Posting photos on UKCaving.com

Pitlamp

Well-known member
Wish I knew how to upload pictures to this forum. I've got the flyer here with all the opening times on and lots of other information. If someone who knows how these complicated things work were to send me an email address I could send a photo of the flyer which you might be able to stick in this topic for me? I'm sure other readers would appreciate it.

(Sorry about this but really I'm the slide rule and logarithm tables generation.)


[gmod]The posts relating to posting photos on UKCaving.com which were originally in the Yorkshire section on the Clapham Shop topic have been split out and moved to here.[/gmod]
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
Er, I failed.  :-[

The instructions are clear enough but they tell me the picture has to be on the web somewhere. As I'm not in the habit of doing such things - and it seems like a disproportionate amount of messing about to start setting up accounts with "flicker" or "buckets of photos" or whatever - can't I just email this image to someone who already does such things, so they can shove it into this topic?
 

Bottlebank

New member
Agreed, it's a lot of faff.

Send it me - I'll put it on Facebook for you. I think you've got my email address, if not it's tony@laptopbits.co.uk

The Facebook advert won't hurt them at all :)

 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Pitlamp said:
Er, I failed.  :-[

The instructions are clear enough but they tell me the picture has to be on the web somewhere. As I'm not in the habit of doing such things - and it seems like a disproportionate amount of messing about to start setting up accounts with "flicker" or "buckets of photos" or whatever - can't I just email this image to someone who already does such things, so they can shove it into this topic?

I agree it's a long winded process - if we can make it easier, we will (another one for the to do list).....
 

graham

New member
Pegasus said:
Pitlamp said:
Er, I failed.  :-[

The instructions are clear enough but they tell me the picture has to be on the web somewhere. As I'm not in the habit of doing such things - and it seems like a disproportionate amount of messing about to start setting up accounts with "flicker" or "buckets of photos" or whatever - can't I just email this image to someone who already does such things, so they can shove it into this topic?

I agree it's a long winded process - if we can make it easier, we will (another one for the to do list).....

You cannot make it easier, even if you host pictures on this site. It is, actually, not that difficult providing the image is on a web server somewhere, as all you need to do is put the image address between image tags in square brackets.

Sadly web servers do not include personal DropBox, OneDrive etc links, so if you wish to do this you do need a hosting account somewhere.

The forum software will not accept direct uploads and is not designed to do so. It is designed to use hyperlinks - and why not, the hyperlink is, after all, the foundation on which the world Wide Web is built.
 

nickwilliams

Well-known member
graham said:
You cannot make it easier, even if you host pictures on this site.

I disagree.

Yes, the process of linking to photos is the same wherever they are hosted but if, like me, you don't have a Facebook, Flikr, (or whatever) account to host them on then the ability to host them at UKCaving will make the difference between posting photos and not posting photos.
 

cavermark

New member
graham said:
The forum software will not accept direct uploads and is not designed to do so.

Is it very difficult for that to be changed?.... or is the problem the cost of server space or something if the site had to host it's own photos?? (innocent question)
 

kay

Well-known member
graham said:
You cannot make it easier, even if you host pictures on this site. It is, actually, not that difficult providing the image is on a web server somewhere

But that's the key. I rarely post pictures to the internet. The only time I use my Flickr account is for posting things to ukcaving which I do perhaps once a year on average. And every time I want to post something, I have to first try and work out what my Flickr username password was, and then I find Flickr has changed the way it works again. Posting here takes a few seconds; finding the correct url to post can take half an hour.
 

Antwan

Member
You can attach images directly into SMF forums using an appropriate add-on, and of course loads of server space... There are a few smf forums I have used with this functionality. Its something to hopefully look forward to
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
My thanks to Bottlebank for his generous help here.

I think the discussion about how images can be put on this site is an extremely useful one (and thanks go to those who have contributed) but perhaps better dealt with as a separate topic?

Is it worth splitting this off now, as some folk who might have valuable comments to offer may not be reading a topic about a Dales shop . . . . .

 

graham

New member
nickwilliams said:
graham said:
You cannot make it easier, even if you host pictures on this site.

I disagree.

Yes, the process of linking to photos is the same wherever they are hosted but if, like me, you don't have a Facebook, Flikr, (or whatever) account to host them on then the ability to host them at UKCaving will make the difference between posting photos and not posting photos.

It does not make it easier:

Step one: upload image to <somewhere>

Step two: link image to post.

It might be a personal preference not to have a dedicated image hosting account elsewhere, but that is not the point.

It would, of course, be the case that if this site hosted images then the amount of both storage and bandwidth that it used would increase dramatically (imagine if Old Ruminator used it, for example) but that is simply a discussion between the owners, their bank manager and the site hosts, nothing to do with anybody else. That would not prevent links being placed to images elsewhere, as that would be a seriously retrograde step (what, no images from the MCRA collection allowed?) and similarly would not prevent others linking to images stored here, increasing their bandwidth still further.

I cannot speak for the owners (natch!) but that is not a route I would go down, especially as it is patently not needed.
 

Bottlebank

New member
This crops up repeatedly. Not everyone is computer savvy enough to want a photo hosting account or get there head round embedding links etc, and many never will be.

Why not just ask for a volunteers and appoint a "posting moderator" or two, people who need to could simply email them a photo and the posting moderator could edit their post's to include the photo or post it in the relevant thread.

I sure someone would offer if you asked?
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
I'm reading this thread with great interest because:

a) I absolutely love cave photography - lucky me will be helping Carsten Peter again next month

b) I am a Luddite (I know, I know ironic that we own a forum)

If there is a way we can make posting photographs easier we will.

Thanks folks... ;)
 

Mike Hopley

New member
It most certainly can be made easier, where "easier" means "more easily achievable by a variety of people, some of whom are not as technical as others".

I could code this feature myself: you click on a button like "post an image", and you can upload an image from your computer. I would enhance it using the HTML5 drag-and-drop API. I'd offload the image processing to a queue like Iron.io and probably store the result somewhere else, like a CDN, or Dropbox, or maybe even Flickr, namespaced under your user account for administration purposes. After all that, I'd smile a big, smug smile and go back to lapping my bowl of cream and preening my whiskers. ;)

You could still keep the "post an image from another website" option as well.

Whether it's practical is a very different question. It could be too expensive. It could be too much work. It could be too fiddly to integrate with the forum software (which is notoriously difficult to work with).

A common pitfall of being technical is that you fail to understand less technical people. You only appreciate this when someone more technical comes along and does the same thing to you. ;) Allow me to demonstrate:

Say you have a website and you update it occasionally. You use an FTP client to copy the files from your computer to the web host (which is how most people do it).

Now let's say I run your web host, and I've decided that FTP is an inferior way to update your web site. I could say something like this:

I'm sorry, we've discontinued FTP because it's a rubbish way to manage your website. Instead, simply SSH into the server, init a bare repo and Git push from origin. Set up a post-receive hook to checkout your master branch, composer install & dump-autoload, and you're golden. It's much easier.

This is (more or less) how I manage my website. And to someone like me (today), it really is much easier. I can't understand why anyone would want to manage a website by uploading the new files. You mean they don't even use version control? Madness!

But to most people (including past me) who have a website and want to update it, this process is impossible to understand, let alone implement. They would have to learn so much techy stuff that they really don't need.

It's not a perfect comparison, but maybe it can help explain how it feels as a less technical person being told by a more technical person that "it's just as easy the way I do it".
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Oh heck, I hardly understand any of your post Mike!  :confused:

However I do know how to delegate  ;) so will ask the technical team....
 
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