Lack of interest [Suggestion] Optional support for third party image hosting services?

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Chromaniac

Well-known member
I personally do not like the ability of image uploads on the server that is being used for the forum itself.

The biggest problem being... The image being shared is only going to be relevant for a short period of time in 90% of the cases. It massively increases the space consumed by the forum. And so on...

That is why I recommend my forum users to use a third party service (IMGUR is what I recommend) for sharing images.

Of course, I might be in a minority here... Just a suggestion... Offer support for integration with some of the third party image sharing services. IMGUR has an excellent API that can be used here.
 
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i find imageshack distasteful. check out imgur.com if you are a regular user of imageshack :) it is much much bettter :D

for other type of files, mediafire is excellent.
 
Like this?


5jMR2.jpg
 
I'm afraid that it depends a LOT on your topic/niche. Our site for instance is largely a DIY kitchen design and installation niche, and having images that are NOT hosted on the site is a bad, BAD thing as they will invariably disappear a year or two down the line and now the threads that were using those images for illustration purposes make no sense.

I view such images as PRICELESS user generated content and having them hosted elsewhere also makes our legal ability to reuse those images in content articles somewhat murky. When you get right down to it, storage is cheap compared to the value you offer to future members by having a resource of searchable, useful images in addition to text.

Obviously it depends on the focus of your forum... If it's about transient things like current events, politics, celebrities etc then the shelf life of the images is probably a lot shorter. :)

So it's like a lot of things, some need it this way, others need it another way. So thank goodness it looks like XF will make it easy to make 3rd party image hosting quite doable as an plugin/addon/mod if it isn't included as a core option! :)
 
well you can of course embed (hotlink) images from any server.

the basic idea was to have an upload box powered by an external service right here.

for forum owners who do not wish to host the files and images on their own server.

4-5 years of running a forum... my total space consumption is still around a GB or so. if i had been hosting files and images, it would have crossed several GBs.

backups and migration becomes a pain with time!

And yes... Some forums would want everything to be connected to the core domain as the linked content becomes part of the entire forum itself.

For others, it is just a nuisance as it does not add on to the value of the forum!
 
So it's like a lot of things, some need it this way, others need it another way. So thank goodness it looks like XF will make it easy to make 3rd party image hosting quite doable as an plugin/addon/mod if it isn't included as a core option! :)
But my picture above is a link from that image hosting site. That was what the request was for I believe. Being able to put up a link to a picture hosted elsewhere with img tags around it.
 
you did not get him right
he meant (and i mean) that the best (and new) way is not to push user to another mediaservices where (for sure) all fotos will be gone after some time. And not to push them insert media flooding your space.
The idea is to get between those two approaches.
1. Users put their images via your forum to a prescribed media hosting (and they do not need to know which one. they just insert an image in the text via standard upload window).
2. Media content (so priceless) remains yours. Because you have a contract or else with the mediahosting and only you know wehere it is kept.

So, you get a hungry-running slim forum and a sorted media content which would be always connected to the forum posts.
 
How about expanding this to all uploads, not just images, and integrating with CNDs like S3? Not really necessary for core functionality, but it'd be great if that could be done.

Until we see how easy it is to MOD XenForo (if it's as easy, for example, as it is to develop plugins for WordPress, then we're going to see a lot of functionality coming from lots of places), it's hard to distinguish what could/should be core functionality, and what would suit an addon (besides, of course, estimating how useful a particular feature would be for 100% of the potential user-base).
 
The biggest problem being... The image being shared is only going to be relevant for a short period of time in 90% of the cases. It massively increases the space consumed by the forum.

I think about that every time there's a string of birthday cake images or such in a thread. I mean sure, you can delete them eventually, but it would be nice to have one less maintenance thing to remember.
 
I'd be interested in seeing something like this that enabled you to abstract the file storage. IOW, everything in the current system would remain exactly the same, but you could point the attachment/file/image/media to a CDN. That would be the best of both worlds, it would offload the large file hosting from your forum server, AND it would get you much faster delivery, esp for geographically dispersed users (Europe, North America, Australia etc.).

I'd like to see it implemented at a level such that any future gallery/media/attachment system wouldn't need to know anything about it, you simply provide the configuration in the "Storage Options" setting, and the upload process just hands it off to the storage system. Hope that makes sense? It would certainly make it highly mod friendly, and would be very flexible. It would be a snap to use local storage, a secondary media server, or a CDN of your choice.
 
Especially if, through using a CDN, you were able to exceed the PHP_MAX_UPLOAD size (although I'm not sure how uploading to CDNs works through a browser interface).
 
Especially if, through using a CDN, you were able to exceed the PHP_MAX_UPLOAD size (although I'm not sure how uploading to CDNs works through a browser interface).
That's generally easy to change by updating your php.ini... Assuming you have access to it that is!
 
I'm not sure if using a free host would be a good idea, but perhaps something like what I saw in a Drupal module a while back. You enter in your credentials for Amazon's S3 service and you can configure file uploads to be placed on the S3 cloud instead of your local site. That way you don't get stressed about how much space your attachments are taking up locally, you know they will be available regardless of when they were uploaded in the past, and bandwidth might be cheaper depending on your traffic.
 
i personally suggested imgur. i have a paid account there. costs less than USD 30 per year. you get unlimited storage space (images). and these images are never deleted (unless of course they are illegal!). it also has an api. so essentially, if properly integrated... all the images are uploaded to your choice of third party service. and they are permanently stored and accessible.

of course, i do understand folks here who have no interest in this particular feature request. but i can bet some people would want such a functionality (in the future or as an add-on!). in the end, this is just a suggestion for a feature. not a core feature demand!

advantages are obvious... you do not have to limit the amount of storage space accessible to your members. you do not get a bloated database/site backup. third party services might (or might not) be faster than your own server for media delivery.
 
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