Remove URL input fields for uploads and `fileStorage: false` config

We’d like to remove the URL input option from our upload components to simplify the UI. This will have a knock-on effect of making the fileStorage: false config in Ghost rather useless as setting that config will make it impossible for users to change any of the image settings.

fileStorage: false predates the introduction of storage adapters in Ghost and was introduced as an escape valve for users not being able to use local storage. Now that storage adapters are available there aren’t many use-cases for completely disabling file storage. Keeping all file uploads in ghost-controlled storage will also help further down the line as we introduce advanced media handling and optimisation.

• remove URL input states from the uploader components in Ghost-Admin @kevinansfield
• remove fileStorage conditionals in Ghost-Admin @kevinansfield
• remove option to specify fileStorage: false in Ghost

[triestpa]

I agree with the concerns raised here. Being able to attach images as links is an essential feature in Ghost.

Here are the main reasons -

1. Using external image links allows for seamless transitions between local, staging, and production environments. Storing the images on each local file system will make it a mess to keep these environments in sync with each other.
2. All of my blog images are served from an S3 bucket behind a Cloudflare CDN, which makes them easier to manage and reuse, and reduces the I/O load on the blog server.
3. In order to scale the blog horizontally across multiple instances, it is essential for persistent content to be stored separately from the source code. Keeping a local image directory in-sync across multiple load-balanced servers will be difficult and impractical.

I understand that there are plans to add a complete in-app media management and optimization system, which I think is great. However, this system does not exist yet, and removing the option to link images is a major regression in the simplicity and flexibility that makes Ghost a great content platform.

@kevinansfield maybe it would help if I understood the reasoning behind the original decision. Why would allowing image URL linking limit the future potential of an integrated media manager? Shouldn’t the database still store the image reference as a URL either way? Won’t any predicted compatibility issues emerge in the future regardless of the UI changes, since 1.0 still supports JSON content imports with non-local image URLs?

Thank you for the hard work in preparing 1.0 for release, and for considering the above concerns.

[pascalandy]

I asked on Slack and I would like to bring my question here.

---

I consider myself a Ghost power user. I really enjoy the fact that we can paste an URL when adding a picture with Ghost<=0.11.x.

This feature is REALLY useful for pictures in the header as I tend to re-use the same picture over many post & pages.

My question: How can we re-use header pictures across multiple pages/posts as we can’t paste a URL anymore?