Attachment issues

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Smithhammer said:
Currently, or as of two days ago....there was a 'maximum allowable size' for file uploads, but I don't believe it corresponds with the stated storage limit for that subscription level. If I uploaded all of my attachments at the max allowable size, I'd exceed the storage limit well before I reach the stated number of attachments I'm supposedly alotted. For example, at the Platinum level, one supposedly has 400 mb of storage/1,000 attachments. But that's only true if each attachment is 400 kb or less, or else you're exceeding the storage limit well before you get to 1,000 attachments. The average phone camera these days is taking pics at 1 mb or more, so one needs to be really diligent about downsizing all of their pics if they truly want to get the stated number of attachments claimed with their membership level.

With that in mind, I think the storage limit is really all that matters - whether you choose to have 1,000 attachments at 400 kb or 500 attachments at 800 kb, etc. is up to the user.
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there was a 1mb limit for a bit then seemed to go away. seemed to shift to maybe around 2 mb and bit larger or so.

my phone seems to take pics no smaller than around 2mb +. often over 4mbs +. I was cropping them down to load. which worked fine as most of the rest of the pic was background filler and didnt need to be there.

on nature type pics I had to compress them.
 
jacobconroy75 said:
First of all, I’m not trying to be argumentative. But, storage may not be as cheap as you think when you are talking about servers. This likely isn’t a matter of buying a $79 2TB drive from Amazon and plugging it into the computer.

Are you 1/2 TB short (or getting there)? That means that you are looking for 2TB more. At least. Don’t want to be doing this again next year. :)

Last week I spec’d and ordered a new server for one of my larger clients. A single, 1.6TB NVME SASS drive in the machine was well over $2K alone. But, with servers, you need at least two identical drives for a RAID 1 to gain redundancy and you get no additional, usable space. So, we are talking $5k for drives alone. And, if you go a more traditional route and want at least three identical drives for a RAID 5…$7k. Want four for a RAID 10 to get a very fast setup that can instantly serve photos on demand and have some redundancy (and double the storage space)? $10K. For the drives only. Plus RAID cards. Plus increased offsite backup costs. Plus a lot of configuration changes that must be done in a live environment (probably).

The total cost of the server I ordered was a little over twice the cost of a similar server five years ago, though it does have twice as much storage space. Thanks inflation. :)

Yes, storage can be much cheaper. But that means it will be slower or less reliable. Would slower storage options have a negative effect on our daily usage of BF? Maybe. I’m not a web guy. Can you imagine the threads like this that would pop up if the issue was fixed and it notably slowed down the speed at which image-intensive pages load? Ug.

Making changes like storage capacity in a server environment is not quick, trivial, or cheap. Ever. I’m just shooting the stuff here and have no idea how or where the forum is hosted.
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I get that, but you're also talking quoting hardware and implementation costs for a single client, no? I'm making the assumption (and I could be totally wrong on this) that this site is hosted by a service that includes "x" amount of storage as part of the account. So, if that's the case, then I don't think Spark is out shopping for servers. If the platform that is hosting the BF account can't offer the additional amount of storage that is needed, without BF having to pay for all the upgrades itself, rather than those costs being spread across multiple accounts at scale by the host, then we've outgrown that host and it's time to migrate (which it sounds like is being looked into). And I realize migration isn't inexpensive either, and has risks. I hope it all goes well.

Again - I don't know the details of how this site is hosted, and I'm happy to be proven wrong.
 
Smithhammer said:
I get that, but you're also talking quoting hardware and implementation costs for a single client, no? I'm making the assumption (and I could be totally wrong on this) that this site is hosted by a service that includes "x" amount of storage as part of the account. So, if that's the case, then I don't think Spark is out shopping for servers. If the platform that is hosting the BF account can't offer the additional amount of storage that is needed, without BF having to pay for all the upgrades itself, rather than those costs being spread across multiple accounts at scale by the host, then we've outgrown that host and it's time to migrate (which it sounds like is being looked into). And I realize migration isn't inexpensive either, and has risks. I hope it all goes well.

Again - I don't know the details of how this site is hosted, and I'm happy to be proven wrong.
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You could very well be right sir. My point was that if all he has to do is purchase more storage space, we are likely talking about hard-costs like the hypothetical ones above (granted, utilizing the benefits of scale), plus a huge corporations’ profits for providing it.

Pure conjecture on my part though. Whatever the solution may be, I’ll bet that the owner is having a rough week.
 
jbmonkey said:
my phone seems to take pics no smaller than around 2mb +. often over 4mbs +. I was cropping them down to load. which worked fine as most of the rest of the pic was background filler and didnt need to be there.
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My S21 has a 12MP camera, which is about 3.2MB, or about 4000 x 2300 pixels.
Resizing can be done in different ways depending on what you want to do.
If you want to post an entire picture, you can edit it to a more reasonable size using something like Paint, which is free software in most MS machines. Resizing to something more manageable like 1200 x 700 would be fine. You lose resolution but you don't have to scroll around to see the whole picture.
You can also use the phones on-board photo editor to change the picture size.
If you are trying to identify something, you need as much resolution as possible, so cropping out unnecessary parts of the picture is what you would do.
 
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Well the way I see it is if more money is needed to keep the page going, then I'll gladly give more money. I don't even remember how much I pay a year for my platinum membership but to me it's well worth it. I thoroughly enjoy coming on here every day and interacting with my friends that Ive made along the way. This is the only site that I pay for so it's not like I have a ton of internet page bills. And I don't have a clue what y'all are talking about with all this technical jargon lol. Just let me know what you need Spark as I do appreciate the service you provide for us.
 
You're gonna need a bigger bag, Ed.

Eating-Popcorn-Soda.gif
 
Smithhammer said:
The average phone camera these days is taking pics at 1 mb or more, so one needs to be really diligent about downsizing all of their pics if they truly want to get the stated number of attachments claimed with their membership level.
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You can set the camera to take lower resolution pictures.
My tablet has a 50(?) MP camera. I reset the resolution to the lowest possible - under 1MP/ and 150KB or less (depends on background) per photo.
For the size of photos that can be displayed on the site, high resolution photos that can be blown up to 18x20 feet or more (movie house/drive-in theater screen size) before a loss in image quality isn't needed. As an added bonus the lower resolution photos take up significantly less hard drive an/or SD card storage.

I had 2,790/500 images (almost 600% over) when I was told I had reached my attachment limt. My data usage was only 350MB. (150 over the limit.)
Since none of my posts were in threads with historical interest (I posted mainly in the what are you carrying, newest addition, and a couple show them off traditional pattern specific threads) I just deleted everything prior to and including Friday last ... with a couple exceptions and the 60 plus that are in closed threads that do not have a delete option in Attachments, nor an Edit option in the thread to get rid of the attachment(s) in that thread's post. ☹️

After deleting what I could, I'm at "10%" of allowed attachments and "2%" of the allowed data.
(The system rounds the data to the nearest full percentage. 53 attachments is 10.3%, I believe. Not "10%")
If I could get rid of the attachments in the closed/locked threads, I would be under 3% in attachments, and under 1% in data used.

Yes. I saw a couple posts by people who are not Moderators or other officials of Blade Forums, saying "DON'T DELETE ANY FILES YET"
I was not born yesterday, and, despite what some may believe, I am not dumber than the average rock or doornail.
I understand the economics of a business, and of maintaining a website.
I was part owner and manager of a business with night clubs, a convenience store, licquor store, TV station, (crewed) Charter Yacht, and an Florida Keys Ocean Front vacation property for over 30 years. I created and maintained the charter boat and vacation property websites from 2000 to 2006, when we shut those operations down.

There is no question in my mind that the paid Basic, Gold, and Platnium membership levels will never again have free unlimited data and attachment again.
Therefore, I had no option but to get my data and attachments to under the current stated limits, with some "breathing room". (The limits may go down or up in the future.)

What little I post in threads like "OLD KNIVES" can keep their attachments.
What gets put in the what are you carrying and newest addition threads ... no reason to keep those attachments for more than a few days to a week. The postsare so far back from the current page, and long enough in the past, no one cares what I had in my pocket, or what I got.
If they do, I always ID what I'm carrying or received, so they will know. There just won't be a picture.
 
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Yeah it's weird to me that people are complaining that 1mb is too small for pictures. 2 of my PC monitors have 1920x1080 resolution. A 24bit 1920x1080 JPG set to 90% compression should be only 211k. If you need a 30 megapixel image so that people can see the intricate details of something, link to it.
 
afishhunter said:
Since none of my posts were in threads with historical interest. I just deleted everything prior to and including Friday last ...

What little I post in threads like "OLD KNIVES" can keep their attachments.
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If I delete very many of my attachments .............. there are going to be some unhappy campers.
Antique Cattaraugus knives, New York Knife Co.history, John Primble history, Fayetteville Knife Co. history, Gardner history, Charlow Barlow history, Old Knives thread.
I spent a lot of time maintaining or contributing to those threads. It would be a shame to see a bunch of red X's in all of those threads.

I already had to add pictures for a second time ........ about 2 years ago, after Tinypic died. Took me ... off and on ...... about four weeks.

I do downsize all of my photos to between 800 to 1000 pixels on the long side for the most part.
 
I started clearing some pics out of my attachments, but there are many pics that I have in “How to do ______” threads and I hate to delete those, since they can help others change scales, tie a dragon braid etc, so I left those. I’ll pony up for more attachments though.
 
Primble said:
If I delete very many of my attachments .............. there are going to be some unhappy campers.
Antique Cattaraugus knives, New York Knife Co.history, John Primble history, Fayetteville Knife Co. history, Gardner history, Charlow Barlow history, Old Knives thread.
I spent a lot of time maintaining or contributing to those threads. It would be a shame to see a bunch of red X's in all of those threads.

I already had to add pictures for a second time ........ about 2 years ago, after Tinypic died. Took me ... off and on ...... about four weeks.

I do downsize all of my photos to between 800 to 1000 pixels on the long side for the most part.
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91bravo said:
I started clearing some pics out of my attachments, but there are many pics that I have in “How to do ______” threads and I hate to delete those, since they can help others change scales, tie a dragon braid etc, so I left those. I’ll pony up for more attachments though.
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Spark Spark has repeatedly asked us not to start deleting photos yet. He's working on a solution.
 
Kbrasmodeler said:
Spark Spark has repeatedly asked us not to start deleting photos yet. He's working on a solution.
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I get that and I reckon I'll have to wait and see what the solution is ....... until then (and hopefully after) I won't be deleting.

I posted that as "food for thought" ....... maybe deleting a lot of pictures isn't a good solution ..... where others use or benefit from them. ;) 😊
 
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