niden.net
Member
I always host attachments in the forum. In the past I used to have them stored in the database (vBulletin) but moved them in the files system for speed and to reduce the database size (the attachments are around 50K and occupy 4GB). This is a forum with 130K members and 8M posts.
I do however have another forum (FusionBB) that has 100 members or so and they have close to 10GB of attachments (they are nuts about pictures).
It is all a matter of how much bandwidth you are going to end up using. Also you will need to consider of people lifting images from your server (also called hotlinking) as well as the slowness that images bring to your site (since it is extra bandwidth).
At the moment I do not have any issues with the attachments. However down the line I will be looking at a CDN to deliver images faster to the users and save a bit on bandwidth.
I hope this helps.
I do however have another forum (FusionBB) that has 100 members or so and they have close to 10GB of attachments (they are nuts about pictures).
It is all a matter of how much bandwidth you are going to end up using. Also you will need to consider of people lifting images from your server (also called hotlinking) as well as the slowness that images bring to your site (since it is extra bandwidth).
At the moment I do not have any issues with the attachments. However down the line I will be looking at a CDN to deliver images faster to the users and save a bit on bandwidth.
I hope this helps.