Image attachments may soon be disabled

I've been checking the stats here and it looks like some people have gotten carried away with their use of this system to post their images. The stats show that the database for this system is now over 40 megabytes.

Quite frankly, I feel that anyone posting more than one or two (at the most) images of the same animal, unless it is to specifically show something that can't be shown any other way, is abusing the resources here. I don't really care about those images that are hosted on a remote server, but those that are attached and sent to THIS server need to be toned down a bit.

So I'm putting everyone on notice. I have not blocked the attachments yet, but instead have reduced the size limit to 100K for images with a size maximum of 640x480. If I find that this has no impact and people continue to post images in an abusive manner, I will have no other choice but to stop the uploads completely.

Remember, this is for uploads from your own computer to my server ONLY that I am concerned with. These files get stored in the database for this message board system on my server. If you are linking from an image on your own server or a third party server that holds your images, it will have no impact on my resources.

I hate to do this, but at the rate it's going, the database will become HUGE in a very short time.

Ok Rich! all of my further pictures will be from my own server!! I anly have 3 snakes, so most pics will be of the same snake!

I will go over my previous post and get the pics on my own server!

Thanx for letting us Know!

Rich,
I hate to say, I almost saw this coming. The Picture forum grows much quicker than most af the others do. I was thinking(it hurts when I do that). Is it possible to set an expiration date on that category only? I rarely find myself looking back at pictures unless someone posts' a coment about them. I hate to see pictures disabled. I think this is where this forum gets it's personality from.---Geeezz--that sounded mushy.

Oh well --do what you must--you can't get rid of me!

That's actually a very good idea if it could be implemented. If Rich could set a date for photo threads to expire it'd kind of control itself. For the most part I'd have to agree that after I see a picture I normally dont have a reason to go back and look again.

If I do see a photo especially interesting Ill normally D/L it to my own drive just to be sure Ive got it for reference anyway.

I agree that would be great if they could have an expiration date so to speak. I went in this morning and deleted some of my pictures I had posted earlier on. I'm sure they don't get too many looks as they get to the back pages. I hope we can get this under control cause I'd hate to see a good thing come to an end.

Alicia

This is actually a very good idea about automatically deleting older messages in the Photo Gallery. However, this is not an option this message board supports. At least I haven't found it in my searching.

All I'm asking everyone to do is to be reasonable about the photos they are attaching. Let's face it, is there really any reason to attach a half dozen photos of a single baby amelanistic corn snake? One would be quite enough.

I'm not trying to put a damper on your enthusiasm at all. I just don't know if there is any practical limit to the size of the database this message board is using, and I'd really rather not find out the hard way. I haven't had time to figure out an effective easy way to make a backup of the database yet, so if this thing crashes because it got too big, it will just be GONE. And I'd really like this to remain as an archive for all of the information everyone has already imparted in the messages here. All of those questions asked and answered this year, will certainly be asked again by a bunch of new people next year. If they understand how to use the SEARCH function on this site, all of their questions can likely be answered by just searching through the old messages.

So for now, I am letting the attachments continue, but will leave in place the size restrictions. Hopefully you all won't find that too much of a burden and can live with that. If it becomes a problem, let me know and we'll talk about it.

Thanks.

I know really nothing about computers, but I was wondering if there was a way that individuals could set a timed delated on their posts to the Photo Gallery only? I know that you can delete your posts or an entire thread that you start, so can a pre-dated delete be added? I myself have never posted a pic, but I would like to when I can and it would be a shame to not have that ability. Maybe this is impossible, like I said I don't know anout computers, but I was just wondering..................?

Colleen