Embedded Media with http (not https) not converted properly during upgrade

[Pete]

I upgraded from quite an old version to 4.7 and a lot of the old embedded images and youtube links where http and not https. It seems that during upgrade, the post converter has embedded all the old media with https but not the ones with http.

What I've done is run a MySQL UPDATE to turn the http:// links into https:// on the converted posts table, but is there any way to trigger a re-build the post content?

Or would I have to do it BEFORE upgrade and run it again? I'd rather not do that as there have been new posts since I upgraded so if there is a way to re-build post content that would be preferable.

Thank you in advance!

EDIT: it was 3.3.4 to 4.7.1 🙂 

Edited August 24, 2022 by Pete

[Jim M]

Are these attachments uploaded through the software?

[Pete]

They're just URLs in the posts that used to either show an embedded external image or URL.

So here's an example, before the upgrade, the URL that's would have shown the file from the external website. Because it's http and not https, the converter seems to have skipped embedding it in 4.7.1 when rebuilding the content.

I've seen the same happen with youtube URLs where non-https youtube URLs just show as links after converting but https youtube urls are correctly embedded.
 

EDIT: I did also check as some of the ones that didn't convert are so old the file/video that was embedded no longer exists (so obviously there's nothing to embed), but the one in this example does still exist at that URL, and definitely would have been displaying as an image  instead of a textual URL pre-upgrade.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Pete

[Jim M]

In ACP -> System -> Posting -> Remote Images, did you opt not to allow these? Did you also not allow secure images? 

If so, this would be intended as these are remote images and not secure.

[Pete]

Ah thanks, but I think it's a different setting actually, bear with me with my line of deductive reasoning 🙂 

It's the same for Youtube videos that had non-http URLs too. So I think what happens during upgrade is the "Only allow secure images?" setting gets ticked on as part of the upgrade process (because I don't think it was an option way back in 3.3.4) and then when the post rebuild happens after the upgrade remote images (which were actually allowed in my settings) any http-only images AND youtube videos that are http-only get skipped because of the "Only allow secure images?" setting.

That's my hunch anyway - the embed part of the post rebuild simply skips anything non-https

So it sounds like unless there's a way to re-trigger the post rebuild I might have to re-upgrade after changing http to https in all links in my pre-upgrade post table? I'm hoping there's just a way of triggering rebuild as that's easier for me at this point 😬

[Jim M]

These settings do not exist in version 3. YouTube is a whole different animal as that is a supported rich video embed so can ignore that 🙂 . The remote image setting will only apply to images, not any other URL or embed.

I'm afraid, there is no way to rebuild these post-upgrade. Why we recommend testing these upgrades 🙂 . If you find this happens again, please let us know though.

[Pete]

Thanks Jim - I think there's only been a handful of posts since the upgrade so I think I can probably re-upgrade locally after tweaking the URLs, then simply copy the new post rows into that table and upload that to the live server.

I had thought it was fine to be honest which is why I then ran it on the live server but didn't think to look as far back as 2014 until I happened to do so today 😆