I have been made aware of a problem regarding the uploading of photos. It appears the storage space for the forum has reached it maximum. I am looking into this.
Meanwhile, if you want to upload photos, I recommend using another photo site, such as Flickr or Photo Bucket and then just posting the link. There's plenty of bandwidth here but the storage space may need to be increased or we may have to change the way we do business with regard to uploading photos.
Dennis
Dennis, i just used photobucket the first time to show my whitening (peroxide) results. Hopefully this is what you mean.Check the link, under telephone troubleshooting and repair thanks
Photobucket has always worked good for me, and is a great way to insert photos into your post!
My son is very active on the car forums and tells me they do not allow for uploading of photos as it uses up so much space. He says Photobucket is the best...for whatever reason. I'm "reaching out" for help on the storage issue. For now if we can use things like Photobucket that will help. Also I think even though the size was restricted to 900 X 600 or something, maybe if we do smaller sized photos it will help too.
Everyone please remember if you use off site photo hosting, and that host goes belly up, all of your photos posted to the forum will be lost, so keep that in mind, and at least use a well established host and not Johhny Fly By Night photo hosting.
I would suggest that photo for use in the Technical section should not be posted off site. Most of the technical library would be worthless without photos.
D/P
Another issue with photobucket is many work ISPs will not allow access :-[
I do understand we have a limited amount of space, but it's no secret I'm dead set against using outside photo hosting, and have gone around and around on ARF for the past 3 years about it. Someday we will be much bigger than what we are now, and may be able to expand our storage. For now, Dennis I suggest that we cut back and limit each post to say 2 photos or 4 photos instead of the 8 we are allowed now, and also make it size limited. Some people post photos, that aren't compressed and that takes a lot of space, one uncompressed photo, can take up as much space as 5 or 6 compressed photos.
Compress your photos always people. Limit the size to 800X600, or 640X480
D/P
Dennis;
I recently read where you, or someone said after 90 days old posts drop off. I was going back deleteing photos I'd posted, that I didn't feel added anything, and I noticed that some posts go back to October. Maybe we need to go through and look at some of these, and move the important ones to technical Library, and delete the rest.
Dan
Dan, thanks for the advice. I agree, I don't want to use off-site storage I just was putting that out there for temporary use while I get this squared away. I have already looked into the software of this "simple machine" program for the forum and did adjust the amount of photos to upload from 8 to 6. But I think I will change that again to 4. If someone has more than 4 photos for a posting, one can just make another "reply" and post a couple more. I have posted 8 at once myself in the past. I will also set a size limit smaller than it is currently. But it will still fill up again.
Also I am going to contact the server and see what it will take (cost-wise) to increase space. Eventually it will have to continue to be increased.
Actually the current program calls for auto-delete after 30 days unless a topic is "stickied". So if there are still some from as long as ago as October, the it may not be auto deleting them.
It will be a huge task to constantly manually prune each "board" unless the moderators use their judgement and sticky what they think should be kept and delete the rest.
I'm working on this issue..................
Dennis -
If I include a photo in my post, and then my friend Freddie hits "Quote" to make his reply, then my photo appears again when his reply is viewed. Do you know if the second copy of the photo is stored separately from the first, thus taking up twice as much storage space? If so, I would strongly encourage everyone to refrain from sloppy and inconsiderate use of the Quote button. The doubled photo already makes things tough for anyone on dial-up, but if it also contributes to filling up the storage space of the board, someone ought to yell.
There. Having yelled, I feel much better.
Bill
On forums which use only outside photo hosting, quoting will duplicate the photo along with the text. With this forum setup, though, the photo remains separate, and quoting doesn't duplicate the photo--only the text.
Just a word about outside photo hosting: On my old radio show forum, I (and most other members) have always used photobucket, and after nearly four years, it's been perfect. That's no guarantee for the future of course, but with a large site like that, the risk of failure is fairly low. A plus for using such a service is that you can embed photos within your text, instead of having them show up only at the very end of a post.
Dennis et. al.,
Thanks for working on this. Since I love posting pictures, and in the past I have posted a lot of off topic pictures, I will do my part by refraining from posting pics unless they are necessary, and will use Photobucket unless they are technical.
Another thing I could do is go back and delete quite a few of my pictures, for example, pictures of my trailer (not really phone oriented) and my long thread with pictures about "old phones in movies", etc..
It would make those threads have some missing parts in them, and maybe confusing, since of course I can only delete my own posts, but I'm quite willing to do that if requested, for the general good of the forum.
Let me know. :) -Matt
Quote from: Dan/Panther on April 14, 2009, 12:39:31 AM
Some people post photos, that aren't compressed and that takes a lot of space, one uncompressed photo, can take up as much space as 5 or 6 compressed photos.
Compress your photos always people. Limit the size to 800X600, or 640X480
D/P
Agreed! Microsoft has a neat little tool for Windows that makes compression trivially easy. It is called Image Resizer - get it at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx. Once installed, you simply put your cursor on the image file (not the image itself) and right-click. One of the options on the resulting menu is Resize Image. Select "SMALL 640x480", and click again. It resizes the image and stores a copy in the same place as the original, with the word "Small" added to the name.
It is amazingly effective. It will usually take a 3 megabyte image file from my camera and turn it into a 20 kilobyte file, depending on the amount of detail in the original file. And with no obvious lack of detail. Don't know how it works, but it works WELL. It is a great solution for the problem Dennis is facing.
As an example, my photos in this thread http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=584.15 are all between 20KB and 50KB, and I think they look pretty good. I have trouble distinguishing between them and the original 3 MB files that came out of my camera.
Bill
We should be back in business. The server had plenty of space. The problem was with settings in the Simple Machines software (this forum software). I had to call out the big gun---Mr. Mark Stevens who made an adjustment and educated me on the change.
Eventually I would imagine there will be a server space issue but it will be a while.
As a result of this however, there have been some great ideas. Dan, your resizing method is a good one and I'm going to give that a shot. I have always used a couple different resizing programs and always resize my photos before uploading them but I still probably have been making them too large. I'm going to take an image and upload several versions of it to demonstrate the difference or lack of. Thank you for your input on this.
Hobie, there is no need for you to go back and delete your photos. We have plenty of space. I think though that it does make us all aware of conservation but we don't want to change our habits of communicating and using photos to do so. Maybe we can all get into the habit of using, say Photobucket to post photos of things we don't really care about if they disappear. Like movie clips, etc. And as Bingster pointed out I do like the idea of working the photo into the text, rather than having to go to the bottom of the post to view the photo. I'm going to try and use Photobucket at times like those. I created an account last night when this started so I'll see how it goes. It does require a couple of more procedural steps when using those off-site programs for photos. I also took the link that Photobucket provided and used TinyURL to shorten the link which also removed some personal information from the link provided by Photobucket.
Meanwhile I am going to verify my changes to the upload limit of 6 photos per post. Feel free to upload more but you will have to just end your post and open another to post additional postings.
After I post several shots of the same image using various sizes, I'll make a determination as to the size limit of uploads.
I think that covers it. Thanks to everyone that contributed to this "problem" which really isn't much of a problem after all.
Special thanks to Mark Stevens who I got out of retirement to come help us with this. Some day when I get the training wheels off we won't have to bother him but it was good to communicate with him again.
I think the best size will be the 640X480. Here are three examples.
1: 320 X 240
2: 640 X 480
3: 800 (Maintain Aspect Ratio)
Based upon these results the 640 X 480 really don't look much different than the larger photos. So I will adjust the settings to limit the photo size to 640 X 480.
The software does resize the photo to as close to 640 X 480. So even if one attempts to upload a HUGE photo the program will resize it to the specifications that I indicated in the software.
And now.........back to our regular programming.
Dennis
so that is why I can't post some photos
Did you just try and post some now and it didn't work? I just uploaded a photo and it worked fine. Give it another try.
not yet tried as of now, yes I will post up something later, thanks Dennis
Bill;
Who the Hell is Freddie ??? ??? :o ;D
D/P
If you will look at the bottom of a posted photo, it will give you a number in KB.
Most photos I've checked are in the 3000 or higher range.
If you will look under a photo that I've compressed it will say 35.5 KB, that means I could post 100 photos just like the one I posted at 35.5 KB compared to one that is 3500 KB. Even at 1000 KB, I could post 30 of one that is compressed to 35.5KB's.
Check it out that is where the storage space is going.
D/P
Dan, you're right. I thought the program was converting them to the maximum size that I set in the Admin section (640X480). I guess it will help if everyone resizes their photos before posting.
I keep a program that will re-size to a smaller picture, and, always do so.
I mail it to myself, post it in MY Documents folder, and, use that folder to upload here.
Bill Cahill ;D
That sounds like a good plan Bill.
I've always prefered using Imageshack or Photobucket to post pictures rather than the internal method. Reason for that is with the internal method, I have to resize the photo, upload it to my personal site, then manually type in the URL to each photo. With Imageshack, I only upload them, then I can either choose to post thumbnails or create a link to a gallery. Imageshack resizes it automatically and creates a URL that I can just copy/paste. You can also click on it to view the "raw" image for a closeup of details. I specifically disable comments because I'm only using it to host the picture file. The picture itself is usually being used to ask a question on a forum.
Drawback to these sites is you can go in and snoop at my other unrelated pictures as well. Be afraid, be very afraid! :o
Easy, I simply click "additional options" found below the message body. Then upload my pics right from my PC.
Such as the last engine I installed in my 1970 GTX. Or a co-worker who likes to sleep on the job. Pics like these can prove deadly at times :o
BDM, I didn't know you were a car buff! I thought I was the only one here!
Ahh hem!!!
I can't drive, so have no cars.
However, I like 50's classics on down to turn of the century.
I really admire tha antique cars, and, trucks.
Bill Cahill ;D
Quote from: AtomicEraTom on April 16, 2009, 11:48:31 PM
BDM, I didn't know you were a car buff! I thought I was the only one here!
Major car buff.....Most of my Friday & Saturday nights were spent racing in the 1980s. Either at the track or otherwise. I used to build engines even when I didn't have a car to stuff one into. I think I enjoy the build more than anything else.
Car buff here, too. We should start a separate topic for this and go to town.
I agree. Anything further should be taken to the Off Topic forum
Vintage autos would be a good subject to discuss.
D/P
On the subject of reducing photo file sizes to conserve forum storage space, I convert pics to grayscale whenever color is not needed. Most "black and white" photo files on the internet are in RGB mode, and converting them to grayscale reduces the file size a lot. Plus I just think black and white pics look classy. 8)
If you go back to your topics and unmark the pictures, does it delete them and save you storage?
I don't mind all my pics being deleted. I don't really know much about compression, but, will use the 640 size.
Sorry about the space.
ntophones
ntophones, no need to delete your photos. It's good if everyone could resize their photos prior to upload to save space. We had a problem a couple months back things have been going smoothly since.
Thanks