but it’s a nice stop-gap measure for now.)

[pfau_tarleton]

If you don’t want to find a photo-hosting site, you could consider using Google Sites or Slides.
A Sites example:
https://sites.google.com/view/flyguide/ (which you can link to from a Journal post)
A Slides example:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/pfau_tarleton/20891

You may even find it easier than using the Journal for the guide itself.

[twainwright]

I have had similar problems with links from Google Drive, but not with links from Google Photos, so you might try moving your images to that site instead (until Google changes the rules for Photos as well …).