XF 2.1 Attachments folder outside of public_html

[spitz]

Years ago, I migrated from the Vbulletin. Ever since, I've had a folder called attachments, that sits outside my public_html folder. This is in addition to the public_html/data/attachments.

If I remember correctly, I chose somewhere, when migrating, to store on the server any external images.

This folder is 17 GB, and I tried deleting it, thinking since it was outside of public_html that it wouldn't be used.

Now, searching through the site, I see broken images on some old posts, although they could have been there the whole time.

I put the folder back and still see those broken images.

Could this folder be used by the site even though it's outside of public_html?

Could deleting this folder, and putting it back, break some sort of links to it?

 

[ForumDevs]

Years ago, I migrated from the Vbulletin. Ever since, I've had a folder called attachments, that sits outside my public_html folder. This is in addition to the public_html/data/attachments.

If I remember correctly, I chose somewhere, when migrating, to store on the server any external images.

This folder is 17 GB, and I tried deleting it, thinking since it was outside of public_html that it wouldn't be used.

Now, searching through the site, I see broken images on some old posts, although they could have been there the whole time.

I put the folder back and still see those broken images.

Could this folder be used by the site even though it's outside of public_html?

Could deleting this folder, and putting it back, break some sort of links to it?

If some posts still reference URLs from vBulletin that were not updated during the migration, those images would point to the old folder. You should check the URLs of those broken URLs to confirm what's causing it.

 

[Mr Lucky]

If some posts still reference URLs from vBulletin that were not updated during the migration, those images would point to the old folder.

These would typically be user generated links to the images in other posts, not the actual attachment links themselves as those would (or should) have been converted to the new xenForo attachment location on import.

At least that is how it worked when I imported from vbulletin and was able to delete the old external attachment folder.

You should be able to check if the broken image links are pointing to the old folder, an external site with missing image, or an image somehow missing from the xenforo attachments.

 

[ForumDevs]

These would typically be user generated links to the images in other posts, not the actual attachment links themselves as those would (or should) have been converted to the new xenForo attachment location on import.

At least that is how it worked when I imported from vbulletin and was able to delete the old external attachment folder.

You should be able to check if the broken image links are pointing to the old folder, an external site with missing image, or an image somehow missing from the xenforo attachments.

During some imports we noticed that users had added vBulletin attachments as images using the IMG BBCode. While this approach worked at the time it wasn't the correct way to handle attachments. This could be one of the reasons why @spitz experiences broken images when the vBulletin attachment folder is removed

 

[spitz]

These would typically be user generated links to the images in other posts, not the actual attachment links themselves as those would (or should) have been converted to the new xenForo attachment location on import.

At least that is how it worked when I imported from vbulletin and was able to delete the old external attachment folder.

You should be able to check if the broken image links are pointing to the old folder, an external site with missing image, or an image somehow missing from the xenforo attachments.

Thank you for this suggestion! After looking over the broken images, it looks they are images from external sites. I think I incorrectly thought that all these external images were turned into attachments. Maybe the ones that were already broken before the migration are what I'm seeing now.

 

[spitz]

During some imports we noticed that users had added vBulletin attachments as images using the IMG BBCode. While this approach worked at the time it wasn't the correct way to handle attachments. This could be one of the reasons why @spitz experiences broken images when the vBulletin attachment folder is removed

Thank you for the replies! Yes, these look to be external image links using the IMG BBCode.