Forum Upgrade !

[Strangeways]

The Admins would like to perform some preventative maintenance to the Forum so that we can mirror the site and then perform the site upgrades with the facility to "roll back" if needed. To facilitate this preparation stage, we need to reduce the 15 Gig of attachments to a more manageable level as they are using up valuable disk space. The downside to this is that OLDER threads will have the attachments stripped with a message "Attachment removed due to age post post". Old threads will NOT be removed. But valuable disk space will be returned to enable us to mirror the site as part of the upgrade.

From a technical aspect, the attachments are supposed to be managed by the forum software at a level of 2 Gig. This has failed and only been recently discovered. It has grown to 15 Gig. To mirror the site, we have to be under 10 Gig to afford the standard "cloud backup" product. Over 10 Gig is simply not affordable. We should be around the 4 Gig average.

What are attachments ?

Photos uploaded to the site. The limit is 2Meg per photo, but the site only displays 400 X 600. So it "shrinks" the 2 Meg photo but retains the original 2 Meg file. This resides "forever" in the "attachments" directory. The effect is the growing diskspace issue and also we cannot mirror the site in case of an outage.

Please be aware that during this phase of the upgrade, there will be no downtime. The only negative effect will be the older threads (starting in 2008) will be "stripped" of the attachments. The threads will remain.

Feel free to ask any questions regarding this process, and I'll do my best to answer them.

[robm]

Nino - are people better linking photos rather than attaching them. Eg: use the image link function within photobucket? Do these still come under 'attachments' in the 10GB limit?

[Strangeways]

Nino - are people better linking photos rather than attaching them. Eg: use the image link function within photobucket? Do these still come under 'attachments' in the 10GB limit?

Links to external sites won't be affected. The link button actually points to the photos hosted on picture sites. All my restorations are hosted on AP, and they take up 750 Meg. But they will all be moved and are not part of the attachments directory structure.

It is preferable for members to host their pictures externally if they want to keep the photos embedded in the threads. In my case, i have to move them and then edit every single post on all restoration threads. I'll do that once we have made it to the first stage - culling the attachment directory !

To answer your question - images hosted externally, and linked within the posts do not affect the attachments directory on the AP Host at all.

[ddstoys]

I wondered how this worked.  Any chance the Em rebuild thread photos be saved I do t feel like recreating them ?

[ddstoys]

Shit that will mean all my restore threads will be empty 

[Marty Machine]

The "[img]" command should be disabled to prevent uploading images, thus enforcing links to external image hosts.

my 2c.

[Strangeways]

I wondered how this worked.  Any chance the Em rebuild thread photos be saved I do t feel like recreating them ?

There's two ways of addressing the current problem ;

1 - Remove attachments older than X Days
2 - Remove attachments larger than X kbytes

We cannot select areas or members as part of the pruning criteria. As an example - we want to keep all the restoration attachments as the whole point of a restoration thread is to demonstrate and document using photos. We can't exempt "member name" or anyone else. My issue is that I have over 750MB of pictures - hundreds of them. All threads have to be edited - and I linked all of mine !

The answer is to host files on photo sites such as photobucket. I don't know what their policy regarding retention is, but they are set up to store and manage photos. Linking to photobucket removes the risk of the attachment pruning process within the forum software.

To "fix" your restoration threads, you will need to host the photos externally and edit your old threads. We can assist you in doing this.

[Pop Bumper Pete]

I have used photobucket for years (only paying once)
They have never deleted anything

[ddstoys]

Is there an easy way I can save all my photos?  As I'd never find the ones an know what treads and what order

[Strangeways]

Is there an easy way I can save all my photos?  As I'd never find the ones an know what treads and what order

Yes - Go to your thread, right click on the photo "save as" and then save it on your local PC. Upload the photo to a photo hosting site (Photobucket or skydrive etc) and then we can enable editing of the posts so you can update the individual posts.

We won't proceed with the "purge" until members have had a chance to update their threads - so we may enable "editing" of the threads to update links. The older the threads, the more chance the attachment(s) will be removed - so start backwards and let me know if you need a hand.

[Belac]

Nino you mentioned that the site only displays 400x600, does it actually resize the photo and keep the original 2Mb version as well as the 400x600 version? Or does it simply display the 2Mb file at 400x600 on the fly?

What i'm getting at is can the 2Mb version be removed/relocated while retaining the 400x600 copy? Better still the 2Mb version could be archived out to some other hosting facility.

[MartyJ]

I have used Photo bucket for a while now and find it a much better alternative.  No size limits and less headaches for maintenance.
Just insert the img tag which photo bucket generates for you.

[Strangeways]

Nino you mentioned that the site only displays 400x600, does it actually resize the photo and keep the original 2Mb version as well as the 400x600 version? Or does it simply display the 2Mb file at 400x600 on the fly?

What i'm getting at is can the 2Mb version be removed/relocated while retaining the 400x600 copy? Better still the 2Mb version could be archived out to some other hosting facility.

2MB is the maximum size allowed in the attachments sub folder. You cannot upload a file larger. Some files are 20Kb. The forum software does make slight format changes, but I don't know the process behind it. I know it does not store the original and then make a copy that is presented withing the posts. It simply keeps the original, regardless of the size or quality.

The current attachment directory cannot be archived because it is tied in with the database. If I view the file structure in Filezilla, I can view the first 10,000 files, but if I download them, they are junk. Admins can see the attachment names and their details. There's over 1900 pages of photos - 17,898 to be exact ! It is currently 13.5 Gig on disk. The attachment management system was set to restrict and manage the size of the attachment directory, but it simply did not work from "day 1". So it has grown to such a size that out host cannot backup using the standard backup process. This is a huge problem.

Regarding site Backups - Hostgator won't backup any site that is over 4 Gig in size. Admin have to manually download using FTP. So if the site crashed and we had to restore, we would lose a lot of threads and we would be down for a long time for the site restore.

Regarding the technology we want to use - https://plugins.hostgator.com/codeguard/

This effectively allows us to keep a backup of the site and also we can perform upgrades with the confidence of knowing we can "roll back" to a previous version if things fail. It also provides a backup that is managed by our host, instead of us.

The price for 10 Gig is US$100 per year
The price for 25 Gig is US$240 per year

That's a huge difference in price. The aim is to reduce our total space from 15 Gig (entire site that includes 13.5 Gig in attachments) to 7.5 Gig so we can allow for growth and pay US$100 for the 10 Gig Cloud Backup solution.

[studley67]

Nino you mentioned that the site only displays 400x600, does it actually resize the photo and keep the original 2Mb version as well as the 400x600 version? Or does it simply display the 2Mb file at 400x600 on the fly?

What i'm getting at is can the 2Mb version be removed/relocated while retaining the 400x600 copy? Better still the 2Mb version could be archived out to some other hosting facility.

2MB is the maximum size allowed in the attachments sub folder. You cannot upload a file larger. Some files are 20Kb. The forum software does make slight format changes, but I don't know the process behind it. I know it does not store the original and then make a copy that is presented withing the posts. It simply keeps the original, regardless of the size or quality.

The current attachment directory cannot be archived because it is tied in with the database. If I view the file structure in Filezilla, I can view the first 10,000 files, but if I download them, they are junk. Admins can see the attachment names and their details. There's over 1900 pages of photos - 17,898 to be exact ! It is currently 13.5 Gig on disk. The attachment management system was set to restrict and manage the size of the attachment directory, but it simply did not work from "day 1". So it has grown to such a size that out host cannot backup using the standard backup process. This is a huge problem.

Regarding site Backups - Hostgator won't backup any site that is over 4 Gig in size. Admin have to manually download using FTP. So if the site crashed and we had to restore, we would lose a lot of threads and we would be down for a long time for the site restore.

Regarding the technology we want to use - https://plugins.hostgator.com/codeguard/

This effectively allows us to keep a backup of the site and also we can perform upgrades with the confidence of knowing we can "roll back" to a previous version if things fail. It also provides a backup that is managed by our host, instead of us.

The price for 10 Gig is US$100 per year
The price for 25 Gig is US$240 per year

That's a huge difference in price. The aim is to reduce our total space from 15 Gig (entire site that includes 13.5 Gig in attachments) to 7.5 Gig so we can allow for growth and pay US$100 for the 10 Gig Cloud Backup solution.

looks like a call for donations is on the cards, for server storage space.i just need to sell a few more and i-m in for one.

[Strangeways]

Nino you mentioned that the site only displays 400x600, does it actually resize the photo and keep the original 2Mb version as well as the 400x600 version? Or does it simply display the 2Mb file at 400x600 on the fly?

What i'm getting at is can the 2Mb version be removed/relocated while retaining the 400x600 copy? Better still the 2Mb version could be archived out to some other hosting facility.

2MB is the maximum size allowed in the attachments sub folder. You cannot upload a file larger. Some files are 20Kb. The forum software does make slight format changes, but I don't know the process behind it. I know it does not store the original and then make a copy that is presented withing the posts. It simply keeps the original, regardless of the size or quality.

The current attachment directory cannot be archived because it is tied in with the database. If I view the file structure in Filezilla, I can view the first 10,000 files, but if I download them, they are junk. Admins can see the attachment names and their details. There's over 1900 pages of photos - 17,898 to be exact ! It is currently 13.5 Gig on disk. The attachment management system was set to restrict and manage the size of the attachment directory, but it simply did not work from "day 1". So it has grown to such a size that out host cannot backup using the standard backup process. This is a huge problem.

Regarding site Backups - Hostgator won't backup any site that is over 4 Gig in size. Admin have to manually download using FTP. So if the site crashed and we had to restore, we would lose a lot of threads and we would be down for a long time for the site restore.

Regarding the technology we want to use - https://plugins.hostgator.com/codeguard/

This effectively allows us to keep a backup of the site and also we can perform upgrades with the confidence of knowing we can "roll back" to a previous version if things fail. It also provides a backup that is managed by our host, instead of us.

The price for 10 Gig is US$100 per year
The price for 25 Gig is US$240 per year

That's a huge difference in price. The aim is to reduce our total space from 15 Gig (entire site that includes 13.5 Gig in attachments) to 7.5 Gig so we can allow for growth and pay US$100 for the 10 Gig Cloud Backup solution.

looks like a call for donations is on the cards, for server storage space.i just need to sell a few more and i-m in for one.

Thanks Damien !