Picture attachments issues

[MarkM]

Ok we are all aware that currently there is a slight problem with the picture attachment feature on the forum.
I currently do not have information to share with you as to why this has happened or when it will be restored to full working order so in the meantime this thread has appeared.

"Crusade mode" ;) If you wish to see AO continue it might be an idea to see what you can do for AO, lots of ideas were thrown around at the time TK retired but the Forum still costs money to host and the attachments increase this cost because of bandwidth etc.
To drop this cost and ensure that all your pics can be seen it would help you (as you can see them) and AO (for the drop in the hosting costs) to find an alternate place to host these pics "Crusade mode off"

Many ISP's provide you with free webspace when you use their service so many of you already have this space but just don't use it. If you are unfortunate enough to have an ISP that will charge you for webspace then....

You can get FREE accounts at the following

www.muchos.co.uk
www.jayloo.com

Now these two are "free" to a point one has a minimal cost per 8 week period, one has a cost if you go above a usage figure.

This is now where you guys come in I have listed two hosts. Now post away with your hosts....remember TOTALLY FREE is what we are looking for or as close to FREE as you can find.

**edit** It also might be a good thing for each user to go to their user control panel and select Attachments to see how much space they are currently using on AO...I didn't think I posted many pictures and found I had nearly 6 meg uploaded..they are now deleted as they were all on old threads and certainly not currently needed..take a look I think more than one or two of you are in for a shock!

[JoshK]

YAY!! I'm the first person to help cut down on AO's bandwidth problems ;)

http://imageshack.us/

[Creative Mayhem]

WOOT!! Just deleted 8.81GIGS of pics from the last 3 years. :rofl: :clap:

Now, if everyone cleaned up their pics, TK could save some money and come to AO Canada (http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=161643)

[MonsterMag]

I am a mod for www.mypicgallery.com
Great host site. Free to

[luke]

**edit** It also might be a good thing for each user to go to their user control panel and select Attachments to see how much space they are currently using on AO...

How much would be concidered allot? :ninja:

[MarkM]

How much would be concidered allot? :ninja:


WOOT!! Just deleted 8.81GIGS of pics from the last 3 years. :rofl: :clap:

Now, if everyone cleaned up their pics, TK could save some money and come to AO Canada (http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=161643)

That would be a lot but when you consider that unless the picture is stupidly large what is an average size 30-300k? I often editted pics before I linked to them anyhow.
I don't think any one figure is to be regarded as a lot but if you are selling a marker and it was a six months, a year, two years ago it wouldn't matter how big that pic was you certainly don't still need it.
The same goes for many of the owned pics and similar.
Look at the movie trivia thread in 3 months or infact now as the answers once given the old picture as a question isn't needed, that is a prime example of un-needed pics, I will be fair and say that some pics in that thread where remotely hosted but certainly not all.
As Creative Mayhem has just found that he had 8.81 gigs worth but I bet if you had asked him before he looked his answer would have been less than 1 gig ;)

[behemoth]

deleted 8MB

I know its not alot, but I'm just trying to do my civic duty :D

[BobTheCow]

YAY!! I'm the first person to help cut down on AO's bandwidth problems ;)

http://imageshack.us/That's the way to do it. Easy to upload single pictures, or you can create an account if you want. Link full pics, thumbnails, all sorts of great options. Fast and reliable, too. Yippee!!


My cpanel told me the following:

Attachment Statistics
You are currently using 3.90 MB to store 73 uploaded attachments.Woo, 3 whole megs! Deleted anyway. :)

[MarkM]

Ok we have currently
8.81 gig
8mb
3mb

Now those numbers are dropping but think we have 24,297 members, ok not all are active but it all starts getting scary and it all quickly adds up and how many of those inactive members are sitting on god only knows AO server space.

Keep the links coming for pic hosting, as I am sure you are all aware AO also slows down from time to time this is all server loads and remotely hosted pics don't slow AO down.

[BD_Paintball]

i just deleted 7 pages of pics from my list. i dont remember how many mb's it was, but it was 7 pages. :clap: :headbang:

[punkncat]

I just did some housecleaning....

I am actually stoked that the feature is there that allows you to go back and look through your old attachments. I had asked about that feature once and was told by who knows that there was no way to find just your old pics.....THANKS.

[MarkM]

I just did some housecleaning....

I am actually stoked that the feature is there that allows you to go back and look through your old attachments. I had asked about that feature once and was told by who knows that there was no way to find just your old pics.....THANKS.
I think the feature has always been there but since it where it is on the bottom of the control panel it is often missed. I only found it by accident about a year ago. I would have posted it was there if I had realised that some people hadn't known about it.
Oh want to share how many meg you were hosting ;)

[AGDlover]

just deleted 3.96mb

[punkncat]

I think the feature has always been there but since it where it is on the bottom of the control panel it is often missed. I only found it by accident about a year ago. I would have posted it was there if I had realised that some people hadn't known about it.
Oh want to share how many meg you were hosting ;)


Right at 5 meg...... :D

[Lohman446]

I tried.. but had a lack of attachments to delete.. none there hmmm

[Mighty Mike]

Oooops.....18.15 mb. Most of my pictures were from old NorCal AO Days that have now been deleted. Well, it's down to 3.5mb now and will be lower by next week when I delete all the pictures i posted in the 05 Huntington Beach thread.

[Maggot6]

I could delete some Kb's, although that might be worthless...

[RRfireblade]

Yowzers....

Right at 20mb and I do host alot of my pictures on my own space, I'll see what i can transfer and clean that up some.

Jay.

[MarkM]

I could delete some Kb's, although that might be worthless...

Not really as it all helps. Many users may think they only have a little of space used many might but a whole lot more are well up there and over time it soon adds up, you haven't been a member for that long so perhaps that is why you haven't got much stored but think about it seriously...do you need all the pics you have stored on AO servers? Chances are you have a copy on your pc anyway.

If you must post pics then use some of the links given in this thread to use for hosting.
The links have been given so you won't have to pay any money out, which is always good.

[Kevmaster]

deleted 1.4 of 1.6 mb i was using to host.

i host most of my stuff on my own server...eh

[RRfireblade]

Down to 3mb and 1 page from 20mb and 11 pages. :eek:

Do I get a cookie? :D

[MarkM]

Down to 3mb and 1 page from 20mb and 11 pages. :eek:

Do I get a cookie? :D

It might be a bit stale by the time it got to you if I sent you one ;)

The funny (as in strange) thing about all this I have argued for remote hosting since well forever...yes I did use AO but I actually deleted all my AO hosted stuff a year ago...but it is proving to be a shock that users have had as much file space used on AO...imagine if all users actually read this thread and acted accordingly. It has taken a fault/error to bring this to a head...honest it is just that not some Twilight Zone plot ;)

[WenULiVeUdiE]

Deleted 1.8 MB. Surprisingly it only consisted of 7 pictures.

[CoolHand]

2.9 Mb just bit the dust.

Man that stuff was hard core old too. It was all from before I had my own webspace.

I had no idea they kept things from that long ago.

Toward the end of helping out AO as a whole, anyone who can't use the other free hosting services should feel free to email me their pics. If you send the pic and the URL of the thread it goes into, I will host the pics and post them where they go.

But really, if you can use Image Shak or the like, do that first. If you can't, give me a ring.

[luke]

OK, I droped 5 mb, about 100 pictures.

[hitech]

Well, I'm down to under 1.5 mb. I'll try to find the attachments I just couldn't delete and transfer them to mypictures.com (thanks for the service). :D

BTW, I deleted about 1 mb.

[Big'n slo]

Dropped two pages of attachments, somerandomnumberMbs :D

[Chris Nearchos]

well, 5.84 Mb down the drain. Now only imagine what kind of space it would make if we started deleting old pointless threads!

[CoolHand]

well, 5.84 Mb down the drain. Now only imagine what kind of space it would make if we started deleting old pointless threads!

Actually, I bet you would be surprised how little space the text part takes up.

[Lohman446]

well, 5.84 Mb down the drain. Now only imagine what kind of space it would make if we started deleting old pointless threads!


Please no - AO is a database of knowledge, of ideas, of thoughts. Well we can generally live without the diagrams if we have to, loosing the vast accumulation of thought, knowledge, communication would be a blow. How would you judge useless information today from what may be useful tomorrow?

[MarkM]

Useless posts are up for debate as to what is useless or not, what isn't up for debate is the BST sections...anyone want to look and see how far they go back?

Markers http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11407 2001! :eek:

Air systems http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32045 2002! :eek:

Misc paintball items http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32052 2002! :eek:

Now me I think there must be a way of Archiving the older posts so peoples precious post count doesn't drop but what period do we draw the line..6 months old? A year? The age I would go for would be 6 months but in archiving these sections the file size volume is still there..with this amount of threads they will contribute to being quite a few meg or possibly gigs. It is something that can be looked at.
The forum can actually be set so that all posts in the BST section do not add to the post count and since many people who regularly use the BST sections for sales (not buying) are constantly adding to their post counts with "up, TTT, Bump! etc etc"

[Lohman446]

Useless posts are up for debate as to what is useless or not, what isn't up for debate is the BST sections...anyone want to look and see how far they go back?


Excellent point. I hadn't really considered those. Though it would be neat ten years from now to look back and say, wow - remember when E-mags were XXX or whatever. Hmm.. I started this thread to say there was no argument at all and that the value of old BST was obviously zero... back to thinking about that one on my part.

[MarkM]

Excellent point. I hadn't really considered those. Though it would be neat ten years from now to look back and say, wow - remember when E-mags were XXX or whatever. Hmm.. I started this thread to say there was no argument at all and that the value of old BST was obviously zero... back to thinking about that one on my part.


Hence the idea of archiving them but that would still incur a cost. Is it good to pay for something just to say in 10 years "oooh thats neat?"

My Phantom cost me $562 at the rate of exchange at the time, it wasn't worth that but that's what they cost. Now that would buy me another Angel with an air system (if I searched long enough)

I started this thread with the idea of clearing the pics not needed on AO's servers not a radical spring clean of the forum itself and offering an alternate means of posting pictures.

The post count setting is something I do believe should be changed, we had a situation just this last week where a user appeared to be fully fledged due to a post count but in reality they had 4 posts outside of the BST sections and so had contributed nothing to the forums, they weren't acting very well so they got themselves a ban, a huge post count and lots of contributions to the forum and it still would have happened (just in case you think it was just because of the lack of contribution ;)) But because of the post count gained in the BST sections people got sucked into thinking they were a useful member...to buyers they might be, but then both Paintball Talk and Friendly Corner both require participation of varying degrees to have validity..I know it might appear that I am arguing semantics but a post count gained by contributing to the forums as a whole is way better than constantly posting "up etc etc"

[MarkM]

Ok we are all aware that currently there is a slight problem with the picture attachment feature on the forum.
I currently do not have information to share with you as to why this has happened or when it will be restored to full working order so in the meantime this thread has appeared.

"Crusade mode" ;) If you wish to see AO continue it might be an idea to see what you can do for AO, lots of ideas were thrown around at the time TK retired but the Forum still costs money to host and the attachments increase this cost because of bandwidth etc.
To drop this cost and ensure that all your pics can be seen it would help you (as you can see them) and AO (for the drop in the hosting costs) to find an alternate place to host these pics "Crusade mode off"

Many ISP's provide you with free webspace when you use their service so many of you already have this space but just don't use it. If you are unfortunate enough to have an ISP that will charge you for webspace then....

You can get FREE accounts at the following

www.muchos.co.uk
www.jayloo.com

Now these two are "free" to a point one has a minimal cost per 8 week period, one has a cost if you go above a usage figure.

This is now where you guys come in I have listed two hosts. Now post away with your hosts....remember TOTALLY FREE is what we are looking for or as close to FREE as you can find.

**edit** It also might be a good thing for each user to go to their user control panel and select Attachments to see how much space they are currently using on AO...I didn't think I posted many pictures and found I had nearly 6 meg uploaded..they are now deleted as they were all on old threads and certainly not currently needed..take a look I think more than one or two of you are in for a shock!

Quoting myself as we are now on the second page and people tend to go on different tangents with thread subjects as we have above ;) so this is the original subject and why this thread is here.

[Lohman446]

Hence the idea of archiving them but that would still incur a cost. Is it good to pay for something just to say in 10 years "oooh thats neat?"

When its not me paying for it - yes :D I understand your point, is it worth it? Good question.



I started this thread with the idea of clearing the pics not needed on AO's servers not a radical spring clean of the forum itself and offering an alternate means of posting pictures.

I have been surprised myself at the amount of work some members have gone through to do what they can once that has been brought up. Excellent initiative to point this out, because most of us never even considered the resources we were using with attachments. I personally would have given about as much warning as the old PM issue (remember when they were unlimited) and then instituted a solution like was done there. Though I realize it made some people less than happy

[MarkM]

When its not me paying for it - yes :D I understand your point, is it worth it? Good question.


I have been surprised myself at the amount of work some members have gone through to do what they can once that has been brought up. Excellent initiative to point this out, because most of us never even considered the resources we were using with attachments. I personally would have given about as much warning as the old PM issue (remember when they were unlimited) and then instituted a solution like was done there. Though I realize it made some people less than happy


It has been surprising to me also but then as I presented this all in a sensible way it has got the right result so far....every little bit helps.

Yes the Pm's I remember that but then to be honest since you can download them as various file formats it isn't an issue. I have to download my pm box pretty regular but then you have to consider I get pm's that are not a friend talking to a friend they are mod related so I have to have them. Given todays pc's all come with sensible sized hard drives and even if they don't you can either burn them to a dvd/cd or even a floppy so there is no excuse.

[ColdFuzion]

I'm a good AO'er. I use Photobucket. ;)

-Cold

[Chris Nearchos]

Please no - AO is a database of knowledge, of ideas, of thoughts. Well we can generally live without the diagrams if we have to, loosing the vast accumulation of thought, knowledge, communication would be a blow. How would you judge useless information today from what may be useful tomorrow?

I Myself use this site to take in and also let out many ideas. I didnt mean just delete any thread/post but the ones that are TRULY POINTLESS. (see below for what I meaning)



Useless posts are up for debate as to what is useless or not, what isn't up for debate is the BST sections...anyone want to look and see how far they go back?

The forum can actually be set so that all posts in the BST section do not add to the post count and since many people who regularly use the BST sections for sales (not buying) are constantly adding to their post counts with "up, TTT, Bump! etc etc"


As MarkM has pointed out, many people just post what they can, JUST to get their post count up. The big one is in the BST section were they just post things like (up, up for the day, ttt, lets get this gone today, etc). I know iam guilty of posting like that, but i go back the next day and delete it and post it up again. That way I dont have a 5 pages of ups just for a one thread.
But there are many other pointless threads/post going on like also in the BST, people making 3-4 threads of the same gun/part (one for each week that didnt get sold). i mean come on, if you want to start with a fresh thread each week please delete the old one(s). Another example are the threads/post that are just pure spaming. and those are all over the site.

[Chris Nearchos]

Actually, I bet you would be surprised how little space the text part takes up.

I know text takes very liitle space. but if you count up all of those Kb`s of the pointless post/threads it really starts to add up like pennies! And its not just the text but bandwith/space used up with the boarders and background of the post/threads.

[punkncat]

I just found out that I have been provided with 10MB of space through my ISP that I haven't been using and just activated. Hopefully it will allow enough bandwidth to hotlink and be useful to save space here.

Might want to check your own ISPs this must be a fairly standard feature.

[Chris Nearchos]

man pics out again. good thing i switched all my pics over to jayloo after the last pic crash.

[kurama]

I've always used imageshack on every site I go to. No uploads on any of them ;)

[ta2maki]

I just found an AWSOME hosting site. The only limitaton is that the filesize be under 1.5mb and that they are jpg,gif,or png. After uploading they give you the code to cut and paste into your post and here's a good one, you don't have to sign up for an account.

It's definitely worth checking out.

http://paintedover.com/

[Def Jeff]

Why not simply disable the entire file attatchment system and force everyone to use an outside site? There's plenty of them and all that's needed is a sticky thread with all the possible places. That way the cost of the site goes down, and people still get to host their pics. Win-win situation to me.

[BD_Paintball]

Why not simply disable the entire file attatchment system and force everyone to use an outside site? There's plenty of them and all that's needed is a sticky thread with all the possible places. That way the cost of the site goes down, and people still get to host their pics. Win-win situation to me.


thats a very good idea. as long as people know where to host the pics then it will be all good. it will save tom alot of money.

[danheneise]

i don't even know how to use the attachment feature. I just use my personall server and link to that, works fine for me, and AO ;) unfortunatly i don't have a ton of bandwidth so they load fairly slowly.

[MarkM]

Why not simply disable the entire file attatchment system and force everyone to use an outside site? There's plenty of them and all that's needed is a sticky thread with all the possible places. That way the cost of the site goes down, and people still get to host their pics. Win-win situation to me.

That is the point of this thread ;) Though the disabling of the file attachment system isn't my call I do agree it will force users to think a little more as to what they post up as a pic plus many find it difficult to even write a code line to remotely host a pic so the file attachment system takes the guess work out of it so it becomes WYSIWYG however remotely hosted pics will pretty much always work and it then takes away the cost to AO and so will enable AO to survive for longer in the current economic climate of uncertainty.

[mark_1791]

Delete All The Old Bst Threads That Are Already Done, They Are A Waste Of Space. There Is Absolutly No Point In Archiving Them!!!

[JLove]

I am glad to see that you guys are making this effort. Most large forum sites like PBNation have had to take steps to limit image attachments because people use forums as web hosting, instead of other sites that offer it for free. I love seeing pictures of guns, and I don't like the idea of limiting those or even signature images. but we have all seen what happens when someone goes too far.

[Aslan]

I'm getting this error when I try to upload a pic...what gives? :mad: :confused: :cuss:

Warning: move_uploaded_file(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/home/httpd/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs/forums/attachments/fea6870d9b3aee4e772ec0b723618115) is not within the allowed path(s): (/var/www/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs:/tmp) in /includes/functions_file.php on line 274

Warning: filesize(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/home/httpd/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs/forums/attachments/fea6870d9b3aee4e772ec0b723618115) is not within the allowed path(s): (/var/www/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs:/tmp) in /includes/functions_file.php on line 286

Thanks! :clap: :clap:

[luke]

Mark, since the last server problem I get the following message when trying to post a picture. I have tried, bmp, jpg and jpeg files and always get the same message. Yet I see others posting pictures, why are some having problem when others arn't? :(

Warning: move_uploaded_file(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/home/httpd/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs/forums/attachments/a83b9e4303126cbad6bdfa5be70f3921) is not within the allowed path(s): (/var/www/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs:/tmp) in /includes/functions_file.php on line 274

Warning: filesize(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/home/httpd/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs/forums/attachments/a83b9e4303126cbad6bdfa5be70f3921) is not within the allowed path(s): (/var/www/vhosts/automags.org/httpdocs:/tmp) in /includes/functions_file.php on line 286
Close this window Manage Attachments

[Aslan]

Does anybody know of a safe, easy, free place to post pictures...so that I can link to them? AO has apparently given up on pictures...

Thanks!

;)

[MarkM]

Read the beginning of this thread plenty of options are listed. Your own ISP will in most cases provide you with free webspace so you don't have to use other servers.
The code line you are getting looks to basically mean that attachments have not been enabled since the last server crash, of which there was another today.