About this plugin
Images you hotlinked from third-party hosts break all the time — Imgur geo-blocked them for UK visitors and deletes them, imgbox has been throwing 503s, and Discord attachment links now expire. PixelVault Image Rescue keeps them working automatically: when a page loads it rewrites at-risk image links so they load through PixelVault’s edge instead of the failing host — and, optionally, migrates them into image hosting you own.
- Instant fix, no account required. Activate the plugin and at-risk images start loading through PixelVault right away.
- Reversible and non-destructive. Rewriting happens at output time only — your posts are never modified. Disable the plugin and the original markup returns untouched.
- Handles src and srcset, in post content, featured images, and widgets. An optional whole-page mode also catches theme-hardcoded images.
How it works
- Install and activate. Live rescue turns on by default and shows how many at-risk images it found on your site, per host.
- Live rescue rewrites each at-risk image to load through PixelVault’s rescue proxy, which fetches the image once and serves it from a global edge network — so it keeps working even when the original host is blocked or down.
- Migrate & Own (optional). Add a free PixelVault API key to copy every at-risk image into your own PixelVault project and rewrite your posts to permanent, owned URLs.
Which hosts
- Imgur — live rescue and migrate. Geo-blocked in the UK and deletes images.
- imgbox — live rescue and migrate. Intermittent 503s / possible shutdown.
- Discord CDN — migrate only. Discord attachment links now expire, so live rescue can’t reliably re-fetch them; add an API key and migrate to copy them into hosting you own before they’re gone.
Two ways to rescue
- Live rescue — zero setup, no account, instant. Best for keeping existing embeds visible today. It is durable-cached but re-fetches from the original host, so it can still break if that host deletes or expires the image.
- Migrate & Own — a free API key copies each image into hosting you control and rewrites posts to permanent CDN URLs, independent of the original host. Fully reversible: every edited post keeps a revision, and a one-click Restore original URLs button reverts everything.
Perfect for
- Blogs and forums with years of hotlinked Imgur, imgbox, or Discord images.
- UK sites where Imgur images stopped loading after the geo-block.
- Anyone who wants to stop depending on a third party that can block, delete, or expire their images.
About PixelVault
PixelVault is image hosting on a global edge network — permanent URLs, on-the-fly transforms, and zero egress fees, with a free tier. This plugin is the WordPress front-end for its image-rescue and migration features.
dev.
- Image rescue overview: pixelvault.dev/imgur-rescue
- Documentation: pixelvault.dev/docs
External services
dev), a third-party image-hosting service, to rehost at-risk images from Imgur, imgbox, and Discord CDN. It uses two PixelVault endpoints:
1. Rescue proxy — Live rescue (always on when enabled)
- What it does: rewrites at-risk image links on your pages (Imgur and imgbox) to load through PixelVault’s rescue proxy, which fetches each image and serves it from PixelVault’s edge.
- What is sent: only the URLs of the at-risk images found on the pages being rendered, sent to the rescue endpoint (default https://img.pixelvault.dev/rescue ). No account or key is required.
- When: each time a page containing an at-risk image is rendered.
2. Import API — Migrate & Own (optional, admin-triggered)
- What it does: when you add a PixelVault API key and click Migrate all at-risk images, the plugin imports each at-risk image (Imgur, imgbox, or Discord) into your own PixelVault project and rewrites your posts to the resulting permanent URLs.
- What is sent: the source image URLs to import and your PixelVault API key (sent server-side as a Bearer token), to the import endpoint (default https://api.pixelvault.dev/v1/images ).
- When: only while you are running a migration or restore from the plugin’s settings screen. Nothing is sent on the front end.
No visitor data and no post content beyond the at-risk image URLs themselves are ever sent. Both endpoints are configurable if you self-host PixelVault.
dev/privacy).