Media Library image URLs not working

  • hakunafang

    (@hakunafang)


    8 years ago

    I’m not a WP expert so please be gentle.

    I’m helping someone with a WP shop site. It’s based on Woocommerce and uses the DMCS theme. There are about a dozen plugins installed, and they are all running their most recent updates. I updated them all this afternoon, and the problem existed both before and after the updates.

    The problem I am trying to solve involves images in the media library. They all work just fine within WP. However, I need to link to some of these images from an external website.

    If you look at the properties of an image in the media library, the first attribute you see is the URL for the image. My understanding is that you should be able to access the image from outside of WP using this URL. Eg you should be able to paste the URL into any web browser and view the image.

    Am I correct about this?

    My problem is that if I try to access an image URL directly (eg by pasting it into a web browser) I get a “WHOOPS! 404 It looks like you are lost” message. So it’s not a straight 404 error, it’s coming from inside WP, on a screen that maintains the site’s headers, menu and colour scheme.

    Just for the sake of experimentation I opened one of the images from within the media library, changed a single attribute and then updated the image. After doing this the URL worked briefly – like for about a minute.

    The only change to the site recently has been the installation of an SSL certificate (no, the images can’t be accessed via https either). I don’t actually know how long the problem has existed because it’s only recently that I have needed to access images using their URLs. I don’t know if it used to work or not. The website has never been moved from one server to another.

    The website is hosted by a hosting provider and I don’t have access to logs or the ssh. I wish I did. I do have ftp access.

    This is driving me bonkers. Can anyone shed some light?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • esmi

    (@esmi)

    Check that anti-hotlinking isn’t enabled in your hosting account. If it is, try disabling it.

    Thread Starter hakunafang

    (@hakunafang)

    Thankyou thankyou THANKYOU!!!

    That was indeed the problem (my provider calls it “hotlink protection”). I have disabled it for the moment and everything is now working as expected.

    Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

    tamannasingh

    (@tamannasingh)

    Oh dear, thank you very much @esmi. I have been facing the same problem for a week now.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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