Catspa, if you can take a screenshot of the problem and post it here, we can give you a definite answer.

From what I'm guessing, when you see a blue question-mark box with a small caption on the side, that means the image source is missing. One of the reasons is the location where the image was stored no longer stores the image.

I think long time ago, forums like GardenWeb (now Houzz) allowed people to post a lot of images if those images were stored externally on some of the free storage places outside of GardenWeb. Most of those free storage places no longer exist nowadays, so the links to those images return blue question-mark boxes (image not found) or Houzz will display as "{{gwi:1233858}}". To avoid this type of issue, Houzz stores images directly on their servers now.

Example of the missing images now displayed as some text. This post was posted 11 years ago: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2136977/lots-of-blooms-mostly-austins#n=24

Helen

Thanks, Helen. Actually, I'm no longer even seeing the little blue question-mark box. Here's an example of what I see right now after clicking on the photo's thumbnail:

I mentioned this to Margaret Furness, one of the HMF administrators (?), in the "Comments" section of this rose last week, actually, and she didn't seem to see this at the time, but at that point I wasn't noticing that it seemed to hit older photos mostly, so maybe she was only looking at newer ones.

The aging-out of storage locations sounds like a good possibility, but there seem to be so many photos missing just lately, not something I noticed much until last week.

Catspa, I noticed that on HMF. I'm guessing the storage location of some of the very old images might have been moved so when we click on the thumbnails we couldn't see the big images.

For example with this link https://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=2.40761.3&tab=36&qn=4&qc=0 if you click on the third image on the left you will be directed to this link https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=21.236615 which should show the image with the URL as https://www.help-me-find.com/gardening/fs/462/236615.jpg . However, this image no longer exists at this location. This image was uploaded on Sep 5, 2013 (8 years ago).

You can provide the info above to the HMF admin so she can reproduce the bug and her engineers can fix it. Helen

I noticed this as well just last night. I thought it was my connection being too slow! thanks!

Well, I haven't gotten a reply from HMF, but photos that wouldn't load previously are now loading fine and I haven't found one yet that won't. Good enough!

Catspa, I clicked the example link above, and the bug has been fixed. Helen