The Flat Earth Society

The Flat Earth Society => Suggestions & Concerns => Topic started by: Dr David Thork on August 21, 2019, 06:28:54 PM

Title: Built in image hosting
Post by: Dr David Thork on August 21, 2019, 06:28:54 PM
I realise we have such a thing, but it gives a very unsatisfying thumbnail at the bottom of the page.

For years I used tinypic. That's about to die. I recently started using postimages.org.
They happen to have an integration for SMF. My suggestion is that we integrate this into the site to make it more convenient for everyone to add images.


https://postimages.org/smf




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Title: Re: Built in image hosting
Post by: xasop on August 22, 2019, 01:16:32 AM
This would be easy enough to do ourselves without relying on a third-party service to host the images, which would be my preference if we implement something like this.
Title: Re: Built in image hosting
Post by: Pete Svarrior on August 22, 2019, 09:32:48 AM
I sort of agree - integrating another third party would probably just kick the can down the road - they could die at any time. On the other hand, if we want to store (potentially) every image someone uploads here, this could become a storage challenge over time.
Title: Re: Built in image hosting
Post by: xasop on August 22, 2019, 11:03:48 AM
I sort of agree - integrating another third party would probably just kick the can down the road - they could die at any time. On the other hand, if we want to store (potentially) every image someone uploads here, this could become a storage challenge over time.

Storage is cheap, and if it were to become a problem (which I doubt given our current volume of traffic), we could find ways to make it even cheaper with a little bit of work on SMF.
Title: Re: Built in image hosting
Post by: Pete Svarrior on August 22, 2019, 11:09:07 AM
You're right, it's probably not worth worrying about.
Title: Re: Built in image hosting
Post by: Dr David Thork on August 22, 2019, 09:11:34 PM
How about you set a storage time depending on the forum it is posted in?

So post something in AR or CN and 28 days later it expires and is removed.
Maybe the Lounge gets 28 days as well.

The other discussion boards get 6 months because those conversations are more important. Anything older and you are in necro land anyway.

And the FE boards get kept forever as it is an archive of flat earth stuff that can be used for reference at any point in the future.

Just make those the T&Cs. I think most people would accept we don't need to keep AR stuff forever, its just a convenience of a service. And if you want to make a lasting post down there, well use a third party as we don't think as a site that AR images need to be maintained forever at a storage cost.