AssetGuard

Dropshipping images broken on Shopify: how to find supplier-hosted images

· Nevarion Technologies LTD · Last verified

Supplier images break when your store is showing a picture that still lives on the supplier's server and the supplier moves or deletes it. Images that were properly imported are copied to Shopify and don't depend on the supplier any more. The ones that break are usually images pasted into a description, or images served by an app, with the supplier's address in them. The fix is to find those, download the pictures, and upload them to your own store.

Imported images vs linked images

When you import products with a CSV, Shopify downloads the image from the URL in the file and uploads it to your store. After that, the image is yours. It is the images that were never copied that stay at risk:

  • Images inside a product description that were pasted in as HTML or by address.
  • Images shown through an app or a feed that loads them from the supplier at view time.
  • Imports where the supplier's image URL wasn't reachable, so the image never got attached.

List every image on a page that isn't hosted by Shopify

Open a product page on your store, open your browser's developer console, and paste this:

[...document.images]
  .map((img) => img.currentSrc || img.src)
  .filter((src) => !/cdn\.shopify\.com|\/cdn\/shop\//.test(src))

Every address it prints is an image loaded from somewhere other than your Shopify files. Open each one in a private window. If it shows an error, that is a broken supplier image. Repeat on a few product pages, a collection page, and your blog.

The free checker looks at images on your store and on Shopify's image CDN, so it won't flag images hosted on other domains. This console check will.

Fix it

  1. Save the picture from the supplier while it still exists, or ask the supplier for a fresh copy.
  2. Go to Content > Files, click Upload files, and select the images. Images can be up to 20 MB and 25 megapixels.
  3. Click the Link button beside the uploaded file to copy its address.
  4. Edit the product description, find the old image, and replace it with the new one.

For product media rather than description images, open the product and add the image in the media section instead.

When an import never attached the image

For an import to fetch an image, Shopify says the URL must be publicly accessible, use https, and have no password protection. If the supplier's server blocks the download, the product imports without its picture. Fix the source (or host the image yourself) and import again.

Prevent it

Upload images to Shopify instead of linking to a supplier. After each import, open a few products and run the console check above. To scan descriptions across a whole store, you need either patience or a tool that reads your content; the free checker handles public pages, and AssetGuard reads product, collection and blog content from inside the admin.

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