Vans forum rant

GyroRon · #1 11-03-2005, 06:40 AM

Okay, I gotta complain..... First off, thanks for the site. It is a good site with lot's of good info and some good regular posters.

My complaint is I want to be able to attach a picture to my posts and have figured out how you got to do that. It seems you got to have your pictures hosted somewhere else on the web and do a hyperlink here to attach a picture on your post. To me this is a pain in the butt, and not worth the effort.

My guess is the reason we can not directly attach a picture here is Pictures use up bandwidth and bandwidth costs money. Whoever owns this forum is making sure not to run up the bill.

Now I am not a computer expert by any means, and I don't know much about hosting forums and running them. I do alot of posting on a gyroplane forum www.rotaryforum.com and it is the same software as this forum, same options, screens, and so on. Just no ad's on the left side of the screen.

My first guess was since Vans RV airplanes are so popular that there is probably a hundred thousand posts on this forum and 10 thousand members. That if everyone here posted pictures directly onto the forum it would make hosting the forum too costly. So I compared some stats from both forums.

Vans Forum 3649 total threads, Rotaryforum 6500 total threads. Vans forum 20465 total posts, Rotaryforum 83370 total posts. Vans forum number of members 2345, Rotaryforum 1536. Vans forum high number of people online at any given time 197, Rotaryforum 366.

So the gyro forum has about 800 less members, but there is almost double the threads, and almost 4 times as many total posts. The gyro forum allows it's members to post pictures directly from the members computer onto the forum, no picture hosting site hassles. We ARE limited to posting pics that are no larger than 150 KB, but that is easy enough to do.

I am good personal friends with the owner of the Rotaryforum. He says the forum is paid for donations from the members. Once a year he asks for those that want to send in a donation to send it in. Those that donated get a special title under there name - Gold supporter, and this kind of encourages others to donate a few bucks. So far the owner says he has had a excess of money, more than what it costs to host our forum, pics and all. Not sure if the owner of this forum has asked for or just recieved donations.... But I do know I can't avoid the ad's off to the left side of my screen!

Anyway enough ranting. Just disappointed that If I want to post a pic to this site I got to sign up to yet another site and then have to download my pictures there and all this hassle......

DeltaRomeo · #2 11-03-2005, 07:19 AM

Hello, Ron.

I'm Doug Reeves and the www.VansAirForce.net site and these forums are mine (the forums have been online as of Jan 1st of this year). I operate them as a small business and you are absolutely right, I try to keep costs down as much as possible.

The instructions for inserting images are HERE and, because of this setup, you can use images of whatever size you wish. A link to these instructions appear as a 'sticky' in several of the forum folders (it is in the folder you posted your message in

).

Googling 'image hosting' returns over 41 million results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=image+hosting. I personally prefer www.imageshack.us at the current time - as it doesn't require you to register and it automatically generates a thumbnail for you. You can even choose the option to have it auto-adjust the size of your image for the viewer's browser, so you don't have to resize the image beforehand. Maybe sometime in the future I'll allow picture hosting, but not at the current time.

I do sell advertising and accept donations. I talk about donations HERE.

To help avoid further confusion I will add a link to the image insert instructions in the bar at left under 'Today's Posts' this evening. I think that will help. Update 11/3/05 5:30pm CST: Link has been added.

I appreciate your comments.

Kindest,
Doug
www.VansAirForce.net

zilik · #3 11-03-2005, 08:00 AM

Wow, it works. sorry only had a picture of my car available.

txaviator · #4 11-03-2005, 08:32 AM

Zilik and other posters,

You are almost there...but it gets even better, as far as posting photos. You can make the photo appear automatically, without a viewer having to click your link.

When you go into Image Shack, do just as you did....Browse, select your photo, select 'HOST IT' (you will see an uploading message)...once it shows it is done, you will see multiple links. However, scroll way down to the bottom of that page....you will see a link that says "Direct Link To Image". This is the link you want to copy (by high-lighting the link and clicking CTRL and C). If so, the photo automatically appears within your post, without a reader having to click on the link. But, the trick is that once you do the upload to Image Shack, once back in these forums, you MUST click on the little icon above your post within these forums (at whatever point you wish to insert the photo) that shows the yellow background and the little mountain. This gives you another bar that shows on your screen, and this is where you post the link you just copied at Image Shack. Press CTRL-V within this bar and it will post in the link you copied from Image Shack. Much easier than it sounds! Give it a try! Hope this helps. Here is an example:

zilik · #5 11-03-2005, 08:42 AM

Thanks for the tip. I am not windows user and I did not sleep at a Holliday Inn Express last night so I need all the help I can get when it comes to using Window's Explorer. My desktop here at work is running Linux and imageshack.us only works on windows explorer. Ok, I don't know that, I do know it does not work with Mozilla on Linux.

Thanks again. I'll try it with a RV related pick soon.

Gary

DeltaRomeo · #6 11-03-2005, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zilik

Wow, it works. sorry only had a picture of my car available.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8081/sporsche2zq.jpg

Gary, to display the actual image (instead of the URL) make sure you paste the URL into the box that opens after you click the

icon. That's the 'insert picture' button.

As a matter of fact, you could go back and edit your post if you wanted to (look for the 'edit' button at the lower right), making the picture appear. Like this:

Gary Zilik's Car...

B,
D

cobra · #7 11-03-2005, 08:57 AM

Geez Ron,

Making trouble again...

Glad to see you posting here too.

GyroRon · #8 11-03-2005, 05:35 PM

I am just being me, and that means I tell it like I see it. Not meaning to be troublesome.....

LettersFromFlyoverCountry · #9 11-03-2005, 07:23 PM

As long aas folks are ranting. One request. Can folks please size the image before posting. It's really a pain in the neck when someone posts a 2400 pixel wide photo, because all subsequent text also scrolls all the way over and off the screen.

I'd say about a 700-800 pixel width should suffice.

compren · #10 11-03-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Collins

As long aas folks are ranting. One request. Can folks please size the image before posting. It's really a pain in the neck when someone posts a 2400 pixel wide photo, because all subsequent text also scrolls all the way over and off the screen.

I'd say about a 700-800 pixel width should suffice.

You can say that again. I have a 21" Monitor and I still have to scroll over on alot of these posts. Makes it hard to read sometimes.