Suggestion: Do NOT use Links to personal webpages to post pictures

Hey...

Going back through the archives, lately, searching vainly for the first posting by Giskard of the C533-L100 matrix, I've noticed something I long-ago anticipated: You Forumites that are more websavy than me (and that's easy...) and post your pictures, images, etc., via an http: address off the Forum, run a risk. If those Links are broken, for whatever reason, the stuff you posted is lost to the Forum, forever. That's too bad and has made many posts much less impactual since the subject mater is now a box with a red "x" in it... :(

If you can, live within the Forum and post pictures / images using the "Attache File" option, and it's acceptible formats and file sizes... :yes:

Bo,

I've done this too because I wanted the freedom to modify the image or to have multiple images in a post.

A possible solution is to set up an area on Apollo where these can be stored. I'll do that if someone wants to track down the missing images and Don will let one of us modify the imbedded URLs.

John

I'm game if someone wants to volunteer to do this.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Don McRitchie
I'm game if someone wants to volunteer to do this.

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I nominate Bo!

John

Quote:

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Originally posted by John Nebel
I'll do that if someone wants to track down the missing images...

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OK, I'm confused on how we'd (read: me'd ;) ) find images Linked-in from other ISP's. Granted, I know less about this than I do Altecs, but am willing to try... :yes:

Bo,

One way is to look at every post and test every link. There are only about 20,000 posts. :)

I'll ask Ann if she can figure out a MySQL query which will find all the http:// and ftp:// strings and produce a listing by post. If that can be done, the task is somewhat reasonable, but every post with an external link would need to be edited by hand and the external page moved to Apollo. One may want to ignore such things as eBay links or archive them, don't know. Links to pages with imbedded links could get interesting.

This is not an easy job.

John

Hey, John...

Yea, it seems monumental. But, my ignorance sez if the Link is busted it may related to the Poster having:

- deleted the ISP account
- deleted / discontinued the http address
- withdrawn his photos so he could post his L100 collection
- all the above

Regardless, these may not be retrievable. But, my ignorance in how all this works is glaring about now... :slink:

Bo,

My suggestion was to move the links that still work which may break in the future. Your original advice was good, of course.

John

Bo,

I asked Ann if she could find posts with [img]...[{slash}img] in them. The thought is that we may be able to run them through wget and find which are broken and which are not.

Do you have any ideas how we could make it easy in the future fo people to avoid that?

John

Quote:

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Originally posted by John Nebel
...The thought is that we may be able to run them through wget and find which are broken and which are not.

Do you have any ideas how we could make it easy in the future fo people to avoid that?

John

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I belong to three other forums that all provide 10-20 megs upload space to paid members for uploading images, etc. 'Maybe something to think about here?

John

John,

Assigning IDs and passwords is the thing that puzzles me if one were going to rely on the operating system to do that.

I'll check the vBulletin docs for hints.

John

Hi John

In case you are not aware, John Nebel, and his company CSD Internet, hosts this site at no cost. In essence, John is offering whatever server space we need to host pictures. What is being discussed now is whether it is practical to go back and replace all of the linked photos on the forum with locally stored photos.

Bo, look what you got started!

An image link is external. An attachment is local to VBulletin.

There are two image link issues here, existing and future. It looks like an MySQL query can find existing image links. They would have to be manually moved into local storage and the post edited to reflect that. The reason - at least why I do it personally and probably true for others - for using an image link is that it is more flexible than attachments.

For the future, it looks like vBulletin v3 has attachment management functions for users, I don't know about v2.

"Attachment Management

* View attachment statistics - shows limit and used space
* View the attachments you have posted (link or thumbnail views available)
* Remove attachments"

Existing attachments may be migrated from the database into the file system with a utility.

The file system to my way of thinking is a better place for large objects than within a database and the vBulletin docs appear to agree. People at Oracle would shoot me for saying that.

There is still the issue of file space for users. That would be nice, but I can't figure out how to manage all the user IDs and passwords.

A scheme might be an ftp area with a generally known password. A periodic script could change the ownership of files to read-only after some time interval. The risk would be a malicious user modifying current posts which might not be too much of a downside, especially if people made sure to check their posts after a day or so.

John