Photobucket

Hurricane said:
Here is a little suggestion.
Maybe the YBW moderators could remove the Edit restriction.
And we could then reinstate some of our old threads.
I'm in the process of doing something like that anyway for the other forum that I run at Sant Carles.
I'm currently downloading all my Photobucket Albums (as most will know, they have random characters generated within the links.)
I will then upload my albums to another provider (my own internet server for the moment) and then all that is required is a find and replace within the post of the base image address.
If we could have access to editing our old posts, we could recover some of the images within the main interesting threads.
It sounds complicated but I'm about half way through my Photobucket Album.
I'm definitely going to do this for my photos in our SCMCHAT forum but if YBW could give us access to editing out old threads that would be good as well.
Click to expand...

nice, but Mike, how would that work on say Match 2 thread? John must have uploaded a couple of thousand pics in there!!!
would a user be able to do a global search replace on all his/her posts on a thread? would any such script exist/work?
I'm sure admin would be able to do that...

cheers

V.
 
Who would genuinely believe something like Photobucket could remain free forever? It seems obvious to me that their long term strategy was to build a massive user base, and then introduce charging. I'd guess that plan was in the prospectus for investors. Things like Google, Facebook and Youtube rely on advertising for revenue, but I can't see that as viable in the long term either. I mean, who even clicks on adverts? Let alone follow them through to a purchase.
 
For the moment I am using Tinypic , but it is another Photobucket company so there's a chance if they find many people using it instead of Photobucket they will slap a whopping charge on that too
 
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Mike, I am not entirely sure I have understood what you are trying to do but if it is uploading your own photos to your own server so that you can view them as a gallery in different collections of related pics then you might want to look at highslide.com

I use it to generate picture galleries on my websites you click on one thumbnail and a series of bigger, related images pop up on the screen and you can do a slide show if you want. The highslide software does all the hard work and you just upload the files when it has finished.

If you want to see an example better pm me because I don't think I am allowed to link to my own commercial website from in here.
 
PEJ said:
Mike, I am not entirely sure I have understood what you are trying to do but if it is uploading your own photos to your own server so that you can view them as a gallery in different collections of related pics then you might want to look at highslide.com

I use it to generate picture galleries on my websites you click on one thumbnail and a series of bigger, related images pop up on the screen and you can do a slide show if you want. The highslide software does all the hard work and you just upload the files when it has finished.

If you want to see an example better pm me because I don't think I am allowed to link to my own commercial website from in here.
Click to expand...


No, I'm looking at this another way.
I keep all my photos (in full res) on my system.
I resize those images and upload (to Photobuchet!!!) those that I want to post on the forums.
OK - I know that some sites resize as you upload but I wanted to keep in control of the size and quality of the image.
So, I had a thought - maybe the appropriate script could resize the images "on the fly" and take them directly from my database of photos.

It is still a work in progress but I have achieved something so far.
I've built an internet server running Apache, PHP under Linux and exposed it to the internet.
Actually, it was new (really cheap hardware) so I'm not expecting it to perform particularly quickly.

I copied my full res pics (just a selection for the moment) onto the new server.

I then mapped one of my domain names (that I own) to redirect to this new server.
I could, of course, link to my photos directly (using the domain name as the base address) but that would then load the full res images which we don't want.
So, instead of loading the full res photos, the link calls a PHP script on the server which resizes the images "on the fly" and serves them to the YBW web page.

This is an example of the image link:-
[img]http://www.maidencombe.com/serve.php?img=Pictures/Jennywren%202/Enhanced/DSC_0742ee.jpg[/img]
Note the serve.php script that does the resizing.

The great advantage is that I won't have to maintain a database of pics that I have uploaded for the forum.
I just point the images directly into my database of photos.

Hopefully, this is the result.
I'm working from inside my LAN so it would be good to hear if people can see these pics - they might only be viewable by me!!!.

serve.php


serve.php


serve.php


serve.php


serve.php



Before anyone comments.
Yes, I could buy some cheap internet space and use that instead of my home brew Linux server.
And, maybe I will in the future - thats the reason I've used my (re-direct-able) domain name as a base.
If I want to change the server in the future, I just point the domain name at a different server.
 
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Hurricane said:
Hopefully, this is the result.
I'm working from inside my LAN so it would be good to hear if people can see these pics - they might only be viewable by me!!!
Click to expand...

Well I can see them!

I get it now. It all sounds like a good idea.
 
petem said:
Mike, I assume you're familiar with Imagemagick?
Click to expand...

There are two graphics libraries that can be loaded into PHP.
The one that I'm using is GD.
I believe the other on is a branch of Imagemagic.
I'm not sure which is the fastest - I seen to remember reading that Imagemagic is quicker.
I've only installed GD onto my server's PHP
 
mlines said:
GD has issues with iPhone posts due to the way the GD developers and the iPhone developers "disagree" on the embedding of orientation information in the photograph. Imagemagic does not suffer from this.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I thought the Imagemagic would have some advantages but I started with GD because I found a good working example.
I've used Imagemagic before in its rawer form under Windows to set colour depths and it worked well so perhaps I should change to it.
I've loaded PHP onto my own systems several times before but mostly, I use professional servers.
The thing that threw me on this one is that these two graphics libraries aren't loaded in the base PHP Install so I had to work out how to load it/them.
Also. my home system is running PHP 7 (which I believe is a leap more advanced than PHP 5) so I had to get a GD that was compatible - all takes time!!

Thanks for the info on Imagemagic.
 
Feeling quite proud of myself.
I've managed to copy all my photos from Photobucket complete with the special Photobucket trailing file references to my new internet server.
This means that they are all available except for the Photobucket base URL.
I know this doesn't help with this forum but I've just written an SQL Query to run through the www.scmchat.com forum database and change all my Photobucket base references to the new base reference for mu new server.
And it works - all my photos on www.scmchat.com are back.
If I want to move my photos to a professionally hosted server, all I need to do is change forwarding for the domain name that I've used.
A number of times over the last few years, I've duplicated my larger posts onto this forum to www.scmchat.com so some of my adventures are back.
For those who don't know, www.scmchat.com is the berth holders forum for Sant Carles Marina in Spain.

It is just a shame that I can't do the same on this forum.
 
petem said:
Others may be interested to know that I've splashed out the grand sum of $15 on Filegator (http://www.file-gator.com/) and am now hosting my images on my own web space. It's a little bit buggy and doesn't support re-sizing (I have to do this in batches using Fireworks). Otherwise, seems to be working OK.
Click to expand...

If your server supports php, you could use my php script to resize images "on the fly".
But you would need enough we space to host the full res images.
I'm also working on a photo link editor that creates the appropriate links.
Not sure when that will be done though - I'm on the boat in Mallorca at the moment with no plan to go home anytime yet.
 
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