Good idea chaps. I can add that this weekend.

Return to top link is now at the header of each comment. It's not really needed in the original post though this is one of those all or nothing functions. I'll take more time to see it not appear in the original post in the new software.

Brad's current thread on sale of a batch of radios raises another consideration for the next forum version.

Each time I return to the thread, the browser has to load all the pictures from the entire thread before I can look at the latest post in the thread. That is slow for me and must be putting a lot of load on the server as well.

Access to threads via a list of posts would enable members to jump straight to the latest post or any other post they want to review, without loading the entire thread each time.

Maven

The server can handle that load and many times it. It is the connections that cause the bottleneck for images and would be overcome with the rollout of the national fibre network though I am still two years away from that. One of the things I am considering is displaying links to images in threads rather than the images themselves. A few forums operate this way with few complaints. This would make life easier for the humble webmaster too as there are quite a few things to consider when displaying images.

I'll give the suggestion some thought though I don't really want to do much else to the current software.

Brad
perhaps thumbnail images might be a good compromise.
I have a pretty good connection and large images dont worry me, however there are those who dont have that luxury.

the ability to link to photobucket images would be nice too, but that overrides my comment above



ben

+ 1 for thumbnails as a compromise.

My tactic in dealing with new posts in threads with lots of photos is to stop the download with the cross in the address bar (Firefox). This leaves the text and maybe a photo downloaded. Then click on any new photos in the new post(s) to view them.

Handy if the broadband allowance is burned up at the end of the month.

Please add a vote for thumbnails.

My tactic in dealing with new posts in threads with lots of photos is to stop the download with the cross in the address bar (Firefox). This leaves the text and maybe a photo downloaded.

I do that too, but then I have to repeat that action every time I access the thread.

(You already have my vote for thumbnails.)

Many members already use Photobucket and Flickr to host images. Just use [img]http://imagehostingdomain/blah.jpg[/img] to link directly to images (on those servies that allow hotlinking).

Thumbnails aren't a bad idea as such though unless a lot of work is done and the correct support is in place them there will be no saving in bandwidth or loading times. Most forums that cater for them simply shrink the physical display size and not the actual weight of the file, so the file display smaller but the same number of megabytes is being downloaded. For a saving to be made and for a quicker loading time the file has to be duplicated and then shrunk and I do not know how to go about this in an automated way.

I am thinking that this is why many webmasters that operate vBulletin and UBBThreads allow hyperlinks to hosted and non-hosted images instead. Closer to the time that development of members' image directories gets underway I'll look at this again and see if something can be done.

I should point out a reminder that the maximum width allowable for self-inserted images is 655px. Please remember this when linking to images.

If thumbnails won't solve the bandwidth/loading time issue on this particular site, then it's probably not worth the effort.

If thumbnails won't solve the bandwidth/loading time issue on this particular site, then it's probably not worth the effort.

One other thing I just thought of is that the new site's pages load very quickly - meaning much better than the current site. It's almost instantaneous and when allowing for the fact that the new site is something like 1240px wide and is fed from the same database as this site it is something of a marvel. The one problem here is that image technology hasn't kept pace with the new ways of building websites. Whilst it is possible to compress images without loss of quality, for example, with the PNG format, an equivalent reduction in file weight has not come about.

As I said before, none of these things will be a problem once the webserver is connected to the Internet via FTTH fibre, though because the new site performs so well, the loading times for images will be the same as is the case now, which means there will be a feeling that there is a reduction in image loading times even though there isn't. I don't know if I am explaining it the right way but that is pretty much how the 'Net works.

Looking to the future, it will be great serving this and the other sites I host at several MB/s instead of the 1MBs that is currently the case.

I'll add that I've always liked the idea of images being able to be included in posts and I think it is only the fact that I've put up a thread with around 40 images that we've all noticed a performance issue. Despite me having that preference it would be better for the site from a search engine optimisation (SEO) standpoint that I adopt the vBulletin-style hyperlinking to a seperate 'picture viewer' page that displays each image because search engines love websites with large numbers of pages. Even on this ancient content management system there's several thousand viewable pages generated by only about 30 files on the server.

It's all a balancing act - making the place fit for real people and computers all at the same time.

I appreciate the complexity. Not sure I understand why you say generating thumbnails will not save bandwidth, though.

The trick is to generate the thumbnail at the time of uploading (once, not time-critical) rather than downloading (many, time-critical).

The main factors in file weight are DPI, bit-depth and area.
Thumbnails only need minimum DPI and 8-bit colour, though many re-sizing programs will default to re-sampling at 24-bits.

I know this process is automated in some forum software such as vBulletin. How to do it depends on what scripting languages are available to the site builder. On a GNU/*nix server, it could be a shell script calling GIMP. Google shows pages of options for PHP modules to automate thumbnail generation, which should work on any standard server configuration with PHP. It means an extra field in the database for a thumbnail linked to each image. I don't think you would have to invent anything special.

The same module could probably be used to standardise member's avatars. I notice Brad's avatar is 7kb at 24-bit depth, and is better visual quality than mine which is also 24-bit depth but 17kb - he must have used a better compression algorithm!

But I appreciate that this is all up to Brad and only one of many features to be considered.

Maven

No go with Gimp here, as the host runs Windows 2008 which is Microsoft's server operating system. Even though there is a Windows version there's a few reasons why using Linux software in a Windows environment and vice versa is not a good idea and the main one is stability. For this reason on its own administrators will more often than not stick to software originally developed for the environment they are running and avoid ported versions.

There would no doubt be ways to achieve the equivalent on a Windows server however it will require some research on my part. The one single weakness of Windows is that its scripting environment doesn't give the administrator the free reign they get with a Unix server and I've performed a few tricks with FreeBSD (a leading Unix-based server operating system) that Windows can't do without building applications to provide the necessary support.

So at this stage I'm not going to say it can't happen. When the time comes I will see if it can be done and then how reliable it is likely to be. If not I am sure we can get by with links instead of thumbnails - it's still better than what we have now.

Hi Brad,

I'm not sure if it's been suggested before or not, but it'd be nice for threads to go to the top of the list when a new reply is sent. I just saw a new post for the Tech Talk forum, but had to go back to the second page to find the thread.

Hope this makes sense,

Chris