Imgur image URL migration: Coming soon to a Stack Exchange site near you!

Question

Update on the URL migration, May 15th 2024

The work described below will be under way shortly. For further updates, we'll be maintaining the update log in the main post for the Imgur migration.

---

We're moving into the next phase of our work to replace Imgur with our new in-house image hosting service. All image uploaders network-wide now use our new image hosting service, and so our work is nearing completion.

Starting the week of May 13, 2024, we'll begin rolling out updates to replace Imgur links with the new i.sstatic.net domain we develop and maintain.

What's changing

We will be updating Imgur URLs appearing in post bodies, comments, chat posts, and other significant text fields across the network. The URLs will change in the following way.

Old Imgur image URL format:

https://​​i.stack.imgur.com/<image ID>.<extension>

New self-hosted image URL format:

https://i.sstatic.net/<same image ID>.<extension>

• We'll update rows of data containing valid Imgur URLs: i.e. https://i.sstatic.net/0000Q.png

• We'll be replacing the actual domain portion of the URL: i.e. i.stack.imgur.com → i.sstatic.net

• Any resize characters or query params on the image will remain intact and continue to work on the new domain.

What won't change

Instances of the word "Imgur" that are not part of a URL or don't otherwise look like an image link will not change. Additionally, image links across the network that load images from sites other than i.stack.imgur.com won’t change either.

Other information and errata

1. As with our previous http → https conversion, we are not creating a new post revision, and we'll be updating historical values in post revision histories as well. This is because image URLs should continue to resolve to the same image whether or not i.stack.imgur.com is the site serving them. Therefore, there should be no issues covering edit rollbacks and revision comparisons. It also avoids making explicit edits that would otherwise bump a post, unlock a post’s upvotes and downvotes, and otherwise disrupt the site.

2. Once the migration is complete, we’ll work with Imgur to redirect traffic to the appropriate images on our servers. But updating the actual data is the only guarantee we have complete control over how images resolve for the long term.

3. Posts that happen to contain an i.stack.imgur.com URL but don't actually intend to link to that resource will also change as part of this update. For example, Code Golf exercises may change, and even this very meta post describing the link transition may change. These represent a small amount of cases across the network. However, as this process may alter important URLs, we ask that if you do notice an obvious error, kindly make or suggest an edit to fix it. Due to decision #1 above, there may not be a simple way for users to verify the previous state, so use your best judgment.

We will, of course, keep a database backup in case something has gone seriously wrong and needs significant intervention to fix.

Something's weird. What should I do?

If you notice anything odd, please feel free to leave a bug report here, or create a new meta post using the tag image-uploader. While we will be reviewing every bug and feature request about our new image hosting service, our primary goal will be to quash serious issues, so that we can ensure the deployment goes smoothly and works as intended.

The rollout starts next week

Similar to the initial rollout of the new image service, we are planning a staged rollout for updates to image URLs, beginning early next week. We also have some special handling in place for sites like Stack Overflow to avoid any site interruptions due to the size of the affected tables, and we'll update this post when we start rolling changes out.

Answer 1

status-completed

There are many runnable javascript snippets that load images from imgur. Most of them (all?) load from i.imgur.com, not from i.stack.imgur.com because i.stack.imgur.com never had the correct CORS permissions to be useable by snippets

Examples:

• ThreeJS transparent PNG textures black
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/39016418/128511
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/44384283/128511

Will this migration affect these snippets?

Further, will the new image hosting have the correct CORS permission so that images there can be used by snippets?

Answer 2

This seems to have broken Stack App images:

Application Icon must be hosted under Stack Exchange's Imgur account

Answer 3

Anyone that wants to have a network-wide list upfront of their own posts that contain links to the i.stack.imgur.com domain can use this cross-site query:

-- accountid: Accountid "Id of your network profile found on stackexchange.com"
-- includemainsites: Include Main Sites "(1 =yes, 0 = no)"
-- includemetasites: Include Meta Sites "(1 =yes, 0 = no)"
exec sede_ineachdb '
select -- top 10 
       [$site name$] [site name]
     , concat(
         [$site url$], ''/q/'', posts.id, ''|'', 
          coalesce(q.title, convert(nvarchar, posts.id))) [Link]
     , name [PostType]
     , substring(posts.body, patindex(''%http[s:]%/%stack.imgur.com/%'', posts.body), 100) [Part]
     , patindex(''%http[s:]%/%stack.imgur.com/%'', posts.body) [Position]
from posts
inner join posttypes on posttypes.id = posts.posttypeid
inner join users u on u.id = posts.owneruserid
left outer join posts q on q.id = coalesce(posts.parentid, posts.id)
where u.accountid = ##accountid##
and posts.body like ''%http[s:]%/%stack.imgur.com/%''
'
, ##includemainsites:int?1##
, ##includemetasites:int?0##

You'll need your AccountId which you can find by clicking on Network Profile in your User Profile. The AccountId is the number after https://stackexchange.com/users/{accountid}/name.

When you run the query you select posts for either main sites only or meta sites only. That might be needed if you are a prolific user that posted a ton across all sites. So if you're a power user and run into timeouts you have to use the on site Stack Exchange search, sorry.

The result of the query will look like this:

Keep in mind SEDE is updated once a week on Sunday.
Use the great SEDE Tutorial written by the wonderful Monica Cellio.
Say "Hi" in SEDE chat.

Answer 4

1. What is the size limitation for new images uploaded to the new system?

2. Will the help manual or FAQ be updated to have an entry on how to upload a picture?

3. Will there be cross linking in the help so if you search for picture or image or photo you are directed to the relevant help?

4. What image formats will be supported?

Answer 5

The image resize characters do not work the same way on the new hosting as they did on imgur. Resizing the images only takes the width into account, not the height. This causes problems for extremely tall images.

To demonstrate, a 200x700 image uploaded to both imgur and the new hosting service, also rotated to a 700x200 image. All four uses have the "m" resize character at the end, which limits the width to 320px.

imgur on the left, SO on the right.

Wide:

Tall:

Answer 6

The last few weeks or so, I have experienced issues viewing images on Stack Exchange sites.

Often, I don't see images at all. I only see links with the alternate texts (often the default "Enter image description here"). If I follow such as link, I am met with something like this:

"oh no, that request didn't look right
RayID: 88423cb16e5409af"

For example, I cannot see any images in this post.

Here's how it looks for me:

(Ironically, I cannot see this screenshot I just uploaded (?) either.)

If I click on the first link in this Q, I am met with

(and I cannot see this newly uploaded screenshot myself either!).

What is causing this?

Answer 7

About two days ago I was looking at this old CodeGolf post, which (used to have) some great images on it.

• Draw an Image with a Snake

I noticed that the Python code in the post had had a lot of array indices changed: a line that was clearly supposed to say a[1] had become a[6] the first time it was referenced, then a[7] on the next reference, and so on.

So I edited the post to fix those array indices. And when I reloaded the page, I saw that somehow this had broken all the images in the post and I don't see any image URLs anywhere in the post, so I don't know how to recover those images! It just shows fake image names like

![Mona Lisa 0.01 tolerance][1]
![Mandrill 0.01 tolerance][2]

I don't know if this data loss was related to the recent image migration, or some vastly older migration. (The post itself is from 2014!) But I really hope someone can help get those awesome images back. And/or, maybe save some other old posts' images before they're gone.

Thanks for any help!