I think that what's being said is that if you've ever deleted a picture in a photobucket album that's linked here, then it leaves a box with a broken link or red X here, even though you have no problem with posting with photobucket. Apparently Cliff's original intent is that any pictures posted here would be preserved for posterity until deleted by he or the OP.
Personally, I like reading a technical article with a description and its photo right along together, rather than having to read the text, then go to another link to see the visual depiction.
Originally posted by JohnWPB: After following that link, and spending about 3 minutes on the site. I found an add on made specifically for this forum that allows you to upload images and include them when making a post.
It would certainly be nice if Cliff would consider installing this. The only topic talked about more that Fiero's on this forum is Image posting! Whether it be with PIP, Image shack, Photo bucket, and the hundreds of posts rallying for all of them, or none of them.
Just the simple installation of this add on would stop all the madness, and make posting images so much easier! ! !
There are two problems with that solution: 1) Although these boards started out as phpbb....they have been modified to the point where standard add-ons may not work properly. 2) From the install file for that mod you posted the link for..."All images are hosted on remote image hosting service, not on your forum." That means that this mod would NOT solve the red X problem.
I do agree that it would be nice to be able to post pics from non-Windoze devices....but I don't have an elegant, fool-proof solution (show me something that is fool-proof, and I will show you a better fool). Every solution I have seen for this issue is either more complicated than PIP, or I feel that it limits how we are able to post pics in such a way that I am not happy with it. My solution is as follows. Use PIP if it works for you. If it doesn't, use a 3rd party image hosting site. But if your pics turn to red Xs because of that 3rd party hosting, I will be leading the lynch mob.
I posted four or five pictures today using PIP and had no problems. This one is on a 32 bit Vista system and PIP 1.09. All of the pictures were displayed in full on PFF.
Nelson
[This message has been edited by hnthomps (edited 01-31-2014).]
Actually...I have thought of a simple (although I admit that is a relative term) solution that Cliff could implement that would solve all problems. All it would take is to add a section to the message post script ( /cgi-bin/fiero/postings.cgi ) where any time a [img] tag is used and it ISN'T a images.fieroforum.com url, then the script will download the URL, save it to images.fieroforum.com, and convert the text of the post to the images.fieroforum.com copy.
This would completely eliminate the problem. It would leave it to where any member can use any hosting site they choose to make life easiest on themselves...yet all links would be to images on the server so the red Xs would be gone forever.
Actually...I have thought of a simple (although I admit that is a relative term) solution that Cliff could implement that would solve all problems. All it would take is to add a section to the message post script ( /cgi-bin/fiero/postings.cgi ) where any time a [img] tag is used and it ISN'T a images.fieroforum.com url, then the script will download the URL, save it to images.fieroforum.com, and convert the text of the post to the images.fieroforum.com copy.
Actually, it already does that (that's how it knows when an image is over 300K). It just doesn't save the image locally because I don't want every single picture shown here stored on the image server . There are a few reasons why I still use PIP. Let me start by telling why I created PIP in the first place.
Every single image ever posted through PIP is still available. If you see a "Red X" where you would expect to see an image from images.fieroforum.com (where PIP stores the images), it's either because the image server is temporarily down, or because the image has been manually removed by me (for whatever reason). Every other X is because somebody posted their images on some site like PhotoBucket and either the service went belly up, the account no longer exists, or the photos were deleted by the poster.
Then why isn't image posting handled through the website? Several reasons. One is time. I already have a complete "drag & drop" solution ready (where you simply drag the photo from your harddisk to the webpage) but I haven't had the time to include it in the forum software. Another reason is security. PIP offers me a layer of security that any other solution doesn't. With little effort, I can probably bring down most forums which have automatic picture uploading.
It just doesn't save the image locally because I don't want every single picture shown here stored on the image server ..... Every single image ever posted through PIP is still available.
I am not making sense of this.... What differentiates a photo, or the importance of that photo, that was uploaded to another server, -vs- one uploaded with PIP? If I upload a photo of "Spock" as above to PIP, it is maintained permanently. If I then upload a photo of all the cars taken at Daytona this year on the track to ImageShack, that photo automatically has less 'value', and you do not want that photo permanently stored on the image server?
I could kind of understand this, IF PIP worked all the time for everyone. As it stands you have to use a Windows based PC (And even then it does not work for every one). It will not work from a Mac or Linux Machine, an Android tablet or phone, or an iPhone or iPad. With all these exclusions, and "not wanting to save every image to the image server", there will be lots of red X's for the foreseeable future.
As for bringing down any board that has an automatic image poster, that seems kind of unlikely. Every other forum on the Internet (Well 95% at least) allow you to upload images when posting a message. If they were so vulnerable, I think it would be a pretty huge problem! They key is to have the file scanned to look for file headers to determine if it is a legitimate image when it is uploaded. (Making sure it is not a .bat, .exe, .js just renamed to a .jpg) And then to store the image in a location where the folders and file permissions are READ ONLY, thus preventing malicious scripts from executing any code contained in any file uploaded as a second layer of protection.
Understand, I LOVE this forum, and have sent beer money a couple times. (I think I am due again ) It is just that this topic has been hashed, bashed, explained, and over discussed for so long. This topic could almost have it's own sub forum It would just be nice to see a solution, as I have come across so many threads on where people are discussing something in photo's that used to exist in that thread.
Here are a couple of examples:
1) I am putting a Cavalier Digital dash in my Fiero, and found THIS THREAD Most of the images on how to do it are gone
2) I am going to get rid of the vacuum canister, and replace it with a digital cruise control system. Again, a great thread, but all the images are gone
[This message has been edited by JohnWPB (edited 02-03-2014).]
I am not making sense of this.... What differentiates a photo, or the importance of that photo, that was uploaded to another server, -vs- one uploaded with PIP? If I upload a photo of "Spock" as above to PIP, it is maintained permanently. If I then upload a photo of all the cars taken at Daytona this year on the track to ImageShack, that photo automatically has less 'value', and you do not want that photo permanently stored on the image server?
First of all, you only seem to differentiate between a member posting an image on the PFF servers using PIP, or a member posting an image on something like Imageshack and linking them here. But the vast majority of images linked from outside are not posted by members at all. They are simply (hot) linked (and unrelated to Fieros). On the other hand, most images posted through PIP are Fiero related. There's the difference.
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I could kind of understand this, IF PIP worked all the time for everyone. As it stands you have to use a Windows based PC (And even then it does not work for every one). It will not work from a Mac or Linux Machine, an Android tablet or phone, or an iPhone or iPad. With all these exclusions, and "not wanting to save every image to the image server", there will be lots of red X's for the foreseeable future.
Well, that's why I'm working on another solution. But unfortunately, currently my priorities are elsewhere.
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As for bringing down any board that has an automatic image poster, that seems kind of unlikely. Every other forum on the Internet (Well 95% at least) allow you to upload images when posting a message. If they were so vulnerable, I think it would be a pretty huge problem!
Every single internet server out there is vulnerable for DDoS attacks, yet it's not like every other server is down because it's being attacked. The reason is that it requires something not every internet user has access to (in the case of a DDoS attack, a botnet for instance). The vulnerability with image uploading has nothing to do will malformed images or images acting as trojans. It will not give an attacker access to the machine. It will simply slow it down (best case) or crash it (worst case).
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It would just be nice to see a solution, as I have come across so many threads on where people are discussing something in photo's that used to exist in that thread.
Everybody is free to use whatever image service they like. If you are a Windows user, I would recommend PIP for all its advantages. That's all.
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1) I am putting a Cavalier Digital dash in my Fiero, and found THIS THREAD Most of the images on how to do it are gone
2) I am going to get rid of the vacuum canister, and replace it with a digital cruise control system. Again, a great thread, but all the images are gone
Yup. The only images still visible are those uploaded using PIP. Back in 2006 the only excuse for not using PIP was because you were not using Windows (no tablets or smartphones with cameras back then).
Long story short, I agree PIP is outdated and should be replaced with something much easier and available to anyone. Like I said, I actually have something ready already but I need to find the time to implement it and test it for vulnerabilities.
That said, I will never implement something fully automated because the PFF image server is not some kind of public dropbox. Also PFF is not some heavily corporate sponsored website that makes me thousands of dollars each month. So every GB of traffic or storage space I can save is money earned. Or at least not lost. The images are hosted on donated space (by isthiswhereiputausername). And the reason he is still willing to donate that space is because it doesn't require TBs of disk space and bandwidth.
. There are a few reasons why I still use PIP. Let me start by telling why I created PIP in the first place.
