Image src not updated when site address is changed in Simple Sites with custom domain

[jartes]

Quick summary

When a site primary address is changed from a custom domain to another domain or free WordPress.com address, the image src is not updated.

In some scenarios, the original domain is detached from the site (domain is transferred or expires), making the images not being displayed.

Steps to reproduce

1. On a Simple site with a domain, upload an image and add it to a post/page.
2. Change the site address to another domain or the default site address.
3. Check the image src.

What you expected to happen

Having the image src updated

What actually happened

The image src is not updated, and as mentioned, is not being displayed if the domain expires, or is not connected to the site anymore.

Impact

All

Available workarounds?

Yes, difficult to implement

If the above answer is "Yes...", outline the workaround.

The only workaround for now is editing the image src manually in cases where there are a few images.

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

Simple

Logs or notes

More context: p1724328833178529-slack-C03TY6J1A

[jartes]

• 8610585-zd-a8c
• 8698141-zd-a8c

[github-actions]

Support References

This comment is automatically generated. Please do not edit it.

• 8610585-zen
• 8698141-zen
• 8706995-zen
• 8713408-zen

[fluiddot]

Findings

After debugging and investigating the issue, we confirmed the following:

• It only happens on Simple sites. On Atomic, changing the primary domain updates the image URLs.
• The image URL points to the domain where it was added. It's not updated when changing the primary domain.
• The image tag contains extra attributes that contain the image URL like data-orig-file. The values of these attributes point to the expected domain, as they are calculated dynamically when rendering a post/page.

Next Steps

Following the Atomic API implementation, we could explore rewriting the URLs when changing the primary domain.

[pauljacobson]

This may be useful: In 8698141-zen the customer mentioned that posts published before 31 July 2024 don't display images. I thought I'd mention this in case this date is significant.

[fluiddot]

This may be useful: In 8698141-zd-a8c the customer mentioned that posts published before 31 July 2024 don't display images. I thought I'd mention this in case this date is significant.

Thanks @pauljacobson for sharing this 🙇. I presume that the date (31 July 2024) is relevant as the user changed the primary domain around that date.

[supernovia]

In this case it's happening on Atomic. Site editor images have the wpcomstaging address, which caused them to break when the user switched to their normal address:
8706995-zd-a8c

@jartes do you want to update to say it's happening on Atomic too?

[supernovia]

Also is this related to this issue?
#94034

[dragstor]

8713408-zd-a8c

They have about 19.000 affected posts. They canceled the domain three days ago (2024-09-09), so they're now using *.wordpress.com as a primary.

Simple site.

[p-jackson]

A proposed fix for simple sites D161259-code

[daledupreez]

We also had two separate changes that aim to solve this problem using slightly different approaches:

• D161419-code - this patch focuses on solving the problem for core/image and core/cover blocks and is much more focused
• D161437-code - this patch was written to perform a very similar operation, with the goal of addressing Site Editor & Blocks: Navigation and other page links aren't relative anymore & can break with changes to primary domain #94034

[fushar]

We don't think there is an easy fix. We need decide whether to dynamically fix the wrong URLs, or to fix them in the database.

We are now counting how many such events are happening in production, to help assessing how to proceed further:

• D161733-code
• pMz3w-kKl-p2

I think this issue needs shaping, moving this issue to that column.

[fushar]

I think this issue needs shaping

This is a related issue which should ideally be solved together (in the same shaping initiative), once and for all:

• Site Editor & Blocks: Navigation and other page links aren't relative anymore & can break with changes to primary domain #94034