A Tip For New Members

[Chris S.]

Yes, I'm new here too, so this advice has been sparked by intensive surfing through old posts, sticky's etc. Anyway, you will notice that image attachments are not permitted on HSM. When you see an image you are seeing a link to photobucket or similar. Because of this you can't guarantee that said image will always exist, as you will soon see by reading through old threads. If you find something that really catches your eye, like the great photos found in the "Shop Made Tools" sticky; do yourself a big favor and save it to your PC.

I love that thread!
Chris

[bborr01]

Yes, I'm new here too, so this advice has been sparked by intensive surfing through old posts, sticky's etc. Anyway, you will notice that image attachments are not permitted on HSM. When you see an image you are seeing a link to photobucket or similar. Because of this you can't guarantee that said image will always exist, as you will soon see by reading through old threads. If you find something that really catches your eye, like the great photos found in the "Shop Made Tools" sticky; do yourself a big favor and save it to your PC.

I love that thread!
Chris

Chris,

Thanks for the kind words about the "shop made tools" thread that I started.

I would like to go one further though and recommend that you back them up to you puter AND a cd or other storage device.

Sometimes puters go poof and lose everything. Don't ask me how I know this to be true.

Brian

[Chris S.]

Chris,

Thanks for the kind words about the "shop made tools" thread that I started.

I would like to go one further though and recommend that you back them up to you puter AND a cd or other storage device.

Sometimes puters go poof and lose everything. Don't ask me how I know this to be true.

Brian

Oops, that reminds me that a backup is overdue!

[Metalmelter]

Hmmmm is there a way to really back up the entire thread or are we forced to save just the images? It sure would be nice to grab it all in one shot

[deltaenterprizes]

I am really enjoying the "Shop Made Tools" thread also!

[Chester]

When I upgraded computers a while back, I moved all those kind of threads to a "Favorites" file then saved the whole "Favorites" file to a disc. It will be there forever in its entirity..........as long as the link stays up, on line. Any interesting photos are are always saved, then to disc as back-up.

A note to re-sizing pictures, if you use these guys, they do it automatically if need be, before you add your post.

http://imageshack.us/

[Paul Alciatore]

The photos in older posts disappear when the photos are either removed from or are reorganized on the photo hosting sites. Rempoving them is obviously a cause of their disappearing. But I have created additional folders on my Photobucket site and if I move a photo that was previously linked to from here into one of those new folders, then the link is broken and the photo disappears here. It may still be on Photobucket, but the link is wrong. This is a basic problem with the link process.

When you upload a photo to Photobucket or another photo hosting site, do give some thought to placing it in a more or less permanent location. It would probably be best to create a separate account or at lease a separate folder for photos to be used on BBs. Once you create and use a link to a photo, do not move that photo. As for erasing them, that is hardly necessary if some simple precautions are taken. Modern cameras produce photos at 5, 8, 10, and even more mega pixel sizes. These are very memory hungry and to be sure, anything above VGA resolution is wasted when including them in a post. In fact, it is really harmful as it forces the viewer to scroll and pan to see only a small section of the photo at one time and the overall effect is lost. Yes, some viewers have higher resolution screens, but the vast majority are not much above VGA in terms of the size allocated to the photo (inside of the BB,s window with margins and scroll bars, etc. So, do take photos with your 10 or 15 mega pixel cameras, but also DO reduce the resolution to VGA before uploading them to the photo hosting site. This not only makes for better viewing here, but you use less of your alloted space on the host and you can upload far more photos. I have hundreds on Photobucket and am at less than 10% of my alloted space.

Explanatory Note:
This board was set up some years ago and disk storage was more expensive then. So Village Press, our host organization, like many/all of the host organizations of other boards, decided not to include any, then expensive storage space for memory hungry photos. Today you can get multi tera byte drives for under $100 and things could be re-evaluated. It would be far better if the same sites that hosted the boards also hosted some way of storing the photos used. Few have volunteered to do this as it would take some effort to set it up. It will probably be more common in the future.

[Evan]

This board was set up some years ago and disk storage was more expensive then. So Village Press, our host organization, like many/all of the host organizations of other boards, decided not to include any, then expensive storage space for memory hungry photos. Today you can get multi tera byte drives for under $100 and things could be re-evaluated. It would be far better if the same sites that hosted the boards also hosted some way of storing the photos used. Few have volunteered to do this as it would take some effort to set it up. It will probably be more common in the future.

Storage space isn't the problem. Bandwidth is. I serve up several gigabytes of images to this forum's users every month with it going as high as 8 gigs in a month. That's just my images and I have had to downsize the older ones to keep the bandwidth under control. This is a very busy forum with a very large number of unregistered viewers. So far this year I have served about 30 gigs of data to about 750,000 hits from just over 100,000 distinct IP addresses.

If Village Press were to assume the entire load of images on this forum they would need to seriously upgrade their servers and bandwidth capability. $$$$

[Chris S.]

Hmmmm is there a way to really back up the entire thread or are we forced to save just the images? It sure would be nice to grab it all in one shot

In IE, on your tool bar, select "File" then "Save As" from the drop down. You will have choice of 4 options. I use "Web Archive HTML". Even so, since these photos are links, you should save the images separately.

Chris

[Davo J]

One of our members over on the woodwork forum just found out about that thread and was disappointed about pictures missing.

The woodwork forum for lets you upload photos or host them elsewhere, and has done so for as long as I can remember. It is also a huge site with a lot of categories.

Dave