Public Commander Keen Forum

Hey everyone,

Just a quick notice that Dropbox is changing their sharing policy for public folders (this feature only applies to anyone who got an account before October 2012). Any links that were made from files stored within Public are probably going to break, so this might affect some people here using Dropbox for Keen uploads (potentially me with AR uploads, for example).

Here's the note from Dropbox:

We’re always looking to improve the Dropbox sharing experience. The Public folder was the first sharing method we introduced, and since then, we’ve built even better ways for you to share securely and work together with your team.

As a result, we’ll soon be ending support for the Public folder. Dropbox Pro users will be able to use the Public folder until
September 1, 2017. After that date the files in your Public folder will become private, and links to these files will be deactivated. Your files will remain safe in Dropbox.

If you’d like to keep sharing files in your Public folder, you can create new shared links. Just make sure to send the new URLs to your collaborators.

In addition to shared links, we have a number of sharing options designed to make collaboration easier and give you more control. To learn more, visit our Help Center.

Great post. Ugh, this is a pain though. I know almost everything I've uploaded is on there.

I suggest start using OneDrive by Microsoft. You already have 5 GB, if you have an MS account. And it's well integrated in Windows 10 and sharing a folder is easier.

@Ceilick: some of your uploads are already broken or dead links. the "Keen Galaxy all-in-one Modding Package" on the KeenWiki for eg. (but don't worry: I reuploaded everything myself.)

by the way: some of those links over there are "private" hosted and others are stored right on the shikadi domain. Malvineous is the one to send these files for long term hosting, isn't he? or are there other admins with hosting rights? who to talk to (Malv seems to be too busy for things like this...)

Nisaba wrote:by the way: some of those links over there are "private" hosted and others are stored right on the shikadi domain. Malvineous is the one to send these files for long term hosting, isn't he? or are there other admins with hosting rights? who to talk to (Malv seems to be too busy for things like this...)

I've been slacking for the last couple of years, but I also have upload permissions (most of the shikadi.net-hosted mods were my doing).

Thanks for the note. I think I'll be switching all my public stuff (most importantly, Abiathar updates) over to Amazon S3; it's free for a year if you don't use very much data:

Amazon S3 wrote:Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

After that year, it just costs $0.02 for each GB each month, which shouldn't break the bank.

Flaose wrote:I've been slacking for the last couple of years, but I also have upload permissions (most of the shikadi.net-hosted mods were my doing).

may I pm you some files for hosting reasons, or can you put in a good word for me, concerning an user group rights upgrade... (+-1200 contributions to the wiki this year)

@Roobar: I have a MS account and one drive, but have barely used it. Are you able to create public links from there?

@Nisaba: Thanks for pointing that out and re-uploading the important stuff! When I have time I'm going to sort through my public keen folder on dropbox and make sure everything important is still available to the community.

Also, super off topic, but Gridlock, I swear I'm still working on getting through AR and I'll finish before the anniversary

There's no "public" option in OneDrive. You just create a folder, put what you will and then just share it. It generates automatically a link and anyone with that link can download the content of that folder. I've tested this with Firefox, Chrome, Edge. With or without account, I was still able to download. For me, it works just like a public link to that shared folder.

Nisaba wrote:

Flaose wrote:may I pm you some files for hosting reasons, or can you put in a good word for me, concerning an user group rights upgrade... (+-1200 contributions to the wiki this year)

Why don't we do both? You can PM the files to host immediately and I can send a good word to Malv to try and get the ball rolling.

Apparently my shared and public folders were banned due to bandwidth limits, but I can't see any way to be unbanned on Dropbox's website? Anyone else have experience with this?

I've experienced it, but not resolved it. Bandwidth limits? I'm not sure that's the real problem, but that's what they say.
It's Photobucket or imgur for me. Not even Nisaba's magic trick can save us now. (Luckily I made two dropbox accounts, if'n I need to share a mod or two.)

Ceilick wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:23 Apparently my shared and public folders were banned due to bandwidth limits, but I can't see any way to be unbanned on Dropbox's website? Anyone else have experience with this?

Not with Dropbox, but i did with mediafire, rapid share years ago.
with bandwidth limits and random removal of files that vent over limits, inability hot link or nor hotfix for files.

Which is why had a web-server for 10 years, but even paid services you and your files are not immune to nonsense:
I had no issue with the host, Until the host out of nowhere took my site down, and 2 days later send me an email. that i should contact them about the issue
and when i did it turned out they took my site off-line, since an single IP in china had 170k downloads of one of my older mods
and when i looked up who the IP was, it was indeed and Internet service provider. serving as a switch as China have so many internet users that they have completely run out if IPv4 and instead using this method to workaround the limit.
So i sat up a Dropbox just for to host that mod...
and had to some re-programming to redirect to the off-site file in the site's code to get it up again, and that they also had locked me out of access point....
also I had to wait roughly 24 hours for each reply message... so it took more then a week to deal with!
But since they did this once, who says they won't do it again...

This was back in early last December.
and given that i also Host a handful of mods for other Modders, that had their Mods randomly removed by mediafire or Dropbox.
this treatment is not what i expect for a 100€/year bill.

Ceilick wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:23 Apparently my shared and public folders were banned due to bandwidth limits, but I can't see any way to be unbanned on Dropbox's website? Anyone else have experience with this?

Yes, this happened to me a few months ago. If it doesn't resolve itself in a couple days, bandwidth isn't the problem - their system thinks something you uploaded is malicious and automatically banned all your sharing. My e-mails and help ticket were ignored; the only thing that lets you talk to a human is tweeting @DropboxSupport. For me, putting unlzexe.exe in my Dropbox was what triggered the ban.

If you're hosting images, I highly recommend Imgur. For files in need of reliable hosting, e-mail them to me (my name at KM) and I'll throw them up on files.keenmodding.org.

Wow, I had completely dismissed that that might be the reason, couldn't imagine something I uploaded being flagged, but you're probably right Fleexy, that darned unlzexe.exe. Did this issue resolve after removing the file, or did you have to work with DropboxSupport to actually lift the ban?