Breaking up is sad. For almost a year, I thought that we liked each other. I was so wrong. In hindsight, I gave you everything… for free, but you just barely whispered my name… Anyway, yesterday’s fiasco was the last straw. Adiós!
Ok, enough whimpering. Let me explain.
Traveling Bytes website is run on WP platform. Up until yesterday, majority of photos were uploaded on Filckr and WordPress Flickr Embed plugin was used to display them on TB pages. This setup worked well for almost 12 months. Suddenly, seemingly without rhyme or reason, number of photos were replaced with a message This image or video is currently unavailable. Just like this: they were there on Saturday and magically disappeared on Sunday.
Interestingly, they are fine and well in Flickr album.
Naturally, I googled the issue with the query “This image or video is currently unavailable Flickr.” What a surprise! Apparently, I am not alone in facing this obstacle. That’s an upside. However, the downside is worrisome: there is no resolution. There are multiple guesses related to image sizes, security, switching from public view to private to name a few. Sadly, despite all these suggestions, people still complaining about reoccurrence of this “little” problem.
Failing to find definite answer made me think about why I ended up with this setup in the first place. Naively, I thought that hosting images with Flickr would produce some exposure and traffic to my small blog. However, the only direct link on Flickr to the account owner’s website is on the Profile page. To get there, you have to mouse over three dots on the right and scroll to the last entry. Guess, how many times somebody ends up there. Ok, I get it: obviously, Flickr wants visitors to stay on their website (in the same way Facebook and others do). I guess I would not mind this arrangement since I could host my images for free. However, it would be stupid to rely on unpredictable service. Hence, no more outsourcing.
After all, if you want something done, do it yourself.