Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
My religion tag is gone again.
Some updates & changes to the site
- Thread starter Servant of Christ
- Start date
Sorry. I found the issue causing your tag to disappear and have fixed it. Please give it a minute.
2 weeks have passed since the page 1 announcement that the forum being open to all women posters, and everything is already falling apart.
It's not full.. not even close. Just trying to prevent it from being an issue down the road. Funny, though.
It's not full.. not even close. Just trying to prevent it from being an issue down the road. Funny, though.
Can we go back to the subject of the size limit?
Like I said, I can work around with webp conversions. It's not ideal, but it will do. However not everyone will want to go through the trouble, and some might be discouraged by it - so maybe let's raise the limit slightly, so at least images copied from other sites will fit without the need to download them first.
Last edited:
Please try embedding images from an image hosting site. Let me know how that goes.
So now instead of simply copying an image straight to the forum, one will have to download it, upload it to a hosting site and embed the link. That's somewhat impractical. And for how long these images will be available on the hosting site?
Personally, I'm gonna keep my uploads small enough to meet the limit.
Last edited:
Where are you downloading them from? Give an example.
2 days ago needed a map showing the Med Express shipping lane for the Red Sea thread.
Before the new limit I would just copy/paste it, but it's too large (665KB) so I had to download it and save it in a smaller size before posting on the forum - already inconvenient. Now You're suggesting that I should upload it to a hosting site and embed the link which is even more inconvenient.
Between that post and now, you've posted 12 basic meme images which almost certainly could have been linked from wherever you found them originally, or could have been uploaded to a site like imgur which takes an extra 10 seconds, max.
Also did you know that in many cases you can use tineye to find an image and use those links to share/embed without having to upload?
Here is an example from one of your recent posts:
Uploading this to imgur and copying the link to post here took me literally 3 seconds:
Also did you know that in many cases you can use tineye to find an image and use those links to share/embed without having to upload?
Here is an example from one of your recent posts:
Uploading this to imgur and copying the link to post here took me literally 3 seconds:
My meme posting history is a bad example. I'm in some meme making/sharing groups and generally store memes. So the fact that I'm uploading them from my drive has nothing to do with the forum's size limit.
You're missing my point. I can make do with the new limit, one way or another. It's an inconvenience but not a problem. The problem is that not everyone will want to go through the hassle - they'll see they can't post whatever they wanted to, because it's too large, and just won't post it. They won't look for a workaround. The point I'm trying to make is to find a compromise - a size limit that will help preserve the space, but will allow for the moderately sized images to be posted without going through a hosting site.
Last edited:
I have noticed on my phone that I can't touch the screen and drag it where a tweet is embedded. If I touch to either side of the tweet, I can drag the page up and down, but touching inside the tweet doesn't move it.
I normally zoom the page so the posts fill the screen and the left panel is off the screen. This makes the tweets fill the screen, so I can't move the page anymore. Despite being unable to move the page with one finger, I can still use two fingers to de-zoom the page, then touch outside the tweet to scroll down, then re-zoom the page.
This was previously always the case with embedded Youtube videos, but it is new with tweets. Is there a fix for this?
I normally zoom the page so the posts fill the screen and the left panel is off the screen. This makes the tweets fill the screen, so I can't move the page anymore. Despite being unable to move the page with one finger, I can still use two fingers to de-zoom the page, then touch outside the tweet to scroll down, then re-zoom the page.
This was previously always the case with embedded Youtube videos, but it is new with tweets. Is there a fix for this?
Putting aside the undesirable appearance of the 'get app' + 'imgur' display attached to these images... this issue seems to depend on how the image is presented by the external site.
We can still embed large images using an external URL only IF the site displays a link to the image file.
I grabbed the following image from this site
https://unsplash.com/photos/gray-concrete-road-top-between-green-trees-vngzm4P2BTs by pressing hold, clicking on 'save image location', copying this image URL and pasting it via the picture>insert link function.
However, I could not do the same with the shipping image:
So I agree with @TruckDriver9 in that these steps are unrealistic for members to follow:
- access original host site
- open image page
- save image
- upload to a file hosting site
- copy link
- embed link here
- submit post.
"But memes are just for whimsical fun and don't reflect the core ethos of CIK." That is true to some extent, although most site activity is outside of the Holy Spirit node. And it is important to engage members in random topics adjacent to the central theological mission of the group. This improves the chance of having members, who may be nominal Christians or agnostic, open up to topics relating to the Holy Spirit.
^ This is an important point for our Admin/mods to consider. Making contributions as easy as possible is central to fostering member engagement. This brings us back to the following proposed solution:
2. Install an auto-reduction tool that reduces the size of all large uploads and removes all meta-data. This means members would not have to manually resize their own images. I strongly recommend this option over simply setting a limit, because forcing CIK members to manually resize their uploads is likely to significantly reduce engagement.
There are inbuilt and third-party add-ons for this purpose:
In-built:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/automatically-resize-images.149232/#post-1262625
XF 2.3 - Image optimization, enhanced image resizing, and more!
Image optimization with WebP support Arguably, we could have talked about this in our bumper Boosting performance entry but it wasn't quite ready to be shown at that point. (I started working on it this week and I haven't yet mastered the art of time travel). Initially the scope of our WebP...xenforo.com
Third-party:
XF 2.2 - Image size limit tips please
My new forum is very image heavy - members sharing photos a lot. It appears the maximum upload file size is just over 1mb in the ACP. I read elsewhere on here that it's possible to increase that to say, 10mb, per file. And that the forum resize will then automatically resize images. Is that...
XF 2.2 - Any way to reduce file sizes of attachments?
I was originally allowing 10mb per attachment but I see that's not such a great idea. I'm reducing that now but was wondering if there is any way to reduce the size of the attachments already in the system. I do see an add-on that will allow dimensions to be resized - but I'm not looking to...
Removing meta-data:
Add option to remove EXIF data from images/attachments (such as GPS data)
There should be an option to remove EXIF data from images. Leaving things like GPS data can be a serious privacy issue: Many people won't realize that this data is added to their photos and may expose more than they want. There is an addon from @wmtech that does this for XF1, but has no XF2...
@Servant of Christ can you please investigate the implementation of an auto-reduction tool(s)?
For your reduction settings, I'd say 1.5MB is a fair size, or at the very least 1.0MB.
I think the auto-reduction tool is the best option available to achieve both aims of (a) keeping server storage manageable and (b) maintaining member engagement. I hope this helps.
As always, your efforts behind the scenes are appreciated
I agree the extra hassle can only deter posting, and I would add the point that saving and posting to imgur is even more of a hassle from a phone.Putting aside the undesirable appearance of the 'get app' + 'imgur' display attached to these images... this issue seems to depend on how the image is presented by the external site.
We can still embed large images using an external URL only IF the site displays a link to the image file.
I grabbed the following image from this site
https://unsplash.com/photos/gray-concrete-road-top-between-green-trees-vngzm4P2BTs by pressing hold, clicking on 'save image location', copying this image URL and pasting it via the picture>insert link function.
However, I could not do the same with the shipping image:
So I agree with @TruckDriver9 in that these steps are unrealistic for members to follow:
I'm sure there are ways to grab that image, either by screenshot or using developer tools, however these methods again reflect too much work.
- access original host site
- open image page
- save image
- upload to a file hosting site
- copy link
- embed link here
- submit post.
"But memes are just for whimsical fun and don't reflect the core ethos of CIK." That is true to some extent, although most site activity is outside of the Holy Spirit node. And it is important to engage members in random topics adjacent to the central theological mission of the group. This improves the chance of having members, who may be nominal Christians or agnostic, open up to topics relating to the Holy Spirit.
^ This is an important point for our Admin/mods to consider. Making contributions as easy as possible is central to fostering member engagement. This brings us back to the following proposed solution:
@Servant of Christ can you please investigate the implementation of an auto-reduction tool(s)?
For your reduction settings, I'd say 1.5MB is a fair size, or at the very least 1.0MB.
I think the auto-reduction tool is the best option available to achieve both aims of (a) keeping server storage manageable and (b) maintaining member engagement. I hope this helps.
As always, your efforts behind the scenes are appreciated
We've always just posted images directly however was convenient. Why don't we just keep it that way, and pay the increased cost?
I will figure out how to buy crypto and send some in to help out.
I hear everyone and I suggest the following:
1. I will increase the upload limit to 1MB for now. Let's see how that works and we can increase or decrease it later if needed.
2. I will investigate the possiblity of "optimizing" uploaded images. However that also has a cost as it uses processing power which is limited and may hurt the site performance, plus usually when you resize images the quality degrades.
3. For those who feel uploading large images is vitally important to the CiK experience, I am giving you some homework. Please start a thread and work together to create a guide for image optimizing and provide some instructions on how to use 3rd party hosting services when possible.
4. It's not simply an issue of donations, although that is one aspect. The issue in my opinion is that the disk space used by image uploads tends to increase rapidly over time and it is barely compressable and they don't get deleted so it just keeps growing. That takes up space on the server disk but it also needs to be backed up off-site so we have to transfer it and store it somewhere. That's also why I didn't explore the idea of allowing people who donated to upload more, because it doesn't really solve the problem.
Right now it's not a huge deal but when I look months or years into the future it becomes a problem. And when I look at what this content is - it's mostly disposable, single-use, throwaway content. How often are folks going back and looking at those memes months or years later? To me it doesn't seem worth it to keep all that stuff on the server.
5. I will explore the idea of possibly deleting or archiving content after some period of time, if people would find that an acceptable solution. To me that seems more feasible than "optimizing" things.
I still think 3rd party hosting the best solution. Only things that are truly high quality and directly relevant to our ethos and mission in Christ and that we need to keep around for a long time should be hosted on the server, imho.
1. I will increase the upload limit to 1MB for now. Let's see how that works and we can increase or decrease it later if needed.
2. I will investigate the possiblity of "optimizing" uploaded images. However that also has a cost as it uses processing power which is limited and may hurt the site performance, plus usually when you resize images the quality degrades.
3. For those who feel uploading large images is vitally important to the CiK experience, I am giving you some homework. Please start a thread and work together to create a guide for image optimizing and provide some instructions on how to use 3rd party hosting services when possible.
4. It's not simply an issue of donations, although that is one aspect. The issue in my opinion is that the disk space used by image uploads tends to increase rapidly over time and it is barely compressable and they don't get deleted so it just keeps growing. That takes up space on the server disk but it also needs to be backed up off-site so we have to transfer it and store it somewhere. That's also why I didn't explore the idea of allowing people who donated to upload more, because it doesn't really solve the problem.
Right now it's not a huge deal but when I look months or years into the future it becomes a problem. And when I look at what this content is - it's mostly disposable, single-use, throwaway content. How often are folks going back and looking at those memes months or years later? To me it doesn't seem worth it to keep all that stuff on the server.
5. I will explore the idea of possibly deleting or archiving content after some period of time, if people would find that an acceptable solution. To me that seems more feasible than "optimizing" things.
I still think 3rd party hosting the best solution. Only things that are truly high quality and directly relevant to our ethos and mission in Christ and that we need to keep around for a long time should be hosted on the server, imho.
Last edited:
1MB was the old RVF limit and seems like a good benchmark. Memes are generally small enough to meet even the lower limit, but now the occasional map or photo used in news/geopolitics will fit through copy/paste. And gifs can be easily embedded through the built-in gif library. So there's rarely gonna be an issue with this limit.
At one point, during an update all images were automatically converted into webp format which is much smaller than jpg/png/gif. Is there an option to make this a feature ?
There's the "how-to thread" and I'm always willing to help.
I'm more worried that the forum will wither away, sooner than we run out of space.
I am going to enable the image optimizer on new uploads. After a testing period, if it goes well, I will re-process existing images.
Not sure about this. I see the same thing with various web sites on my phone. It's annoying but I just work around it.