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Image retention


Sean N

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By and large I'd think most images are stored off-site on individuals photo hosting accounts. They are posted in-line in posts/threads here on the forum by using special BB IMG tags to load the picture directly from where it's hosted. Essentially, this forum has no control over the pictures and is not responsible for storing them, the benefit to the forum is that it puts less tress on the web server and requires infinitely less disk space to store the forum if you're not also storing the pictures. However, the downside to this arrangement is that if the individual closes that photo hosting account or deletes his pictures from that photo-hosting account then they disappear from the forum threads as well and they show as red X's. It's a perennial problem on all Internet forums when the pictures on very old posts disappear.

 

Vbulletin, on which this forum runs use to have an 'attachment' system where the pictures got attached to the post and either uploaded to the database or a backend file system. As I say the problem there is storage for the 100's and 100's of photo's you can end up with, especially on a site such as this one. I don't know if this site ever employed the attachment system as I've always used photobucket and remote linked to images. However, the attachment system in Vbulletin was a third-party add-on (made by Yahoo I think) and a major security vulnerability appeared in it a few years back. Yahoo end-of-lifed the app and said they would not fix the flaw and all Vbulletin boards were forced to cease using it. I think there may now be replacement apps but I haven't looked into that as I prefer to force my uses (I run a wee hobby board which is also hosted on Vbulletin) to use their own photo hosting sites. I then make my own decisions about which threads I feel need archiving and for those threads I have a small app that automatically imports the attached pics as soon as I move the thread to a special archiving area. It sounds wonderful but it sometimes barfs on me and periodically I have to go in and manually fix some bad import links!

 

So a long winded answer, sorry about that (Brevis esse Laboro, Obscurus Fio) but in short, the chap who originally posted the pictures has most likely deleted them off his own photo hosting account. Maybe PM him directly and ask him for copies.

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Vbulletin ... used to have an 'attachment' system...

 

This is the point of my question. This forum can reference posted images locally. There are two possibilities for the images disappearing; the poster hosted them remotely and has moved or deleted them, or they were referenced locally and there is a limit to such local hosting, for example only so many images can be hosted or the images are deleted after a certain time. My experience is that if users delete or move their own remotely hosted images you tend to get odd ones or runs of images disappearing, not all images to a particular date, which made me wonder if there was such a limit. I hoped someone (mods or admins) might know for future reference so I don't get caught out if there is, but it's not important.

Edited by Sean N
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  • 5 weeks later...

I've just found that I have a listing for 'attachments' in my account settings which tells me I am using 12.96 MB in 96 attachments referenced / stored locally.

 

As the last two items I uploaded defaulted to URL instead of upload from computer I presume I might be reaching the limit of any available storage.

 

Does anyone (Mods, Joris) know what the limit is?

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