Using discourse.ubuntu.com is for me a bit flakey.
Half the avatars don't show up. Other pictures won't occasionally load, etc etc.
Is anyone having the same experience or do I need a deep dive and going sherlock-holmes through my dns-crypt settings ?
I won't say I don't have occasional problems with it, but it's been fine with me.
A quick look and I posted something ~36 mins ago, then again 2mins ago on this thread
Thank you, Chris 
I will check some settings on my end.
EDIT: It turned out to be my strict brave-browser settings (uMatrix). Switching to my Librewolf browser solved it.
Thanks again 
Just as an aside...
I just had a PM relating to someone having trouble on Ubuntu Discourse and unable to 'edit' a post of theirs on a thread (~24 mins ago!)
Whilst I'm not having issues, I've also got higher privileges due to being a moderator, thus maybe my experience may differ (or its geolocation, or just luck/timing).
EIther way, I don't know.
(Delay in posting this as this is one of many things currently happening).
It's not just you, I've always found Ubuntu Discourse to partially load images. I'm using Firefox with strict protection enabled. Other Discourse sites have no trouble.
The web developer tools (F12) under the Network tab will have the answers. I'll look out next time, but I think the behaviour lined up with the server never responding to the request, or gets aborted.
Hi Luke,
I too experienced that very strict settings can prevent loading images. Switching to my other browser seems to solve it, but I keep your word in mind that the 'new' site can be acting up sometimes.
Thanks for this addition.
P.S. the F12 key revealed that there is nothing wrong with the 'faulty' pages so I have to conclude that it is a server issue.
Same here. Sometimes just leaving the site and coming back fixes the issue or closing out FF and restarting will do the same and other times nothing fixes it but time.The only Discourse site I have this issue with is the Ubuntu Discourse.
Instantly replicated. Went to the site, clicked a random avatar to see their profile card. Image didn't load, server says no (403):
We don't use a CDN for Discourse, our uploads all stay together. They're using an S3 bucket on Amazon (which is a configuration choice). Possibly permissions over on AWS are not set up right. Or maybe they migrated at some point, so it could be that they need to update old objects permissions so they are public.
But then, weirdly, URLs are mostly this:
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/user_avatar/discourse.ubuntu.com/xxxxx/288/8750_2.png
A user has an avatar, but when you click on it to expand their card, the server takes forever to give a response, then comes back with a generic avatar.
Something's not right with Ubuntu Discourse on the CDN side. If someone knows the infrastructure person, please give them a prod. I don't know if there's a 'global' set up and it's simply one bad egg behind the load balancer that sometimes serves missing data.
Hi, @lah7 
I think that diagnosis you've just done (about errors 403 leading to some user avatars not showing, possibly related to CDN), in "Ubuntu Discourse" / "Ubuntu Community Hub" - https://discourse.ubuntu.com/ - is great! May I suggest that you post your analysis in the "Site Feedback" category there? The direct link is the following:
I just copied bits from this thread (mostly directly quoting Luke's 8th item) at
@lah7 if you, or anyone wants to change anything on the UD post, just PM me and I'll make my post a WIKI or something, so it can be edited etc.
FYI: Within 10 mins of posting that on UD, I was nudged and reminded of [known] CDN issues mentioned at various times, over many months including back in 2025 I can see in logs... Sorry, networking wasn't ever my area so I tend not to retain that detail.
I brought this up in Nov. of 2024 so it's been a known issue for some time.
Thank you @Norm24, I didn't use 'profile picture' in my searches, so didn't see that...
I'll be joining these threads momentarily... (I noted someone typing an entry, so delaying a tad)
New(ish) thread has now been joined to your earlier one Norm. Thanks again !
Since I joined the main Ubuntu Discourse site, in late 2024, I have observed the "flakiness" with the avatar rendering, in all contexts, as well as a sluggishness in response.
I don't understand enough to explain it, but with so many Categories, and Sub-Categories and Tags, in order to be as "specific" or "inclusive" as possible, the complexity associated with all those permutations, must ... in my mind ... impact the server's capacity to fulfill the demand, especially if it needs to deal with any sizable fraction of the 27K+ membership!
This last point underlines the fact that, when something gets too big, it becomes unwieldy, sometimes to the point of losing its effectiveness in delivering on the stated intent.