Rescuing unviewable GIFs? Or is it a lost cause?
About a third of the original GIFs we've posted on our blog seem to have become unviewable sometime in the past couple of months. They sometimes display briefly before disappearing. When I first noticed a few older GIFs doing this I thought it was a server/loading issue, but when I realized how systematic it is I started suspecting that the GIFs themselves have been corrupted. The issue affects every GIF posted January through June of 2021 but none posted before or since. Images are not affected. I've looked at some other archives and seen similar issues during that period in a few. I've managed to download some of ours by opening them in a separate tab, but what I get is invariably partial GIFs, seemingly just the first three seconds, always 4 mb file size.
I know this sort of thing has happened on the site before, but I can't find anything on these boards to indicate whether it has ever been repaired. I'd appreciate any advice on how to figure out whether it's a loading issue or damage to the the GIFs themselves. If damaged I wouldn't be able to reconstitute those six months of our blog since I can't insert the originals into existing posts. Does admin have the ability to repair them? (I've had no response yet to the ticket I put in.)
There are plenty of problems with this site and I've tried to be patient about them, but this one is going to kill it for us. What is the point of building a blog full of personal content if huge chunks are going to be randomly obliterated?
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I don't know if this helps, or answers your question, but I recently imported my entire blog from here over to ReBlogMe. The gifs are unsorted and untagged but, as far as I can see, there are no broken ones. At least, so far, as I scroll back through the archive (on ReBlogMe) I haven't seen any that are broken.
Until I do find some, I'm concluding that the gifs themselves (on bdsmlr) are fine but there is a problem with the way they are being displayed on here.
Also: I just tried to download one of my own gifs that appears broken. It didn't download - either complete or incomplete - it wouldn't download for me due to a 'network issue'. (Tried again with a different gif. Same result.)
All of this, together with the fact that people are liking and sharing gifs of mine that I can't see, leads me to conclude/assume that the gifs themselves are fine but the way they are being displayed to different users is the problem. I can't see all of them but others can. And the gifs are not corrupt.
I could, of course, be wrong. But the evidence suggests this. I will follow this thread with interest.
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Thanks, yes that does seem like pretty solid evidence that it's the delivery and not the gifs themselves. I was hoping ours were visible to others despite being invisible to me, but I reblogged one and asked followers if anyone could see it and no one could. Anyway, your evidence is at least somewhat reassuring, although it leaves me all the more curious whether anyone has had this happen and then get repaired. Maybe the problem is with a particular server that holds our uploads from those six months. I suppose Jennie might know if she's still on here. (No response to the ticket yet. It's been a week.)
You can actually view the gifs you tried to download if you alter the file name to remove the .opload after the .gif.
I've been thinking about trying reblogme but sorry to hear that it only imports images and out of order, without text and tags. I guess it would mean basically rebuilding the blog from scratch.
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Yes, it just means rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. I'm glad I imported them to reblogme, but I'm not going to go back and add tags to them all. That would be a nightmare.
I, too, considered asking followers if they could see certain gifs. But never did it. Your own results do seem depressing though.
It's weird. Even today - 11 hours ago, actually - one user liked 4 posts of mine where I definitely can't see the gifs. The gifs all start but then vanish to be replaced by that broken image icon. This user also liked other posts that I can see, and even reblogged one. I suppose I could directly message that user right now and ask them to confirm that all the gifs are displaying for them. Couldn't hurt, right?
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No idea if it's related but I've noticed if I go to view my blog.. some of the images aren't there or the posts aren't in order? (If I view Own Posts they all seem to be accounted for?)
I've been looking at Reblogme too but can't decide whether to start from scratch again.. import.. or just put up with the ad.crap and stick to bdsmlr.
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Thanks, DD. Seems inexplicable to me that a bunch of gifs would play for some viewers and not others, but someone with more tech knowledge could probably explain it. If so, a relevant question would be whether most can or most can't. None of our followers who replied could. More systematically, when a high-volume account reblogged nearly forty of our older posts in one day, about half that were visible (to me) and half not, there were nearly five times as many follow-on mentions of visible ones than invisible and more than twice as many accounts liking/reblogging only visible ones than those doing invisible ones. (I couldn't resist using this accidental experiment to get some numbers on this problem.)
I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't such a huge chunk of our archive, and maybe if we weren't posting our own content created from our own filming of our own selves. Makes it kinda personal. It's also impossible to generate the kind of volume from such content that seems to be expected on this site.
If you don't mind another question, are you seeing any pattern of what isn't showing, similar to ours all being gifs posted between precisely 1st of Jan and end of June last year? I've looked at a few archives and found one with same problem but from 1st of March to end of June.
Sure would be nice to get a response to my ticket from admin about this....
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Good question. I haven't noticed a pattern but I will definitely take a closer look at the archive when I get time. As I'd quite like to know myself, now that you mention it.
As to why it happens... I don't have the tech knowhow either to understand it. Could be geography, or browser, or cache, or anything. Something somewhere along the line prevents a specific gif getting to my PC. But those same gifs transferred to the ReBlogMe servers. And some other users are getting them.
A typical post of mine will have about 10 gifs from the same movie. And all of those gifs are affected.
Yes, I agree. It's a shame nobody at BDSMLR will take the time to answer these questions. I don't know what they are doing behind the scenes but they really don't care about customer service. They clearly don't care if they lose everybody who is currently a user. The logic seems to be, if they eventually get the site up and running then new people will join. In some ways, it would be better if they just took the whole place offline until it's ready.
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RugRollers A quick look at some months in my archive reveals...
- DEC 2018 - OK
- MAY 2019 - OK
- NOV 2019 - OK
- MAR 2020 - OK
- JUL 2020 - OK
- DEC 2020 - OK
- JAN 2021 - problems with many
- APR 2021 - problems with some
- JUN 2021 - problems with most (all?)
- JUL 2021 - problems with most (all?)
- AUG 2021 - OK
- SEP 2021 - OK
- NOV 2021 - OK
The gifs from a Jul 28th post appear broken. That appears to be the last one. The gifs from a Aug 3rd post appear just fine.
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Thanks for checking. Similar pattern but not precisely. All my July 2021 gifs work fine.
Admin got all chatty a few months ago, seemed to have turned a corner, then went dark again. Very weird. How hard would it be for them to just keep up with this super-low-volume "discussion" forum and address issues raised? That's what they used to do before the ownership change.
It does seem to me that traffic on here has been trending downward since at least last summer, but it's hard to be sure since we only started posting more regularly in early 2021. What's your sense, having been here since 2018? And what sort of traffic does reblog me seem to have?
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I don't notice a downward trend on here, to be honest. It's pretty steady, for my blog. Several new followers every day.
I double posted to ReBlogMe there for a couple of weeks, but got almost no response.
BDSMLR has major problems, definitely, but at least my posts are seen/liked/reblogged every day and there are comments, etc. ReBlogMe, for me, is just a ghost town. If I was getting traction for my gifs over there, I'd stop posting here. But, for now, the audience is here and I enjoy the feedback.
It's not like Tumblr, of course. That was fantastic.
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Can't even upload new gifs anymore. They immediately become broken.
Lot of old gifs from my blog are not loaded anymore:
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)
cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2022/02/9690918/bdsmlr-9690918-EfzTodbWU9.gif:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET
cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2022/02/9690918/bdsmlr-9690918-s4mBAd2AIz.gif:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET
cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2022/02/9690918/bdsmlr-9690918-UZhOmTApPN.gif:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET
cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2022/02/9690918/bdsmlr-9690918-5eZ4UUYkcX.gif:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET
cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2022/02/9690918/bdsmlr-9690918-oHGEDWWUqd.gif:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET
cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2022/02/9690918/bdsmlr-9690918-C19j9iyrVC.gif:1 Failed to load resource: net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET -
qwe123, that's not what I get when I open our unviewable gifs from last year, so yours might be a different problem. Here's an example of ours:
https://cdn012.bdsmlr.com/uploads/photos/2021/06/9900902/bdsmlr-9900902-1gHR07ccZr.gif
For me it shows but runs only a bit of the way and then freezes. You can give it a try and see what you get.
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Further correspondence from the support folks:
Hi RugRollers,
Are you still experiencing this issue? If so, please confirm with us and tell us what web browser and operating system you are using.
Thank you for your patience,
BDSMLR SupportI replied that they are equally broken on my two Windows 10 computers and my android phone, on multiple browsers. Got this response:
Hi RugRollers,
We thank you for providing us this information. There is a migration currently going on and this might be the reason why there are some broken images. I'm gonna make a spreadsheet of your broken images and will then ask our dev to restore them if ever they were nowhere to be seen.
Thank you,
BDSMLR SupportI'm mystified by this. At least from my limited understanding, it can't be an issue of broken gifs if they load properly for some users. And the fact that many blogs have the same problem points to a systemic issue that can't be fixed by repairing/restoring individual gifs. I've informed them of these observations, so....
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@qwe123 If it helps... all of those gifs are loading and working fine on my PC.
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I've buggered off to reblogme due to the adverts on bdsmlr but I've noticed some of the gifs I've imported over also freeze. I queried this with their support and the informed me the files most likely got corrupted in transfer due to bdsmlr's servers not being constantly accessible or stalling during transfer. 🙄
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I don't want to keep mentioning it like I'm advertising but.. that other site I mentioned implemented deleting/adding images via edit last week lol.
It definitely doesn't have the same user base as BDSMLR and the quick reblog function for mobile browser is starting to wind me up.. but I don't have to put up with those damn redirect adverts anymore which is basically what drove me elsewhere.
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Latest exchange with BDSMLR Support:
Me:
Okay, thanks, but I'm a little mystified as to how the problem can be addressed the way you suggest. I don't have any relevant tech competence, but from my limited understanding it doesn't seem like this can be an issue of specific gifs being broken since they do load properly for some users. And the fact that many blogs have the same problem points to a systemic issue that can't be fixed by restoring specific content. Maybe you could pass along these observations to the devs and see what they think? I do appreciate your efforts to resolve this. ~RRBDSMLR Support:Hi RugRollers,
What we mean by migration is we are moving a lot of data from the old server that we were using into a new one. We are trying to talk to the devs directly about this and it might take time and there is no timeline yet on when this will be fixed. This is clearly on our end so our dev team have to take time to fix it.
Thank you for patience with us,
BDSMLR SupportNot particularly confidence inspiriting, I gotta say.@Jennie, can you shed any light here, or have you departed these blighted shores? -
RugRollers - I'm stunned to hear that there actually has been an "exchange with BDSMLR Support". Usually, no response of any kind is to be had from them. I love the phrase "We are trying to talk to the devs directly about this". WTF?
I actually came to this forum to see if anyone else has reported chat being fucked once again. But "trying to talk directly" is so funny it definitely deserves a special mention. These people are both incompetent and ignorant, it seems. Every time I return to bdsmlr, something is not working. Perhaps "management" ought to be "trying to talk directly to tech guys who know their ass from their elbow" - that's if they have even the smallest amount of interest in retaining at least a core membership. All that's working flawlessly is those disgusting and potentially dangerous popunder, tab-stealing ads. Shame on you, bdsmlr!
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Guys, there's clearly no bdsmlr "devs". Definitely not plural. Most likely there was a team 1-2 years back when the admins cared by implementing new features every other week and by keeping in touch with the community but something clearly happened (most or all devs quit?) and since then bdsmlr hasn't been the same. The support person responding clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.
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RugRollers Another thing I forgot to mention before. About a year ago, or more(?) the gifs in some of my Top Posts were unviewable. To me. There was one set in particular that I could not see for months. But, it was still getting likes, reblogs, etc. For months, it was like this.
Eventually, it was fixed. It's viewable to me now. And has been for a long time. And I did nothing. It was fixed from BDSMLR's end of things. It took ages but it did happen.
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Commander and Dexter Day It also seems that the old team what made this place shine which cared and what made this place so awesome is now reinforced with more skilled members and running reblogme. There was a thread where someone "in the know" put some facts down but it got deleted or I can't find it anymore, of course they were not confirmed by anyone but seeing reblogme pushing out new updates weekly, developing apps and the website plus communicating and reacting it's not difficult to believe.
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Thanks, Dexter, I guess it's somewhat comforting that these things can mysteriously reappear, although it sounds like this happened under the old regime, whereas the new one seems pretty hapless. Also, in our case broken gifs are seven of our top ten posts, ten of our top fifteen. In the month since I discovered the problem I have seen only one instance of likes/reblogs of any broken ones, and only by a single user, whereas ones from right after the broken months often do get "noticed," so invisibility seems to be the rule, visibility the rare exception.
Commander, there's no question as to bdsmlr having changed ownership early in 2021. Plenty of admin statements and other evidence discussed on this board.
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