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  #1  
Old 06-21-2002, 07:14 AM
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Dave Larsen Dave Larsen is offline
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Attachments?

The FAQ indicates we can post attachments but the Browse button does not appear for me.

Dave
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  #2  
Old 06-21-2002, 07:23 AM
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I may be disabled. I don't even see a browse button at all.


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  #3  
Old 06-21-2002, 08:06 AM
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Martyn Martyn is offline
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I'm guessing Alex has disabled this function. He may have concerns over folks uploading tons of images into the database, which will bog down the site dramatically. That's one of the problems with vBulletin's attachment feature. Any posted attachments go into the same database as the posts. Obviously a large jpg is way more space/bandwidth hungry than a few lines of text, which means the database would grow to a huge size very rapidly, making everything else very slow. Diskspace and bandwidth particularly are at a premium. You can post 1000's of messages in the space taken up by a few hi res images.

But it may be something else entirely


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Old 06-21-2002, 09:08 AM
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Martyn,

Thanks for the explanation. You are exactly correct.

We're looking hard for the perfect image hosting solution software to help in this regard, but have been unhappy with what we've seen so far. I think the solution will likely be creating a few new specialized hosting account plans on our system that users will be able to use for not only hosting images and some web pages on our site, but for also displaying images on other sites, as well. It's OK to have a system that allows images to be posted to a single site, but in our industry (the knife business), it's also important to be able to post those images on other sites and forums as well, preferably from the same source account.

Alex


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Old 06-21-2002, 10:21 AM
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Dave Larsen Dave Larsen is offline
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Thanks for the replies, understand about the bandwidth and storage. I do have image hosting at Boomspeed but haven't used it much yet.

Dave
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  #6  
Old 07-04-2002, 09:59 PM
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Boy, I'd hope you can do whatever it takes and charge whatever it costs to make things simpler for the members to post pics. I have never seen such a problem with image hosting as there is currently.

The 'free' site days are OVER! With rare exception these sites cause WAY too much trouble for average users to link and post. Too many characters, Server down-time, non linking pages, account 'unnaccessible', etc....

My money was VERY well-spent buying into fototime, but I'm BIG on posting. For the occasional user, an on-site option would be a boon. (I would hope. It's not 'FREE' )

Just had to vent again...!

Coop


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  #7  
Old 07-05-2002, 01:11 AM
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I'm working on it.

Would anyone have interest in a 15 MB Host account? Something you could not only store and serve images, but you could also have web site area, email and user panel features?

Alex


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  #8  
Old 07-05-2002, 06:32 AM
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Quote:
Originally posted by CKDAdmin
Would anyone have interest in a 15 MB Host account? Something you could not only store and serve images, but you could also have web site area, email and user panel features?
Kind of a mini-webpage for ourselves with ability to display pics, pages and text? Sure that sounds good. I'd do it.

But it also has a lot of bells and whistles. You are serving some needs here--but at the risk of overcomplication. I'd make that option #2.

I have 250mb allowed on my pic server, and I'm up to 85 already with trimmed pics. (Glutton!) I need that many pics like I *need* more knives.

Heck, USN and BF have the space. What would it cost? How much dedicated server would it take, and how much would it slow it down? Lastly, how much would folks be willing to fork out?

All tough questions and I don't have a clue. Thanks for chewing on this.

Coop


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  #9  
Old 07-05-2002, 01:13 PM
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Terry Primos Terry Primos is offline
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Actually, 15MB of web space is a lot. It would most definitely not be a mini-webpage.

I was just checking the stats of the master copy of my website (which is stored on my PC). My site contains about 40 pages of text and images. This covers 5 directories, which collectively contain 112 files. My entire website will fit on a 1.44MB floppy disk.

Back in the early days of the Custom Knife Photography forum, and the CKD Photo of the Week forum, several of us were stressing the importance of learning to optimize digital images for the web. We wanted to help folks learn how to take that 5MB digital image and crunch it down into a web-ready JPEG image of less that 60K.

Nobody wanted to listen. The general concensus was, "But I don't care about web images, I just want to learn to take better photographs". Remember the struggles we had when trying to get people to keep images for the contest under 60K? We heard things like, "It doesn't take that long to display a 100K image, and I am on a slow dialup connection".

The facts were then, and still remain today, that we are using the Internet to share information, and it only makes sense to learn how to use it effectively. Decreasing the amount of bandwidth used is only a part of the equation. That part of the deal is just the polite thing to do for the millions of viewers on the Internet. When it comes to optimization for the sake of storage, we are doing that for ourselves. The better I can optimize my images, the more images I can store on the disk space I am paying for.

If I keep my images at 60K, I can store 200 images in just 12MB of disk space. I might mention that it is EASY to optimize down to 60K. Alex, dogman, and several others have displayed images in the past which were crunched down in the neighborhood of 30K. At that size we could store 400 images in 12MB of disk space.

Look at my banner below. The original one, on my PC, which is the same physical dimensions, but is in the proprietary format of my image editor is a little over 304K. However, the image you are seeing which was made web-ready, is optimized down to about 8K.

By the way Coop, all this rambling is not directed towards you. This is for all to read and absorb. 15MB of disk space is a huge amount.


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  #10  
Old 07-06-2002, 12:35 AM
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I've been working on my posting problem since Terry, Martyn and I discussed it last. I'm getting close to the solution and I'm confident it's only a matter of time, patience and perserverance. What I have noticed is that I'm not alone. I keep hearing "why isn't this like msn'? or similar comments along those lines. I have a reason and mission to get this moving but I feel that the occasional contributor might eventually just plain give up, lose interrest and move off.
You fellows have the handle on how this system operates. I'm still using baby steps. Speaking for myself, I can adhere to the image size recomended/limits but cannot guarantee that someone sharing a photo on the site will.
In the interim, if I can't resolve my posting problem within the coming week, I'd appreciate any recommendations for a more compatible arrangement to link to the forum, even for the short term. I would go for a host account. Tim
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  #11  
Old 07-06-2002, 01:26 AM
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15MB should translate to roughly 200 images. That's based on 70KB each. I could put 400 in it, but I'm a stickler for precise compression. The setup I'm referring to would not be what you're used to with a photo hosting site. This is the "pure" solution ...

I hear the BF and USN argument all the time. I have to make decisions based on what I know to be true. If you were to chart their server performance over time, it'll look like the back end of a volkswagon beetle ... unless they remove the images from the db as they go along. We provision our space and resource usage precisely. The difference in what I'm describing is this ... not only will it faster and more feature rich, but you'll be able to post the images within CKDF, BF, USN, KF and all the rest ... with one cust-and-paste move. It's the total solution to anyone's imaging needs and so much more!

It won't come with some of the power features that guys like Terry and others here have who run full blown websites, but it'll have more than anything else you'll find. I'm considering $6.95 a month. I think that's about what we can do it for.

1 will get you 10 that most users would throw rocks at the other method once they see what this will do for them.

Alex


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  #12  
Old 07-06-2002, 02:58 AM
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Tim Adlam Tim Adlam is offline
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For my needs, I could get by with half the space. Get the post/pics up there and then dump the old ones out.
Bells and whistles are not that important. Maybe as an option later, it really doesn't matter to me. If I can get my point across to the viewer, that's enough.
However you set this up, I'm for it. You don't have to convince me! Beats the hell out of waisting time and effort on what "should " be a simple command!
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  #13  
Old 07-06-2002, 01:01 PM
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Alex,

That is a great price! Fototime is $25.00 a year. And for the megaphoto guys (Coop), they could always buy more space.

I would rather send my cash to you than fototime. They are ok as a host but I would rather spend my cash in my "backyard".


Keep us posted!

Bob Sigmon
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  #14  
Old 07-07-2002, 01:40 AM
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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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  #15  
Old 07-07-2002, 10:58 AM
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Guys,

Hang in there. We're working on it now.

Alex


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