Sonoma wrote:
SeexySauce wrote:
Im kinda confused as to the whole point of avatar restrictions, can someone help me out.
no restrictions mean people can pretty much use whatever they want as an avatar. inappropriate images / bulky images that push the topics in too much / big file sized images that take longer for the viewer to download / not optimized images that take longer to download as well as cause stutter step when scrolling down the page.
We started out not wanting avatars to be a main focus of a thread, they can be distracting, they can even detour a conversation causing unneeded and wanted posts that don't belong in the thread thus causing more work for the moderators and more unneeded reading for the viewer, the list is rather long as to why NOT to have avatars at all, However we are trying to compromise between individuality and optimization.
Eury, if you see this, you'll know its a classic me thing to do
Sonoma, i believe that restricting uploads is a good idea, but restricting content by filesize and file type? seriously? I understand your arguments, but in all honesty if an avatar is "distracting" a thread and that thread requires "moderation" due to that "distraction" it sounds to me like the subject in itself was not worth talking about.
I do not mind the restricting content by type, inappropriate content/lewd photo's/suggestive themes should be left out of the forum, they exist solely to disrupt flow, but to base it on content type, what did you do, hardcore the user's icon as a .jpg based on their user id or a database column, referencing a static/database list? If this is the case, why the jpg requirement? png has such a better quality as a lossless, and its really not much bigger (and in most cases, usually the same size unless jpg is done in medium or low quality)
GIF's... holy gif's i understand for the MA Chat, that would DESTROY some people's browsers, but a gif... you think someone's potentially 150-250k gif, is going to be disruptive/affect page loads... i don't see where the "stutter" you're talking about is on the old forums, it doesn't exist for me.
If you want to restrict it, set a file size max of 125k-150k, yes if someone loads a post with 25 UNIQUE USERS, all with 150k gif's its going to slow things down, but lets be serious, lets talk about odds, what do you think the ODDS of that happening are? Could it? yes, but i could also win the lotto right?
I have 8 years of background in
Professional Website Development and Cisco Network Management, and i can appreciate someone's efforts for trying to optimize the hell (sorry if profanity isn't allowed) out of things. I have worked on platforms that handle 10,000 active users, i have contributed to several open source projects (including PHPBB2 and 3) and have developed 3 different forum platforms over the years.
If someone is browsing the forum, and they're on a slow connection, maybe you could have a small function, where you can enable "lite" mode and it disable all non "optimized" avitars (gif's, files over x size, ect) from showing, Or maybe even set lite mode by default that way only if someone OPTS to have the higher stuff they can. This would be extremely simple to implement, 2-3 hours tops, if it took longer than that then I'd say its probably being implemented wrong, Chats should NEVER show gif's, holy, that would be a terrible idea.
I understand how much optimization you're after, but in all honesty this forum doesn't load any faster than the old one for me, which points to network connection (sorry, but my network connection has never been good, 2-5megs if that). Or low end hardware, in which case, if you go off my previous recommendation it helps out much more than restricting users.
As for storage (continud below), I can tell this is being hosted on a digital ocean droplet, good on you guys for thinking about that, its an awesome way to host your server, and it provides amazing performance utilizing SSD's and top notch hardware. ( If you're wondering how i know, the servers Public IP is in the same subnet as one of my own :P )
Storage, you guys should use Amazon's S3, its free for 5GB of storage for the first year, and you get enough requests to easily handle the requirements of this forum for free, then its $0.035 per GB of storage, so if you guys control the use, its amazingly fast, always responds, and prevents the site from being held up, because its essentially acting like a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
If you want to know my current background i am a Linux Server Administrator for my own 3 companies, and i also developed the web based software that runs them, if you don't believe me on this, Toushi (KenBarroll) knows me personally and he knows I'm a very busy person
Sorry if this post seems long winded, i just wanted to add my 2 cents, due to my experience with forum software, people, general web development and server management i figured i might be able to give a different perspective on the matter, in all honesty i feel its being handled the best it can be in its current situation, which in my opinion is poorly thought out and executed.