Attaching photos to Posts
Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2017 3:56 pm
We have a pretty efficient "Upload Attachment" facility for our posts, which allows photos and illustrations to be pasted into posts. The photos can be sourced from any file or folder on the user's computer.
This arrangement has the distinct advantage that the attached photos, as well as the rest of the post, all end up on our Forum server, and will stay there as long as anyone wants. It means that valuable technical, self-help and archive posts will be there, complete, in perpetuity (hopefully).
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Another way to put photos into posts is to make a link to a photo-hosting site, eg Photobucket. Some web forums actually recommend this, and have made it their only way of posting photos.
You can read on FCF (and elsewhere) that Photobucket has now started to prevent "linking to third party sites" for users, unless they make an upgrade to their accounts, for which they are currently asking €399 a year. In a number of cases, where this payment is not made, the photos on the "third party sites" are blanked, and replaced with a PB message. As you can read, the site is in complete chaos at the moment, as many of its 100,000,000 users are 'rescuing' their photo libraries, and downloading them back to their own computers or elsewhere. It is leaving Forum sites across world in a mess.
It is quite possible that PB won't survive all this, and that other 'free' photo hosting sites might adopt similar tactics.
So, if your post to our Forum contains photos/illustrations/attachments that are valuable or essential to understanding the post, my recommendation has to be don't use a hosting site, use our direct Upload facility instead.
I'm sure others will have a take on this, plus wise guidance.
This arrangement has the distinct advantage that the attached photos, as well as the rest of the post, all end up on our Forum server, and will stay there as long as anyone wants. It means that valuable technical, self-help and archive posts will be there, complete, in perpetuity (hopefully).
___________
Another way to put photos into posts is to make a link to a photo-hosting site, eg Photobucket. Some web forums actually recommend this, and have made it their only way of posting photos.
You can read on FCF (and elsewhere) that Photobucket has now started to prevent "linking to third party sites" for users, unless they make an upgrade to their accounts, for which they are currently asking €399 a year. In a number of cases, where this payment is not made, the photos on the "third party sites" are blanked, and replaced with a PB message. As you can read, the site is in complete chaos at the moment, as many of its 100,000,000 users are 'rescuing' their photo libraries, and downloading them back to their own computers or elsewhere. It is leaving Forum sites across world in a mess.
It is quite possible that PB won't survive all this, and that other 'free' photo hosting sites might adopt similar tactics.
So, if your post to our Forum contains photos/illustrations/attachments that are valuable or essential to understanding the post, my recommendation has to be don't use a hosting site, use our direct Upload facility instead.
I'm sure others will have a take on this, plus wise guidance.