Does anyone know / can anyone explain why we can only use hosted photos on the forum? Personally, I don't really want to set up a "free" account to host them; I can't see why they can't be loaded directly from our computers just like the avatars are.
Anyone know?
dlm
Because it would cost MR money to keep all your photo's on THEIR server. Most websites ONLY allow hosted photo's. You need to get with the times. Go to photobucket.com and start your own account.
danmerkel Does anyone know / can anyone explain why we can only use hosted photos on the forum? Personally, I don't really want to set up a "free" account to host them; I can't see why they can't be loaded directly from our computers just like the avatars are. Anyone know? dlm
Avatars are one per user (max - relatively few users have one), very limited size. It is a commitment of disk space (and backup time etc) that is pretty easy to calculate into the cost of providing the forums as a service.
General images, on the other hand, is an openended committment. In disk space, backup times, administration, dealing with legal issues about copyright violations and what not.
Kalmbach has chosen to offer to store the text parts of the forums, free of charge to you. If you want pictures, you will have to store em somewhere else.
Doesn't like that ? The just create and host your own forums where you store the pictures of your users on your web server.
The funny thing about freedom of the press is that it de facto belongs to those who actually invest their own money in buying a press and their own time in operating it :-)
Smile, Stein
Another option is to use the space generally provided by your local Internet Service Provider (ISP). My allows me 25 Mb of storage. I resize my images and then FTP (file transfer protocol) them to my storage area. Generally your ISP has instruction on their website on how to do this.
Tom
Life is simple - eat, drink, play with trains!
Go Big Red!
PA&ERR "If you think you are doing something stupid, you're probably right!"
Dan--
You can also post the access to your own photo website at the bottom of your signature. I've done this and I'm frankly AMAZED at the number of people who visit my sites.
Also, the various hosted photo sites on this forum allow all of us to view each other's progress and modeling efforts. And encourage or criticize as we see fit. Usually, we encourage, which IMO is a Good Thing. But a lot of times, even the criticism is constructive enough to make us think about the possibilities of changing a few things.
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Basically it saves MR money by having us use “FREE” image hosting web sites.
#1 it saves server space
#2 it saves MR from having to provide tech support for hosting said images
#3 traffic flow and volume (band-width)
Look at it this way, if you use a “FREE” image server to host your graphics files when building a web site. The web site takes up less space on your server or less space on your ISP letting you build a lager web site without paying for more space. Graphic files can be very “LARGE” in file size, while text files are very “small”.
If you “Internet Service Provider” gives you just five megs of server space “FREE” and your web page text files only use four megs of space but, you graphic file need to use ten megs of space and you do not have the room on you ISP for them. You have to pay for the extra space.
And lastly. If you only have so much traffic and volume (band-width) you can get into your web site before you have to pay for more flow and better volume (band-width). By having the users host their graphics on a “FREE” server the flow and volume (band-width) used for the graphics is on that server and “NOT” MR’s server.
Besides it lets you have a central location to store you graphics rather then uploading them to a new server every time you change servers or ISP.
It saves you both time and trouble along with saving MR both time, trouble and “MONEY”.
Johnnny_reb Once a word is spoken it can not be unspoken!
My Train Page My Photobucket Page My YouTube Channel
Duplicated post Edited to clean up this thread. Computer operator (myself) malfunction.
Yeah, just set up your own free web site and host your own photos. There's a bunch of ISP's that offer free site space and software to build it.
I dump alot of pictures and videos onto Photobucket and Imageshack. Once I have the links provided by these two Web Based providers, I can paste them here to this forum or anywhere online and people will visit those pictures.
One thing about uploading pictures and video onto the internet you can consider; if you lost your hard drive or if Kalmbach had a datacenter failure or someother issue, those pictures are gone. However by uploading onto the internet, you know where your photos are, a free way of backing up your stuff.
I use backup drives and several machines to hold the photos and video.
Imagine if Kalmbach had to buy several hard drives for every user on the forums to store and hold uploaded photos and video. The money will run out very quickly. Finally but not last, there is a certain limit to data flowing back and forth in real time and if these forums were bloated with a thousand cat pictures for every user over the years... no one will get satisfactory response time out of the visit.
You can visit any one of my previous threads and a few will hold a picture link to the free host site, wherever it may be. You might find a bunch of other pictures to view and possibly cross links to other people's pictures and get totally sidetracked for the rest of the day looking at train pictures.
Finally, Imageshack and Photobucket installs tools onto your machine so that when you pull a picture or a video off your camera you simply right click the item and choose "Upload to..." and poof.. all done. Eventually you will be provided a link to the media you just sent up.
It will help to have a fast DSL or Fiber to do this. Some of my pictures come from a 7 megapixel camera and videos reach upwards of 15 gigs per hour in size and they take a little time to upload. Although video processing software will cut down the bloat quite a bit.
The future is bright, but file sizes will only get larger and larger becuase of the new HD quality video coming on this year and some really big imagery from monster cameras.
One last thing but not least. Free host sites grudge you a small increase in your limits to size and time lengths of your pictures and video. Eventually, some sites like Youtube will insert advertising into your stuff. You will see that there will be hundreds if not thousands of visitors viewing your stuff each month.
It saves them money, it lowers the server cost by needing less server space and/or band width. It also lets us upload our graphic files to the net where we do not have to do so again to use them some where else.
Edit: It also encourages us to upload our graphic files to a free service server so that once put on the net they can be used in other forums or web sites saving “US” upload time. I would however keep a copy of “ALL” uploaded file on a backup CD in the event of a server or computer crash causing you to lose the original.
But if you want to copyright you graphics, pictures and/or any other files and midia types by all means do so. The US Patent office has had some craze patents filed over the years. I would just add a shadow mark into the picture or photo myself.
Last Chance It will help to have a fast DSL or Fiber to do this. Some of my pictures come from a 7 megapixel camera and videos reach upwards of 15 gigs per hour in size and they take a little time to upload. Although video processing software will cut down the bloat quite a bit.
So you upload the full sized images from your camera to the free sites? Seems like a lot of time would be spent on the uploading and a lot of free server space being used up. Another forum that I post on has guidelines for posted photos - around 80mb and 750-800 pixels wide for those who may not have high speed access. I reduce the images from my 12.2MP camera to 750 wide then reduce the size of the file by resampling in my Paint Shop Pro XI program to around the 80kb limit. All my forum photos are this size, Here's one:
This allows me more space on the free Photobucket site, they won't be pestering me to "go pro" for a while. I think I have over 200 images with them at this time.
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
Railphotog Last Chance It will help to have a fast DSL or Fiber to do this. Some of my pictures come from a 7 megapixel camera and videos reach upwards of 15 gigs per hour in size and they take a little time to upload. Although video processing software will cut down the bloat quite a bit. So you upload the full sized images from your camera to the free sites? Seems like a lot of time would be spent on the uploading and a lot of free server space being used up. Another forum that I post on has guidelines for posted photos - around 80mb and 750-800 pixels wide for those who may not have high speed access. I reduce the images from my 12.2MP camera to 750 wide then reduce the size of the file by resampling in my Paint Shop Pro XI program to around the 80kb limit. All my forum photos are this size, Here's one: This allows me more space on the free Photobucket site, they won't be pestering me to "go pro" for a while. I think I have over 200 images with them at this time.
Your pictures look fantastic. I think you should post them larger. They're too small to appreciate all the details shown.
My upload is about 800 and down is at least 5 mbits down. The large camera pictures take a few moments each. Maybe a few minutes each total.
Keep in mind that patience is a virtue. I might upload 20 pictures spread out over a short time to reduce the tedium. I see in the future fiber optic coming with uploads in excess of 6 mbits and downloads that carry whole feature films in a few minutes time.
The only medium that I can see becoming a problem is Blue Ray. Once that takes hold file sizes will become very significant indeed.
We were given a digital camera that took pictures that would be considered avatars today in both size and total resolution. Back in those days, dailup would drop out halfway through a photo upload to a email to a family somewhere. Unacceptable. DSL saved the day and has only improved each passing year.
When I upload pictures to Photobucket, it gives me options as to what size will be displayed. My camera is set at 3072x2304 (7.1mp), everything at Photobucket is at 800x600. I have 1100+ images there, using 156 MB of the allotted 1 GB. I have a ways to go before upgrading to Pro.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com
I think its ridiculous that we have to go to all that trouble to post pictures. If you want to see how its done go to RC Groups.com. They have thousands of members, probably many more than this forum and posting pictures is VERY SIMPLE. Its made convienent for the user.....imagine that. I post pictures on that forum all the time, I'd like to post pictures on this site,but I dont. Part of it is Im not very computer savy. The few times I've tried it was frustrating. I have passwords for every freakin thing in my life, why do I want to join another "group" just so I can post pictures? Someone said that most forums use hosted pictures, well, Im on several forums and this is the only one that does it. I just finished a Farmers Co Op grain elevator, I think I did a fairly good job and I'd like to post some pictures,but I probably won't. You may not understand why I feel so strongly about this,but just post pictures on one of the user friendly sites and then you'll know what Im talking about. There.......now I feel better.....I got that off my chest....
PS Its harder to post smileys too. I still dont know how.
I'm on MANY forums and only a very few of them host photos and the photos can't be over a certain size. By hosting my photos on Photobucket I only have to upload the photo ONE time. After that I can just paste the IMG tag of the photo anywhere I want to display said photo and I don't have to wait for it to upload each and every time and I don't have to worry about different size restrictions. More and more forums are getting away from hosting photos because of the space it takes to store them. Get with the times and stop whining because this or that forum won't allow you to upload your photo.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
I don;t see what's so comlicated? Once you put a photo on Photobucket, you can show it off in any number of forums anywhere - even oens that allow you to uplaod directly to it, you can still link in your Photobucket image. You can even email people links to your Photobucket albums. Far more versatile and useful than havign to upload the picture 4 times tot he 4 forums you participate in PLUS attach it to the email to send to your friends.
As for smileys - click on the smiley face, and then just click which smiley you want in the window that opens up and it posts that smiley in your message. Exactly how it works on 100% of the various forums I'm a member of.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Santa Fe all the wayPS Its harder to post smileys too. I still dont know how
Yah, it is pretty hard ....
Grin,Stein
LOL
Sometimes I wonder how some even get onto the web.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
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There are those who are Spiders and use the web to catch goody bugs.
And then there are the bugs....
Edit. Before anyone gets riled, this is simply a sarcastic comment about the net in general.
It would not be difficult at all to return to a lifestyle with nothing but a rotary phone.