Thread: Attachments?
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Old 07-07-2002, 01:40 AM
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Martyn Martyn is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: England, near Europe.
Posts: 509
If I may offer a comment here. Like Tim has already mentioned, I think the *need* is to service the occasional picture poster, rather than the regular user. Most people who want or need to post images regularly, already have some sort of hosting organised. The problem comes when someone who doesnt require to do it often, wants to post the odd pic. For them it's hardly worth paying out for, yet the facility would be nice. They are betwixt and between.

Alex, as you know, I've been using Photopost software on my server and I'm very impressed. Here's a possible solution.

Run Photopost on a separate database from vBulletin, but integrate the access and permissions feature with the same db used for this BB.

Why? Well, you could then ask a small nominal fee to provide members of this forum with a 1 or 2 megabyte account (enough for 20-40 pics at 50k each). You can control who has access to the photopost software, via vBulletins user groups (create new user group called "photouser" or whatever and just move the user into that group when you recieve their cash).

Photopost stores the pics in a folder, rather than in the db, so users can link to it with a propper url (ie: *www.ckdforums.com/pics/bowie12345.jpg). Photopost just uses the database for thumbnails and indexing.

Basically, you provide occasional users with a dead simple system, using propper urls, for a nominal fee.

It's pretty idiot proof too - to upload a photo, just click the upload photo button and point it at the pic on your computers hard drive.

If you click on the "my knife gallery" link in my sig, you can see how it looks. Every user gets a page like that, where people can add comments, or the user can link photos out.

It's a low-tech solution for sure (no email feature or whatever), but I think it fills a gap well.


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Last edited by Martyn; 07-07-2002 at 01:48 AM.
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