How to Use DW's Image Hosting
Oct. 1st, 2025 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peasinaToday, while scrolling my Reading Page, I was greeted by purple boxes containing a message from imgur: "This content not viewable in your region." It's because of stupid new laws in the UK that have also stopped me from looking at fanart on AO3 and many other websites (๐), and yeah I'm annoyed, but I thought I'd try to channel my annoyance into something helpful!
If you include images in your DW posts, such as icon batches or community banners, are you aware of DW's inbuilt image hosting? I feel like a lot of people are, so ignore this post if that's you, but if you're not... I'd already written the below guide for someone who reached out to me a few years ago asking for help, so I've tweaked it a little and hope it's helpful to anyone who might stumble across it.
Please note: DW-hosted images only display on DW.
How to use DW's image hosting
(1) Go to "Create" > "Upload Images".
The direct URL is: https://www.dreamwidth.org/file/new
(2) Click "Choose Files" to upload your image(s). You can upload more than one at a time.
After you've selected your image(s), DW shows their thumbnails below the upload box, then informs you an image is uploaded with a green text box reading "Image uploaded successfully." If you uploaded multiple images, wait until you see that green box appear beside each of them.
(3) Once your images are uploaded, scroll to the top and and click "View all your images".
The direct URL is: https://www.dreamwidth.org/file/list
You should then see the images you've uploaded along with two embed codes for each image. The first code, titled "Image Embed", will embed the fullsize image. The second, called "Thumbnail Embed", lets you change the width of a thumbnail using the dropdown on the right. Once you've chosen the width, the code will update. Copy and paste whichever code you need into the HTML editor for posts or directly into DW comments.
Tah-dah! You've hosted images on DW that (at time of writing) anyone visiting your account will be able to see!
If you include images in your DW posts, such as icon batches or community banners, are you aware of DW's inbuilt image hosting? I feel like a lot of people are, so ignore this post if that's you, but if you're not... I'd already written the below guide for someone who reached out to me a few years ago asking for help, so I've tweaked it a little and hope it's helpful to anyone who might stumble across it.
Please note: DW-hosted images only display on DW.
How to use DW's image hosting
(1) Go to "Create" > "Upload Images".
The direct URL is: https://www.dreamwidth.org/file/new
(2) Click "Choose Files" to upload your image(s). You can upload more than one at a time.
After you've selected your image(s), DW shows their thumbnails below the upload box, then informs you an image is uploaded with a green text box reading "Image uploaded successfully." If you uploaded multiple images, wait until you see that green box appear beside each of them.
(3) Once your images are uploaded, scroll to the top and and click "View all your images".
The direct URL is: https://www.dreamwidth.org/file/list
You should then see the images you've uploaded along with two embed codes for each image. The first code, titled "Image Embed", will embed the fullsize image. The second, called "Thumbnail Embed", lets you change the width of a thumbnail using the dropdown on the right. Once you've chosen the width, the code will update. Copy and paste whichever code you need into the HTML editor for posts or directly into DW comments.
Tah-dah! You've hosted images on DW that (at time of writing) anyone visiting your account will be able to see!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-01 08:31 pm (UTC)(An interesting thing I learned in the process of modding an event is that not only do images only display on Dreamwidth, you canโt even link to them directly from somewhere i.e. linking to a cover sticker/badge from an ao3 collections info section; you have to link to a Dreamwidth post that then links to or embeds the image. Which is fair!)
(Also itโs funny about imgur because according their tos youโre actually not allowed to use it as an image hostโฆ๐)
Re looking at images, I wonder if you could bypass that with startpageโs Anonymous View proxy? (www.startpage.com/en/anonymous-view)
Almost forgot! You can even set granular privacy on images, for instance if you want to match it to your circle or a specific access list, which is pretty neat.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-12 12:24 pm (UTC)I just tried startpage with a DW account currently using imgur for event banners and it just shows the little broken link icon and the alt text :'( That's such an interesting little site though, thank you for the suggestion.
"Almost forgot! You can even set granular privacy on images, for instance if you want to match it to your circle or a specific access list, which is pretty neat." Really!! How would I do that? <3
no subject
Date: 2025-10-05 07:51 pm (UTC)The censorship you're experiencing is messed up๐ I hope the UK government sees sense soon!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-12 12:19 pm (UTC)