I need a direct image URL to use for a forum profile's CSS and icon. I've tried several image-hosting options, including an image-sharing site, cloud storage, temporary hosts, and even sending images through a chat service, but the URLs either show a broken-image icon or aren't accepted by the forum. What's the correct way to obtain a usable image URL, and are there hosting services that work reliably for this?
2 Answers
On an image-hosting site, open the uploaded image itself in a new browser tab rather than copying the page URL. The address should point directly to the image file, usually ending in something like .png, .jpg, or .gif. That’s the kind of URL CSS normally needs.
The issue may be compatibility with the forum rather than the URL. Some forums block particular image hosts or don’t allow their images to be embedded. A host that provides a true direct file URL, or a storage service/CDN such as Cloudflare R2, should work better. In this case, switching to another image host solved the problem.
I tried the direct image address, but the forum still couldn’t load it even though the image was public.