Image hosting

just do it

Could boards.ie develop in-built image hosting? Something simple like Whatsapp or similar is what I've in mind. It should automatically reduce the size of the file and display it.

I've pasted a lot of photos over the years and it takes effort on behalf of the poster to upskill. I know on the farming and forestry forum posters regularly ask how it's done and often fail. Attaching photos just isn't the same and posters just don't bother opening them.

Advantages:
- easy and straight forward
- therefore more photos, more traffic, more potential profit
- less clogging of server due to size of attachments (3-8MB is now common)
- for those of us with slow BB it won't take an age to view a photo
- image immediately visible
- some hosting sites can reveal a naive posters email/ identity (been there)
- make boards a better place

Avada

To add to do this idea, would it be possible to automatically embed a photo at a certain resolution if its attached to a post. Tapatalk added this in one of their updates and its a nice feature.

Spear

There's more than a few small issues here.

It would take a non-trivial investment in infrastructure and an increase in costs, hosting/power/bandwidth, all for absolutely no return or revenue.

There's also the increased legal liability and risk from morons/abusers uploading illegal or dodgy content there.

And if people can't embed images now, they won't be able do so later either unless an entire frontend for doing so is also developed, and there's already a lack of developer resources.

Creamy Goodness

Can we not just sponsor it. Like send some pizza, beers and sleeping bags and they hack it out over night, like they do in the movies. Shouldn't take longer than that!

gctest50

just do it wrote: »

Could boards.ie develop in-built image hosting? Something simple like Whatsapp or similar is what I've in mind. It should automatically reduce the size of the file and display it.

I've pasted a lot of photos over the years and it takes effort on behalf of the poster to upskill. I know on the farming and forestry forum posters regularly ask how it's done and often fail. Attaching photos just isn't the same and posters just don't bother opening them.

Advantages:
- easy and straight forward
- therefore more photos, more traffic, more potential profit
- less clogging of server due to size of attachments (3-8MB is now common)
- for those of us with slow BB it won't take an age to view a photo
- image immediately visible
- some hosting sites can reveal a naive posters email/ identity (been there)
- make boards a better place

Upskilling is good for you thoough :P

maybe a little upload tool is whats needed ?

like this sort of stuff :

http://mashable.com/2013/08/01/imgur-iphone-app/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.moosen.imgur

just do it

Spear.
I appreciate your reply and if it is totally cost prohibitive so be it. However I'm not convinced about the reasons:

Spear wrote: »

There's more than a few small issues here.

It would take a non-trivial investment in infrastructure and an increase in costs, hosting/power/bandwidth, all for absolutely no return or revenue.

If it generates greater traffic does that not generate more revenue? From my little bit of googling I believe other forums have the option. However boards is the only one i go on so can't name one.

There's also the increased legal liability and risk from morons/abusers uploading illegal or dodgy content there.

They can do that already?

And if people can't embed images now, they won't be able do so later either unless an entire frontend for doing so is also developed, and there's already a lack of developer resources.

That's the whole idea. However from what you're saying it obviously a bigger job than meets the eye and isn't considered important enough to be prioritised by the available developer resource.

just do it

gctest50 wrote: »

Upskilling is good for you thoough :P

maybe a little upload tool is whats needed ?

like this sort of stuff :

http://mashable.com/2013/08/01/imgur-iphone-app/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.moosen.imgur

I hang out in the farming and forestry forum and a lot of people tried apps like in your link and just gave up. F&F is now the 5th busiest forum and very few people embed photos. They attach them instead which isn't as good.

What your suggesting is extra workload and your average user just wants it as simple as possible. Otherwise they just move on.

Spear

Traffic isn't automatically revenue. A single page view will still show the same ads, and earn the same ad revenue either way, except boards.ie now has to pay the additional cost of delivering an image from its server that takes easily 20 to 50 times more total bandwidth.

The previous image hosting that boards.ie already did in the form of the albums was disabled due to low usage as it is.

Spear

just do it wrote: »

I hang out in the farming and forestry forum and a lot of people tried apps like in your link and just gave up. F&F is now the 5th busiest forum and very few people embed photos. They attach them instead which isn't as good.

What your suggesting is extra workload and your average user just wants it as simple as possible. Otherwise they just move on.

If anyone in F&F is having issues, send them to read the 10 point on here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056232089

That in turn also has a link to some images that Anniehoo prepared if they still can't manage it.

just do it

Spear wrote: »

Traffic isn't automatically revenue. A single page view will still show the same ads, and earn the same ad revenue either way, except boards.ie now has to pay the additional cost of delivering an image from its server that takes easily 20 to 50 times more total bandwidth.

The previous image hosting that boards.ie already did in the form of the albums was disabled due to low usage as it is.

Ok it's obviously more complex than I thought. How about when I click on an attached photo and it opens in a separate window. I assume the attached photo is stored on the boards server. Does image hosting take up more bandwidth than that?

Spear

That already is image hosting essentially. The object is still stored on a boards.ie server and served out from there. But you'll note from the attachment dialogue that there's strict restrictions on filetype allowed and filesizes allowed. It also doesn't produce a friendly URL, ending in .jpg or the like. The attachment system is also subject to other controls such as the vbulletin permisions system, as this is an integrated function of vbulletin and not a general purpose platform for serving content.

just do it

Spear wrote: »

If anyone in F&F is having issues, send them to read the 10 point on here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056232089

That in turn also has a link to some images that Anniehoo prepared if they still can't manage it.

Anniehoo provides a good pictorial guide but it's even easier if you cut and paste the bb code directly into the post. Are most users not now using the touch version on their phone?

Also I used to use imageshack but for some reason it won't work now. It was better due to the automatic resizing. I then switched to photobucket but that displayed personal information by clicking on the image. Now I'm using wthax.org or imgur

gctest50

http://www.aviary.com is what imgur use for resizing

50 million downloads - probably works

just do it

gctest50 wrote: »

http://www.aviary.com is what imgur use for resizing

50 million downloads - probably works

gctest50

I appreciate your input. However using your suggestions now requires 2 apps and a whole series of clicks. All these are hurdles to be jumped. That's a big ask, especially for non-techie folks working with poor download and upload speeds in rural areas.

My suggestion is to simplify the process and display a resized image in a post in a matter of a few clicks i.e. photo>browse>select>post reply.