Picture Posting debate

[coachgeo]

Don't mean to speak for the owner fo this site... its totaly up to him on this.

IMHO please do NOT use photobucket or other such photo posting websites. I know thats contrary to what everyone else says. As a person who has done lot of net research, nothing is more of a waste than potentially good archived information where the pictures are very much key to the writings but, ARE GONE leaving the info totaly a waste. Check out old archived forums and see how many pics are now little white boxes with red X's. The mark of a dead photo link.

Things are repeating themselves and I see this same problem happpening now. Users stop using their pic site and it defaults to cancel the account or users rearange things so the urls they put in post are no longer valid, company does some upgrades and this moves things about abit causing some of the urls to no longer match etc. It will get worse. Major dropping of millions of hosted images is the worst that can happen. It has already happened 3x by my count in the last ten or so years. due to this there is some great archived material that is waste now.

I am VERY conscrned with youtube. no one is expecting them to make changes that will leave thousands of vids unasscable. Mark my word it will happen and the cycle will repeat. Not that we are yet using video in technical discussions but more and more we will be. We are using youtube for tutuorials alot now. What a major loss its going to be when we loose alot of those.

UPLOAD to the bulletin board your using when ever you can (if thats how the site owner wants it) to better preserve the archive in a usuable state. you might even consider keeping a running copy of anything you really like with all the pics. Boards like this one go out of biz. too and having folk who archive and can repost in a new board is AWSOME.

[Crazymanneil]

I'm not the board owner as such (that'd be Stuart) but I do run the tech/hosting side. At the moment the bandwidth usage is ok so its good enough to use the hosting/attachments on this site rather than linking over to someplace else for now. It also makes sense to keep a copy of your pics locally in case something does happen.

n

[buckles]

I dont understand fella's are we supposed to post pictures like i have done are is there another way to do it . Anyway picked up my gearbox, clutch and final drive today so i can start to get things together, i hope to have the flywheel machined within the next two weeks and then mate the engine and box together .

[coachgeo]

I dont understand fella's are we supposed to post pictures like i have done are is there another way to do it ....

Yes there is anotherway to do it. My suggestion is to "attach" them by uploading them to this site. This puts them in this boards archive. Much better IMHO over putting them on a different host site like imageshack.

Each board is little different but here to attach pictrues.... looking here below the box you type new messages/responces into there is the Options menu. Next to its tab is another menu tab , [upload attachment] Click on this to switch to that menu. Follow the steps there to upload your pic to the server that host this site. Doing so will automatically attach them to your post as well

[buckles]

testing coachgeo's idea!. This picture was taken at the krystall rally in Norway this year.

[Stuart]

Yeah Coach, I know what you mean about imageshack and the rest. I did tend to use and recommend (Imageshack) because they seemed to be by far the most reliable. This new forum allows stuff to be uploaded directly. When I back up the forum the database the download is pretty small (at the moment about 2.5meg) and so I'm wondering if that actually includes the pictures? I guess it does - I'm no expert and am still feeling my way here with it.
(BTW I notice some of the guys using this facility have uploaded doubles of pictures to some threads and so I'll have a go at cleaning those up a little soon to save space.)
But back to topic - Storing info in the digital age is a problem for everyone, not just us guys. I don't think anyone anywhere has yet come up with a full proof system and much as we'd like to have a solution here I can't think of one yet. Perhaps we should keep our eyes peeled whilst looking at the computer geeks forums Thses guys are more up to speed than this biker anyway
Looking at the big picture it probably is inevitable that pictures loaded to third party sites may start dropping off the back end of the forum as it grows in age. But I kinda hope that the rate of growth accompanied with new ideas might outpace the drop off rate. Hope springs eternal
If anyone thinks a particular thread (perhaps on CVT's for instance) is worth keeping then feel free to compile it into a document (attributed to and thanking all contributers) and I'll happily post it along with pictures to the website where hopefully, it'll be a bit less likely to get lost.

I decided to split this from the other (slightly edited) topic because I think it's worthy of its own thread.

[Sphere]

I seriously doubt that 2.5MB will include the pictures. JPEG does not compress that well. If I find how to do a full backup I will post it here. On the topic of youtube, if you are interested in preserving a video, you can go to www.keepvid.com and paste the link. Select MP4 for the high-quality download. I guess that this is not really an option for this site, because it will eat bandwith, but It Works For Me(tm).

[Crazymanneil]

You guys are right that the pics are not part of the backup that you run Stuart. The pics are kept in a separate directory on the server. The web host we are on claims to backup stuff etc but I'll start doing a backup of this also. Actually I'll write something to do this automagically...

n

[Stuart]

Good stuff Neil If anyone can help with a little spare space to back us up then all the better. The more that exist the better I think

Stuart

[Sphere]

Lets ascertain the amount required first. There is no point in storing heaps of data off-site if you don't live close to the hoster, or if you can't upload it very fast.

[Sphere]

Are pics being backed up now? How's space?

[Crazymanneil]

I think space is ok at the moment. Theres an option to upgrade if we outgrow it anyway but ok so far.

Could use an off-site FTP server someplace to backup to though the stuff is all backed up weekly.

N

[Sphere]

How many GB (GiB) are we talking about?

[Crazymanneil]

I think its about 200 meg at the moment (zipped). I really should setup a home server...

Space is not a problem for hosting at the moment and we are hardly using any bandwidth so don't be afraid to post pics. I'm gonna look and see if I can turn up the max pics per post...

N

[Sphere]

Hum, I'm setting up a homeserver with Ubuntu/xbmc soonish, perhaps I can add a service of your liking? I have cable 20/3 which should be upgraded to 30/4 at the end of Q1.

[Sphere]

Neil, since you are off to pollute the world on your steel horse, it would be good to know if the backups actually work. That is, can you restore the forum from a backup. You know that Murphy strikes when you least want him to, which will most likely be on your trip without proper Internet connection

Willing to help with testing.

[Crazymanneil]

Hey,

Backups are being made automagically which should include everything though I guess we can test a restore. I have spoken to a friend who is pretty good with web development too and he's agreed to provide support for the board (though from a tech perspective it ticks over ok - maybe not speak too soon though )

Neil