Images disappeared after going live

I see a lot of 404 errors like this one

https://darklanecreative.com/uploads/2/1/1/5/21151136/20140820-121220_orig.jpg

That looks like you’re using some non-standard upload directories.

The images that work are like

https://darklanecreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/das-glas-wasser-1961e_orig.jpg

So how did you enter those images that get the 404s?

If there’s some pattern to where they were and where they are now, you might be able to fix them using a plugin like “better search replace”. However, Murphy’s law probably applies and you’ll need to edit posts and pages to fix up the images.

Was the site developed where it is currently hosted? Or was it moved?

Images are in uploads folder? Path to images in site is: https://darklanecreative.com/uploads/2/1/1/5/21151136/1408514198.jpg

did you insert images manually or using the insert media button?

Thanks Steve and @jaycbrf for your helpful comments. The site was created as a Weebly website, hosted on a GoDaddy domain. Over the last few months, a professional developer transferred everything across onto WordPress, with the domain still hosted by GoDaddy. I am new to WordPress so cannot confirm how exactly the uploads were organised.

What puzzles me is that – if this was a problem in the transfer (i.e. a discrepancy between the method of uploading the images originally, and how WordPress now regards them) – why did they all look fine in the temporary domain yesterday? They have only disappeared since we switched over from the temporary domain and activated the present site. Is there something in THIS process that could have such an effect?

When it was on a temporary domain, the old site was still there so the images were being pulled in from it. When the new site replaced the old one, there was no Weebly site from which pt pull the images. Your developer did a half-****ed job. Ask if he moved over all the images and, if not, if there’s a backup of that old site.

Thanks very much for clarifying this Steve. I phoned up GoDaddy and the technical support in their hosting department examined the site closely and found that this exactly the problem:

‘Upon further investigation, there appears to be some hard coding on images that were not brought over completely to the new wordpress installation.

Images are generally stored in wordpress under the directory “/wp-content/uploads”
The hard coding from the other site store the images to “/uploads”
The single “uploads” folder is not in the new installation which means that it was not transferred over to the new wordpress.’

I have now passed this information over to the professional developer who I paid to do the migration (which took him eight months) and he has agreed to rectify it. Hopefully it won’t take another eight months.

Many thanks for your advice and support here. Most grateful.