OOAK Table Tennis Forum

At the moment I have option, of being able to upload pictures or other files onto the forum, switches off. This means if you want to post a picture, you need to upload it elsewhere, to services like photobucket (or other free services) and post the link within [img] brackets here. Many people have never done this before, so may end up not posting the picture, or not even bother to post at all.

The only reason I have it switches off is to conserve bandwidth... although a single picture of say 100kb does not chew up much bandwidth, if 1000 people read the thread and look at the picture, I've suddenly used an extra 100Mb of bandwidth.

However I would consider switching it back on, if most people here think it would have a significant positive influence on the forum.

What do you think?

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
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Save the bandwidth, if people really wants to post pictures or videos here, they can learn.

Maybe do a detailed tutorial on how to upload a photo to imageshack and add to a post would help.

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Yes I sure that would help... but only a few would read it, and then it will get lost among the other posts, and we'd be back at square one. New people would probably not find it unless they searched for it or know where to look.

I supposed one option is just to try it... if people find it useful and it does not chew up too much bandwidth, I can leave it on.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Yes, turn this feature on! The bandwidth in today's broadband terms is minuscule and phpBB has ample admin settings to limit the byte size and pixel dimensions of any uploaded image. Once activated, you will begin to receive much more image content, and this is content you store and own; not just a link to a file on someone else's server that may or may not be there later.

I've admin'd forum sites both ways for close to 14 years now and I can tell you that this is a no-brainer.

Thanks for sharing that nathanso!

Can you suggest some sensible settings for file size and pixel dimensions?

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Size: 200K, Pixels: 800 wide by 600 tall. The idea is to not slow page loads or cause horizontal scrolling for those with smaller screens. Some will still be challenged on how to prep their camera's 12MP images for web consumption but this is a big step in the right direction.

There is already a feature on this forum offering help and instructions.

faq.php

If people either can't or won't use these, or the instructions and how to's available on how to post images on other sites and link them here - of which there are many help tutorials - I doubt people will read instructions, or watch them at all. I'm all for making things easier but there comes a point where the individual needs to take some responsibility or put the effort in and learn. Ironically, its haggisv who has raised this topic and you've already posted videos etc to the forum. I could understand this more if this topic had been started by someone who wanted to post a video or photo but didn't know how to.

Putting this in table tennis terms, if players struggled against playing LP's (posting images on the forum) would you help them learn how to play against them (refer them to lots of help available already to improve their knowledge or give advice on technique/tactics etc), but the onus is on them to learn - or would you ban LP's so it was no longer a problem (your suggestion haggisv) and they could enjoy table tennis the easy way but never truly improve. Mmmm, maybe that's not a good analogy after all

On a serious note, there have been enough threads around which have been successful and required forum members to post pictures. If the topic is strong enough, people will find away to post the image in the forums current format. Regarding size of files there are lots of nifty little programs that can reduce image size before posting here eg Easy Thumbnails - but then people would have to read the help files to learn how to use it

Debater, I am glad that you agreed with me in this regard.

If you all remember the first few months I was here, I have much trouble knowing how to post pictures, not even videos. It was with some helpful hints and directions offered by the knowledgeable forum members and with many tried and failed attempts by me, I finally figured out the ways and procedures to upload pictures and videos from the camera and posted them here.

I am no expert in these stuffs but, learning by actually doing it by oneself is the fastest way to learn.

Hmm. Thanks for the idea, I shall endeavor to do 800x600 -- should be big enough, actually.

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Viscaria. H2 Neo 2.15. Tenergy 05 1.9.

So what did you decide? Are you going to turn on the upload feature? I think it would be really convenient.

Also, I think going to forums where users post pics via links is often disappointing when the link no longer works. If the post and image is on this server then it will always be there for the seo bots to find. That's better for your site instead of sending the bots to someone else's site and letting them get undeserved recognition by Google or whoever as a link referral. What you want are incoming links, not outgoing links!

 

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For the moment I've decided not to do it, mainly because in the last few weeks I've had some issue with my host, and it seems I'm already 'straining' the (shared) server... I need to look for better options soon, and if this has plenty of capacity I can't see any reason not to enable the feature....

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide