XF 2.2 Lower quality images if using Imageshack?

[bennylava]

I'm in the content creation stage of building my forum. I'm posting recipes and menus from restaurants, and the images from imageshack take a hit when viewed on my forum.

I checked my image size limits, but it doesn't seem to have any bearing on the images I've posted. I tried every size imageshack gives you, from large to very small. They all seem to suffer a quality loss, except for maybe avatar size (and who would see that level of detail anyway)

Is this a problem with imageshack? Or can I do something to improve the image quality on my side? Thank you

 

[mrdoitnyce]

I'm in the content creation stage of building my forum. I'm posting recipes and menus from restaurants, and the images from imageshack take a hit when viewed on my forum.

I checked my image size limits, but it doesn't seem to have any bearing on the images I've posted. I tried every size imageshack gives you, from large to very small. They all seem to suffer a quality loss, except for maybe avatar size (and who would see that level of detail anyway)

Is this a problem with imageshack? Or can I do something to improve the image quality on my side? Thank you

Try using https://postimages.org/

I don't get any quality loss.

 

[bennylava]

Try using https://postimages.org/

I don't get any quality loss.

Do you know if they have a limit to how many gigabytes you can upload? I would also be curious to know how they are making money. If they disappear, so does a lot of your forum content.

 

[mrdoitnyce]

Do you know if they have a limit to how many gigabytes you can upload? I would also be curious to know how they are making money. If they disappear, so does a lot of your forum content.

They make money from ADS on their site as far as I can tell. Every free image hosting site won't be around forever. it's a risk you're taking when hosting images externally (free sites). And no, I don't know their limit, but I've uploaded large files before without issues. However, it seems to me like you might be interested in something premium given your concerns, So I suggest you stay away from free sites and spend some money to host your images.

 

[frm]

Do you know if they have a limit to how many gigabytes you can upload? I would also be curious to know how they are making money. If they disappear, so does a lot of your forum content.

I suggest using block storage at $6/mo for 1TB. You'll likely never need that much, but youll have peace of mind that if the image host goes down, it doesn't take down more than half your website (making it usless as it seems like it heavily relies on images of recipes and menus, which can be quite small with WebP image optimization).

If you ever grow to needing more than 1TB for this use case, your site should already be making more than $6 to double it to 2TB for $12.

Just my opinion.

 

[bennylava]

I suggest using block storage at $6/mo for 1TB. You'll likely never need that much, but youll have peace of mind that if the image host goes down, it doesn't take down more than half your website (making it usless as it seems like it heavily relies on images of recipes and menus, which can be quite small with WebP image optimization).

If you ever grow to needing more than 1TB for this use case, your site should already be making more than $6 to double it to 2TB for $12.

Just my opinion.

I guess I'm unfamiliar with "block" storage. I was under the impression that you either hosted yourself, or you paid for a hosting service. In which case you paid them for the amount of storage you need. I didn't know you could somehow add another hard drive if you were paying for a hosting service. Would this still be fast?

 

[frm]

I guess I'm unfamiliar with "block" storage. I was under the impression that you either hosted yourself, or you paid for a hosting service. In which case you paid them for the amount of storage you need. I didn't know you could somehow add another hard drive if you were paying for a hosting service. Would this still be fast?

I guess I should clarify, it's object storage.

If the instance is in the same network as your site, you shouldn't have any latency issues.

chanForo (in my signature) has the site hosted in Japan, but the object storage is hosted in Amsterdam. The images load a lot slower on the site. It is merely just sitting there for now as a test. When I get around to reviving it, the site server and object storage will be in the same location and the latency to load images will drastically improve.

Block storage is a second "hard drive" that you attach to your physical machine, but it's limited to the size you select and doesn't — to my knowledge — automatically scale as needed, so you might need to attach a new drive, async the old files over, and destroy the old drive (might be wrong though as I haven't worked with it; you might be able to adjust the size on the fly). But unlike object storage, you're paying for the base (say $10 for 100GB) regardless of whether you're using it all. It's more cost effective to go with 1TB and then scale up from there as needed.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Cloudflare R2 buckets are inexpensive. On my oldest forum (which dates to 1996), which has low but steady traffic, I've uploaded quite a few images and have yet to be charged by Cloudflare. I'm nowhere near the limits. And even if your usage goes over the limits, their pricing is such that it's a very affordable alternative.

There is an add-on, Digitalpoint/App for Cloudflare, that can help with connecting it, and there are other threads here to assist with setting it up.

I learned the hard way on a couple of non-important projects that relying on a third party (like a free service) always results in disappointment after a while.