First, I plead guilty right up front to paranoia. There could easily be another explanation for this, although at the moment I cannot think of one.
On a prior post, philosophermouseofthehedge left a comment mentioning WordPress’s available no-ads upgrade. I was going to jump in right away and say something like, “Yes, yes, by all means you should get it. And let me tell you why. Check out my post ‘Ouch, WordPress lesson learned.'”
Of course, first I had to dig up the post to get the title and URL. And I discovered the oddest thing … the image in the post wasn’t showing. Strange. I went to the editing screen to diagnose the problem. The image link looked okay. But you know what? The image itself was no longer in my media library. Hmmm. Whatever could have happened to that image?
Anyway, long story short, I keep most of my images on my computer somewhere, either on this laptop or on my big computer — some half-baked idea about maybe wanting or needing them again; after all, I invested a lot of time finding them. It took about ten minutes, but I found the old screenshot and uploaded it again to my media library. So now, for the moment at least, the image is back in the post where it belongs.
If this post, or the image in that old post, or perhaps this entire blog, should suddenly disappear, ask the WordPress gods if they know anything about it. And remind them I was only trying to plug their ads-free upgrade.
I’m sure there was nothing intentional. There are WAY too many sites and too many posts to take the time to go in and do something malicious. Plus, what you’ve said is mild. I’m sure there are plenty of others that really go off the deep end.
I’d feel better about it if I could think of even one other way that picture might have disappeared. I suppose undiagnosed Alzheimer’s might be a possibility …
They’re all out to get us, you know, PT.
Incidentally: how are you getting rid of the comments box below? Clever…
Per my post, “Update on WP Gremlins”: “To disable the option on your blog, so as not to spam your readers, go to Dashboard > Settings > Discussion and on the Discussion Settings page, scroll down to “Follow Comments” and uncheck (or leave unchecked) the box saying “Show a ‘follow comments’‘ option in the comment form.”
Images disappear from the WP Media Library, it’s a common complaint in the Forum.
To be honest the Library is a forgotten and abandoned part of WordPress. I rarely use it because the URL is always unique, it comes with a date attached, so if you want to change an image you’ve left on several posts have to find each post and edit the HTML. If you upload the image to PhotoBucket the image is given a URL with no date, so if I want to change my copyright image on all 383 posts at the same time, all I have to do is delete the image from PhotoBucket, then upload the image with the same file name. Presto, 383 posts updated at once.
PhotoBucket URL: http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/vv326/saltedlithium/042312victor.jpg
WordPress URL: http://saltedlithium.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/smcomments.jpg
If I upload a new “042312victor” file to the same PB account, it changes in every instance I’ve used it, everywhere.
If I upload a new “smcomments”, WordPress gives it a new date in the URL, so it changes nothing.
Wow, thanks. I had no idea this had been happening to other people. And I’d never thought to store my images elsewhere. It has advantages I’d never considered. Thx for the info.
(Sorry, WP.)