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Topic: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally (Read 3096 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #1

I always told my users to use the attachment function for pictures! Best choice! Thanks for the information.

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #2

At the moment I am changing all those photobucket pictures into attachments.  More than 800 topics in our forum content a lot of photobucket images. I did the same eight years before, when we noticed that some of the Imageshack pictures have already disapeared.

Since 8 or 9 years it is not allowed to use Imageshack, Photobucket, etc.  in our forum. But we used them a lot in our first years. ::)

What are you doing, if your members break the rules about the pictures? I am used to tell them again and again, that they are not allowed to use photobucket, etc. But they use it, because it is (was) allowed in any other forum they know. ::)  And a lot of our users can't handle the proper resizing of their pictures by themselfes. Would you just delete their posts with such pictures? I am used to change those photobucket-pictures afterwards or any other pictures, which have more pixel as it is allowed in our forum.


Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #3

Echo same.  I too have been gently encouraging people to attach over the years.  Some have been.  One forum has over 125,000 attachments.  Lol.  In reality this has been an issue for a long time.  People would run out of space on PB, prioritize and delete some for new photos.  Naturally that left many places on the web sans pix.

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #4

Well, one option could be to automatically detect the URLs from external services, fetch them and store the fetched as attachment.
I do something somehow similar on my forum, there are drawbacks (not always you can do the above, you may not be able to fetch the original image, etc.), but it could be a solution.
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #5

Much like the current avatar functionality?   That would be fantastic!

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #6

Quote from: Ruth – At the moment I am changing all those photobucket pictures into attachments.  More than 800 topics in our forum content a lot of photobucket images. I did the same eight years before, when we noticed that some of the Imageshack pictures have already disapeared.
I understand well this situation, I did the same thing with Imageshack images, but was a little bit late, I've lost hundreds of pictures and some were important for my forum (step by step tutorials, DIY guides, etc)

Quote from: Ruth – What are you doing, if your members break the rules about the pictures? I am used to tell them again and again, that they are not allowed to use photobucket, etc. But they use it, because it is (was) allowed in any other forum they know. ::) 
I had this problem in the past I encourage them to use the attachments system, but I don't insist on this, it seems to irritate my members. If I see a chit chat topic with embedded images I do not take any action, if it's an important topic with pictures I upload them as attachments and send a PM to member just to inform why I did the edit.
Like I said I had this problem, now it happens rarely to see important posts with embedded images. I could say it's a problem from the past, I have 50-60% of visits from mobile devices and most pictures are taken with those devices, so it's much easier to upload the images from mobile to forum, instead of uploading to external service and then paste the bbcode.

Quote from: Ruth – And a lot of our users can't handle the proper resizing of their pictures by themselfes. Would you just delete their posts with such pictures? I am used to change those photobucket-pictures afterwards or any other pictures, which have more pixel as it is allowed in our forum.
You should not ask your members to resize images, nobody will do it in 2017 :) , in the era of social networks where posting an image is a matter of seconds.
Fortunately elkarte & its addons handles well this situation. I allow people on my forum to upload 5 MB / image, and those images are resized automatically to 1280px, so the final attachment on the forum will be about 150-250 KB.
Have a look at this addon  and you can also install this addon to gain some extra free space for your attachments.  They work well together.

Quote from: emanuele – Well, one option could be to automatically detect the URLs from external services, fetch them and store the fetched as attachment.
I installed a similar addon on my xf forum,actually 2 addons, one to run once to convert to attachments all embeded images, and one to convert once the post is published. It's not working perfect, but converts almost all images. With a similar addon you won't have missing images, but there are also some disavantages:
- you cannot decide which images convert and which not
- I have some people that are using embedded and animated smileys, so I have lots of those attachments
- I am not sure how legal is such addon, you need to pay attention to copyrighted images.

On some big forums I saw that attachments are uploaded automatically to external services like Amazon S3. Not my case since I have about 10k attachments and 1,5 GB of space. For xf there was a paid addon for this and the good part is that is reversible, if you decide to not use anymore amazon S3, the adon will move attachments to your forum. Very useful to take quick backups ;)
sorry for my bad english

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #7

Thank you very much, Radu. I did not kow, that there is such an addon, to resize large pictures automatically. :)  Sounds pretty good, but I am not sure, if it would work for us. Maybe Jorin can tell me?

Only a very few of our members are using a mobile device sometimes in forum or are making pictures with their mobile phones. Most of them have just an oldfashioned PC like me. ;)

A problem in our forum is, that we cannot use thumbnails for our pictures. We need to see them all the time in "full size", for example to see little differences between two or more collecting items on more than one picture.

Allowed are 780 pixel width and 700 pixel height, and 150 kb. If people attach pictures, wich are only a tiny little bit larger and those pictures are automatically resized to 780 pixel width, the scrolling  in such topics will slow down. Therefore and for another reason, which I can't explain in english, I ask them zu resize their pictures proper. Or I do this afterwards, if they have the wrong size. ::)



@Jorin wäre das erste Addon, zu dem Radu verlinkt hat, vielleicht eine Möglichkeit für uns? Hört sich super an, aber wir brauchen die Bilder immer in der vollen Größe (also 780 Pixel Breite) zum Ansehen, weil wir oft mehrere Bilder gleichzeitig betrachten und genaustens untersuchen und vergleichen müssen. Deshalb können wir auch leider diese Thumbnail-Funktion nicht nutzen , die ja eigentlich prima ist, bei uns aber gar nichts bringt.  Außerdem werden bei uns sehr oft für Vergleiche von ähnlichen Objekten Bilder von einem Thema per IMG in ein anderes Thema eingefügt.

Wenn sich die User nicht an die vorgeschriebene Maximalgröße für die Dateianhänge halten, verkleinert das System sie ja automatisch. Aber auch wenn's nur 1 Pixel mehr ist, merkt man das beim Scrollen sehr. Die Seiten kommen sofort ins Stottern, wenn auch nur minimal zu große Bilder im Dateianhang sind. Auch deshalb laufe ich unseren Usern da ständig hinterher und verkleinere ihre Bilder.

Ein Addon, das die Bilder beim Upload ins Forum, so wie sie von der Digi kommen, automatisch auf unsere Bildgrößen verkleinern würde, wäre absolut genial - genau das, was ich mir schon seit Jahren wünsche. :)

Oder geht das nur bei Bildern, die mit einem smartphone aufgenommen wurden?
Last Edit: July 08, 2017, 04:58:18 pm by Ruth

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #8

QuoteA problem in our forum is, that we cannot use thumbnails for our pictures. We need to see them all the time in "full size",
If you are not using it yet I suggest you to have a look at ILA addon which allows you place inline images (thumbnail or full image). You will need to write the bbcode of image manually, but fortunately on 1.1 version is already included, you can see it in action on this forum.

QuoteAllowed are 780 pixel width and 700 pixel height, and 150 kb
you can set the addon to resize the attachments to max 780 width and 700px height. 

sorry for my bad english

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #9

@Ruth The addon is what you need. I use it too and it works fine. I will explain it to you tomorrow, ILA (inline attachments) too.

Re: That's why it's not a good idea to store attachments externally

Reply #10

Thank you very much, Radu and Jorin. Would be great if we can use those addons in future.

At the moment I still have a lot of work with changing all this photobucket-pictures into attachments. I believe, that we had about 5000 photobucket-pictures in our forum. Most of them had been Imageshack-pictures before, uploaded to photobucket eight years before, ::)  when we noticed that Imageshack-pictures are going to diappear.

But we didn't loose anything this time. Those pictures from our first few years can hardly get replaced by others. They are just a small part from all our images, but they are very important for us, "the basic" of a lot of topics in our forum.

Another forum I know, is trying to do the same as we have done during the last week - but they have lost a lot of photobucket-pictures now, because Photobucket had already broken them. This forum ist one year older than ours, 12 years old, and they always wanted their members to use photobucket, etc. ::)  I think, it's done for them. It is impossible to safe or replace such a lot of pictures from such a long time.
Last Edit: July 10, 2017, 02:42:58 am by Ruth