Honestly I think that if it will improve performance of the site that I am ok with it.

+1

How can you leave it as it is and make changes?

What I meant, and hence the fact that I'm dutch which might be the reason for the misunderstanding, was that it would be good to not change everything but only that what would be good. Not sure if I got it across this time

Go right ahead. It will slow down some of the serial image posters, many of which are quite mundane, and make them think more than once whether it is worth the effort.

 

+1

As images hosted by avsim get deleted after a while I always thought it made sense to have them hosted elsewhere.

 

If hosting elsewhere speeds up avsim as well I am all for it. 

Perhaps some middle ground... allow much reduced size and number, say 2 or 3 images maximum of no more than 800x600 for those who want to post a quick and dirty image to discuss a problem or something. For full fidelity eye-candy shots, take it to a third party. This is exactly how I use AVSIM images now, so it would be a transparent change for me. :lol:

I am OK with external for images. Perhalps allow Thumbnails here that connect to external may be a good solution.

I have trouble every day logging in to avsim. If something simple as this can help I am all for it. There are many places to host the images anyway which makes this hardly any negative at all.

I would say do what needs to be done with local image hosting, at least until the MySQL database situation is overhauled and fixed up. Perhaps once that is fixed, this could be evaluated for reinstatement. But if this will help with the forums' stability in the meantime, I'd say go for it.

 

As long as we can keep the full image and text file upload capabilities in the RTW race forums....

It depends on how long you want images around I suppose, looking for solutions to problems that are approx a couple of years ago I notice that images may not be around anymore as people clean out dropbox and so on.

 

Could you split off processing to another server and hosting to Amazon AWS & S3?

Go for it. External linking is something everyone can figure out quite easily. In fact I don't think I've ever actually uploaded a photo into a forum server. Ever.

 

If it decreases server load and speeds up the system, it's well worth it. People will adjust accordingly.

I have always used the external upload and link it here. I use three monitor setup and screenshots are usually big. So I don't have to crop the originals. posted a small size here and folks can click on it to see the original if they so desire.

I guess the question I am first asking is why?  Will this help the degrading performance I have noticed loading pages here at AVSIM?  If so, I am all for anything to get back to the speeds of yesteryear. 

Hi.

 

Tom, it's a great idea. Pretty well everyone has a personal gallery somewhere online; let's make use of them. The only drawback I forsee is that images presumably wouldn't be visible from the Avsim forum so members wouldn't have anything to grab their attention. I imagine thumbnails would be as demanding as the current display & resize, is that right?

 

I used to use Photobucket before it became an absolute dog to link out of, currently use Imageshack which is brilliant. 

 

Me too, but I never went anywhere else. I must have a look at Imageshack.

 

Cheers,
D

I am 100% for external linking.

 

I know some people are afraid of change but external linking takes 5 minutes to learn and is so easy.  If you use the right site (I use Servimg) it is actually easier that uploading directly to AVSIM.

 

Doing away with local hosting of pics should have a dramatic effect on load at AVSIM and should benefit everyone - screen shotters and non-screen shotters.

 

Most other forums I frequent haven't allowed local hosting for years, so I don't think AVSIM would be the exception, by any means.

 

GO FOR IT!   :smile: