I follow Dolls and Demons via Feedly. I adore the images Alles Klaar creates for her (I think her not his) blog. Today the article Escaping the Octopus has a Flickr image message rather than the intended image: This photo is no longer available. I was puzzled by its appearance as she is the owner of the blog and Flickr image. So, what happened?

Example image of Not Available.

While I’ve run into this problem and assumed it had something to do with All Rights Reserved images, probably not. I now think it is the result of a bug or a user mistake. If you open the SHARE feature at Flickr for a restricted image you see only this:

Flickr Share Panel: Share Only Image

There are no options to; Embed, Email, or for BBCode like this less restricted image:

Flickr Share: Share, Embed, Email, and/or BBCode for forum.

I take the information in the SHARE PANEL to reflect the authors intended copyright and their designated level of sharing from within the Flickr ToS. If I use the links in the Share panel, I expect to be within the framework of the ToS and copyright limits. It is also easy to insert the images into a post. I’ve always had the embedded image display properly.

If the author has restricted sharing to the minimum Flickr allows then WordPress treats the available sharing link this way: https://flic.kr/p/DQb9zy

If I just paste the Share link in my page, depending on what tool/app I use to write the post, I get a clickable text link or I get the image as I show just below the link. At Facebook and other places I get the image.

While I can still get the image and it still links to Flickr from the Share Only link, I lose most control over size and placement in the page. At least without doing some HTML coding of my own.

Also, I am totally unclear about where I am on ToS and copyright. Notice the Share panel for SHARE Only has four icons indicating where the intended sharing is expected to happen. There is no icon for my blog, which is really inconsiderate…

So, I asked permission from Nayra31 to use her images in my blog. She graciously allowed it. 🙂

If you click on the normal ‘This photo no longer available’ image (not the one herein) you link to the image at Flickr. The image is there and it is available or has been in most cases. So, what is going on?

What I find out after reading lots of posts and FAQ items is: it seems that if you edit the image on Flickr it breaks these links, a bug, and you get a not available notice. If you set an image to private, Flickr breaks the links, a feature and intended behavior.

In the case of the bug, if you go to the download page that shows sizes, you will see the ‘No longer available’ message images for the sizes other than ‘original’. A bug report was filed in July 2015. I can’t verify the problem remains or was fixed. I’m not going to try and reproduce the problem with one of my images. But, if you see the problem on your download ‘sizes’ page, it is a bug and the Flickr people will have to fix it. Or you can delete the image and upload it as a new image. Another choice is to upload a replacement copy. Flickr has a REPLACE feature and it seems to force the system to generate the missing images.

Flickr’s Download Page

My Trick

I place Flickr images in my pages using the WordPress’ [ CAPTION ] code:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"] [/caption]

I paste the Flickr embed code between the ‘width=”500”]’ and the ‘[ / caption’. I then have to copy the Title text and paste or copy drag it to just before the ‘[ / caption’.

I taught my editor to auto-replace ‘[cap]’ with the longer [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"] [/caption] . So, it is a quick process for me.