Connecting your storage

ArchiveSend keeps nothing. Your photographs go into a cloud storage account that belongs to you, and we hold the keys needed to sign a link against it. Connecting that account is the one setup step nothing else works without.

Getting your keys

Pick your provider on the Storage page and the steps for that provider appear underneath. In short:

• Wasabi. Access Keys in the left menu, then Create Access Key. Click Show to reveal the secret and use the download button. Wasabi shows a secret once.
• Backblaze B2. Application Keys under B2 Cloud Storage. Give the key Read and Write on one bucket. Backblaze calls the two halves keyID and applicationKey, in that order. The applicationKey is shown once.
• Amazon S3. Make an IAM user with programmatic access and a policy allowing GetObject, PutObject, DeleteObject and ListBucket on the one bucket. Do not use your root account keys.

When you save, we write a tiny test file to your storage and delete it again, so you find out whether the keys work now rather than when a client is waiting.

When it will not connect

These are the things that actually go wrong, in order of how often:

• The key is for the wrong bucket. A key can be restricted to one bucket, which is what we recommend, and a key restricted to a different one is refused even though both the key and the bucket are perfectly good.
• The secret has a space on the end. Pasting from a PDF or an email often brings one. We trim what we can see, but check it if a key is refused.
• The key cannot write. Read and write are granted separately. A key that can list the bucket looks fine until the first upload.
• The bucket name is slightly different. Bucket names are case sensitive.

One thing that is not on that list: the region. Your storage knows which region your bucket is in and will tell us, so there is nothing for you to look up and nothing to type wrong.

"Connected, but your browser can't upload to it"

Your files go straight from your computer to your storage without passing through us, and a browser will only do that if your storage says it is allowed. That permission is called CORS, and it is one setting you add once.

• Wasabi normally allows it already. If you see this message, the bucket has a CORS policy of its own that leaves us out.
• Amazon S3 has it in the console, on the bucket's Permissions tab.
• Backblaze has it on the bucket itself, under CORS Rules. Pick "Share everything in this bucket with this one origin" and paste the address we show you. Changes take about a minute to take effect.

Whichever you are on, the Storage page prints the exact rule to paste once it knows you need it. If that is more than you want to take on, write to us and we will walk you through it.

Changing or disconnecting

Disconnecting removes our copy of your keys. It does not touch your storage or anything in it. You cannot disconnect storage that live delivery links still point at, because those links would stop working for clients who already have them. Delete those deliveries first.

"Your storage has stopped answering"

A connection that worked when you set it up can stop working later, and all of it happens at your provider rather than here: keys deleted or rotated, storage removed, write permission narrowed, an account suspended over a card that expired. We re-test every connection once a day, so the first you hear of it is this banner rather than a client telling you a gallery will not download.

The banner carries the provider's own reason and a link straight to the connection. Paste the current keys, save, and we test them while you watch. Nothing else needs doing: your deliveries, links and passwords are untouched, and every gallery starts working again the moment the keys do. Your clients see nothing but a slow afternoon.

A file you deleted from your storage

Your storage is yours, and tidying it is allowed. If you remove something a live delivery still points at, the client is told that one file is no longer there and that the rest of the gallery still works. They are not sent to your storage provider's error page, and it does not count against the download limit.

You will see it too. The delivery's activity list shows "… is no longer in your storage. Upload it again." in red, which is also the fix: open the delivery, add the file again, and the same link keeps working.

Uploads you never finished

A large file goes up in parts, and parts from an upload that was abandoned halfway sit in your storage being billed for, where nothing in your provider's console will show them to you. We clear those after a week, so an upload you gave up on does not become a standing charge. Inside that week, choosing the same file again picks up where it stopped.