Avatars and Attachments

NorioDS

Well I had a small heart attack when I got my bandwidth bill for September - extra R1k because of GFSA ?

So I've played with the code a little and, now, all avatars and attachments will be served from the my Amazon S3 account in the US. This should save me some bucks without slowing the site down much for your guys.

Let me know if you notice any significant speed difference (ie: slower) I'm hoping you won't ?

Night night!

dee

Maybe we should make a list of free file and image hosts, so that that want can use them, instead of using the forum's bandwidth. Every little bit might help...

Bane

OUCH!! Well haven't noticed a slowdown so all good!

FatBoy

You guys can try http://www.photobucket.com/ for your gear pics etc works great for me

AlanRatcliffe

That's what I thought would happen with an on-site attachments directory. And it will only grow larger and larger as time goes by - especially with audio files now being added too.

Do you pay for Amazon S3 as well? If so, I can see running into a problem with that in future too. We don't want to get into a situation where we have to start trying to weasel money out of members to continue running the site. Perhaps it would be better to ask our members to use file hosts from now on and disable attachments? If it's possible the problem will arise, then it almost certainly will at some time - better to deal with it now rather than later.

I use my own site for any pics or files, but otherwise would recommend www.box.net for files and http://photobucket.com/.

NorioDS

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:Do you pay for Amazon S3 as well? If so, I can see running into a problem with that in future too. We don't want to get into a situation where we have to start trying to weasel money out of members to continue running the site.

I'm aiming to make this site a tad more useful than other forums so that if, one day, other people try to compete, they simply can't ?

Amazon is incredibly affordable. I've paid a couple of US cents over the past few months for hosting videos, audio and more. It's ridiculous!

So I'd like to run with this for a while and see how sustainable it is. If it isn't sustainable, that's fine. I'll deal with it but I seriously wanna try because I think little things like this, if they're affordable, over a long period of time, will give us an un-matchable edge over other forums.

Let's wait and see how it pans out.

AlanRatcliffe

Fair enough...

Renesongs

I have been out of mainstream IT and web programming for a while so I am probably talking through the hole in my pants but is there not a way of writing a bit of code to take advantage boxnet, photobucket et al and treat it like RAID. Say open multiple accounts and pass logon parameters to these accounts making it transparent to the forum user ?

Another idea is when you sign up to guitar forum you automate a boxnet and photobucket signup for the member.

NorioDS

Renesongs wrote: I have been out of mainstream IT and web programming for a while so I am probably talking through the hole in my pants but is there not a way of writing a bit of code to take advantage boxnet, photobucket et al and treat it like RAID. Say open multiple accounts and pass logon parameters to these accounts making it transparent to the forum user ?

Another idea is when you sign up to guitar forum you automate a boxnet and photobucket signup for the member.

Rene, you've got the right idea but implementation can be a bitch (with either idea). What I've done now, with Amazon, is cheap and working.

One thing I've learned over the years is to change something and then wait and test the results without changing anything else. It takes discipline but it's the best way to quickly pinpoint what's effective and what's not, so let's give this latest change a shot and see how it compares to the old setup.

FatBoy

Agreed Norio, there should be some sort of way to implement integration with the other two, but even if we do get it right after several long nights I think we may run into issues with terms of service of those providers. Amazon seems to be the logical route at the moment.

Anyway, let me know if you ever need help on the site, two pairs of code reading eyes is always better at debugging than one ?

NorioDS

Fritz Brand wrote: Agreed Norio, there should be some sort of way to implement integration with the other two, but even if we do get it right after several long nights I think we may run into issues with terms of service of those providers. Amazon seems to be the logical route at the moment.

Anyway, let me know if you ever need help on the site, two pairs of code reading eyes is always better at debugging than one ?

Thanks Fritz! Will keep that in mind! I have a small project that you could do if you're interested. Can't pay you but happy to link to a site of your choosing and giving you proper credit for the dev. Email/PM me if you keen. Should be quite a simple development.