info Autoshite technical help. Ask questions about how the site works here.

[LightBulbFun]

Just wondering, is there any chance for an undo button when you accidentally click on the massive "mark forum as read" button

*grumble*

 

I dont normally have an issue with it, but twice now in recent weeks I have done it LOL 

[egg]

could we have a 'shocked' emoji as one of the 'emotions' I could feel when reacting to a post please?

[robt100]

Is there a reason why the forum seems to auto-resize images I upload? Just posted some where someone was asking about polshing the car, but due to the "auto-shrink" on image size you can't really see the detail. Not sure if there is a setting I need to adjust? (Files are well within the mb limit)

[eddyramrod]

An issue has arisen today, and I'm wondering if it's the site, or just me...

When I reply to a PM the message I've typed usually takes a few seconds to appear in the thread.  Today I've replied to a message and the reply has taken nearly two hours to process.  That can't be right, can it?

 

Edit: and now it's doing the same with this post!

Further edit: posts behave normally on The Dark Wob, so it rather looks like the problem might be AS itself.  I mean look, I've been able to add these two edits while the post is trying to upload itself!

Still further edit: the above was a good hour ago and still it won't post!

[eddyramrod]

...And as if by magic, my posts are appearing to a normal timescale!  I don't know who's done what but Thank You.

[Cheggers]

AS doesn't seem to work for me on Tapatalk since the outage last week. Is anyone else having the same issue?

[Spurious]

Has the mobile web interface changed? I used to have all the forums and subforums, now they all seem to be lumped into one page? 

[Mrs6C]

  On 11/07/2023 at 20:08, Spurious said:

Has the mobile web interface changed? I used to have all the forums and subforums, now they all seem to be lumped into one page? 

Expand  

Looks like you have selected the rightmost button from the three on the RHS of the page opposite the 'Topics' heading. Select the first of the three and that should give you the layout you want. 

[Spurious]

  On 11/07/2023 at 21:24, Mrs6C said:

Looks like you have selected the rightmost button from the three on the RHS of the page opposite the 'Topics' heading. Select the first of the three and that should give you the layout you want. 

Expand  

God I'm an idiot. User error. Thank you, that's fixed it 😄

[mercedade]

I've suddenly stopped receiving notifications about PMs - I thought I must have clicked something when trying to quieten down roffle messages, but I'm actually missing direct PMs as well, but I've definitely got the "receive email" option ticked for PMs.

Also, they're not in spam.

Anything I can do?

[pauldoubleyou]

How do I get my account deleted?

 

Like I want the whole thing deleted please. 

[mercedade]

  On 14/07/2023 at 08:05, mercedade said:

I've suddenly stopped receiving notifications about PMs - I thought I must have clicked something when trying to quieten down roffle messages, but I'm actually missing direct PMs as well, but I've definitely got the "receive email" option ticked for PMs.

Also, they're not in spam.

Anything I can do?

Expand  

Must just be me!

[brownnova]

  On 17/07/2023 at 09:40, mercedade said:

Must just be me!

Expand  

No that’s happened to me too… not sure why. 

[mercedade]

I would PM tech support ( @Slartibartfast?) but I figured with Current Forum Issues that he might have other priorities right now just trying to keep the forum afloat tbh

[SiC]

  On 14/07/2023 at 08:05, mercedade said:

suddenly stopped receiving notifications about PMs

Expand  

What email provider do you use? Hotmail or Outlook? There is a known issue where the MS servers are rejecting emails from the IP address range this server is on.

Im investigating ways on how we can get around this without spending money. I've cut back on some of the hosting cost already as the last few months bills have been astronomical and I don't want it to start racking up again. 

[mercedade]

Cheers Si

I'm signed in with a Hotmail address (old skool, since '98). It was fine until maybe 4 weeks ago.

Good work on the behind the scenes support as well, sounds like you're getting stuck in. 

  On 01/08/2023 at 19:48, SiC said:

What email provider do you use? Hotmail or Outlook? There is a known issue where the MS servers are rejecting emails from the IP address range this server is on.

Im investigating ways on how we can get around this without spending money. I've cut back on some of the hosting cost already as the last few months bills have been astronomical and I don't want it to start racking up again. 

Expand  

 

[BorniteIdentity]

Hi Gang

Quick question.  Does the photo-compression have to be set to 'UTTER MINGEBAG' mode? 

73kb for a photograph was unheard of when I first got a 4mp digital camera in 2000.

I appreciate there are alternative hosting platforms - all of which are a complete fucking ball ache.  

It just seems a real, real shame in the year 2023 to have such terrible pics.  They even look shit on a phone.

[Talbot]

  On 13/04/2023 at 19:04, robt100 said:

Is there a reason why the forum seems to auto-resize images I upload? Just posted some where someone was asking about polshing the car, but due to the "auto-shrink" on image size you can't really see the detail. Not sure if there is a setting I need to adjust? (Files are well within the mb limit)

Expand  

 

  On 09/08/2023 at 20:21, BorniteIdentity said:

 Does the photo-compression have to be set to 'UTTER MINGEBAG' mode?  73kb for a photograph was unheard of when I first got a 4mp digital camera in 2000.  I appreciate there are alternative hosting platforms - all of which are a complete fucking ball ache.  It just seems a real, real shame in the year 2023 to have such terrible pics.  They even look shit on a phone.

Expand  

There is a reason for both the resize and the "UTTER MINGEBAG" compression.

This forum hosts a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of images.  Every kb saved per photo makes a huge difference to how much space is used on the server.  Old photos are not purged, so the amount of storage is only going up.  Photos are resized to 800pix in the longer dimension for viewing in thread, and are saved at 1280px in the longer dimension (viewable by clicking on the image)  The .jpg compression is set to 60, as this is the best compromise between allowing photos to be uploaded and hence put context to threads and discussions, or having to delete older pictures to be able to have higher quality images stored.  60 is also the limit of where .jpg artifacting starts to become really noticeable.  at 50 it's utterly awful, but at 70 it's not a lot better than at 60.

External hosing of photos is a bit of a ballache, but is pretty standard for forums.  It's a lot easier than it used to be.  If you really do want to show off a 22mpixel super-high-quality .png image, then external hosting is free and a much better option.

Keeping most images under 100kb means we can have a lot of them hosted.  Photos have gotten a lot bigger in the last few years, which means we'd be hosing 3Mb for every photo uploaded, which is just not possible.

Info also here:

 

 

[High Jetter]

Not sure if it helps in any way, but I tend to transfer pics to my PC then open them in ACDSee editor and crop. Even the slightest crop seems to reduce the file size dramatically. (Can you tell I started using computers back in the days of 1.44 floppies and miniscule capacity HDD's?)

[SiC]

  On 15/08/2023 at 12:12, High Jetter said:

Not sure if it helps in any way, but I tend to transfer pics to my PC then open them in ACDSee editor and crop. Even the slightest crop seems to reduce the file size dramatically. (Can you tell I started using computers back in the days of 1.44 floppies and miniscule capacity HDD's?)

Expand  

No as the forum software will compress them anyway once uploaded. JPEG Compression is lossy and compression on compression will just reduce the quality of the image without actually reducing the file size much.

 

[SiC]

Right now (while I have a terminal session open in front of me) the  storage is at 202GB used (78%) out of 275GB of storage, leaving 59GB free. 

Because everyone loves data and to give an idea of usage of the image uploads with its changing over time.

 

Amount added per month:

Raw data:

Date		Size
2013-06		27M
2013-07		71M
2013-08		69M
2013-09		75M
2013-10		134M
2013-11		432M
2013-12		126M
2014-01		187M
2014-02		109M
2014-03		196M
2014-04		198M
2014-05		212M
2014-06		307M
2014-07		284M
2014-08		393M
2014-09		470M
2014-10		368M
2014-11		305M
2014-12		334M
2015-01		590M
2015-02		689M
2015-03		524M
2015-04		613M
2015-05		656M
2015-06		674M
2015-07		594M
2015-08		804M
2015-09		813M
2015-10		681M
2015-11		820M
2015-12		804M
2016-01		1018M
2016-02		777M
2016-03		938M
2016-04		833M
2016-05		840M
2016-06		1020M
2016-07		649M
2016-07		1.5G
2016-08		1.2G
2016-09		794M
2016-10		657M
2016-11		643M
2016-12		741M
2017-01		971M
2017-02		693M
2017-03		1.1G
2017-04		943M
2017-05		1.1G
2017-06		1.1G
2017-07		1.5G
2017-08		1.2G
2017-09		1.1G
2017-10		1.2G
2017-11		1018M
2017-12		1.2G
2018-01		1.5G
2018-02		1.1G
2018-03		1.4G
2018-04		1.4G
2018-05		1.6G
2018-06		1.7G
2018-07		1.7G
2018-08		1.7G
2018-09		1.5G
2018-10		1.4G
2018-11		1.4G
2018-12		1.5G
2019-01		1.7G
2019-02		1.5G
2019-03		1.6G
2019-04		1.7G
2019-05		4.0K
2019-05		3.1G
2019-06		3.0G
2019-07		3.1G
2019-08		3.0G
2019-09		2.8G
2019-10		3.0G
2019-11		3.1G
2019-12		2.4G
2020-01		2.8G
2020-02		3.0G
2020-03		3.4G
2020-04		4.3G
2020-05		4.4G
2020-06		3.8G
2020-07		3.1G
2020-08		3.8G
2020-09		3.9G
2020-10		2.7G
2020-11		2.3G
2020-12		2.3G
2021-01		2.3G
2021-02		2.5G
2021-03		2.7G
2021-04		2.7G
2021-05		3.1G
2021-06		2.9G
2021-07		2.6G
2021-08		2.6G
2021-09		2.1G
2021-10		2.4G
2021-11		2.2G
2021-12		2.2G
2022-01		2.5G
2022-02		2.3G
2022-03		2.7G
2022-04		2.8G
2022-05		3.2G
2022-06		3.5G
2022-07		3.4G
2022-08		3.4G
2022-09		2.4G
2022-10		2.4G
2022-11		1.7G
2022-12		2.1G
2023-01		2.2G
2023-02		2.0G
2023-03		2.4G
2023-04		2.8G
2023-05		2.8G
2023-06		2.4G
2023-07		2.6G
2023-08		1.3G

 

[SiC]

Thought I'd do a quick calc on how much each gigabyte costs on the current host. 

€0.000118 GB per hour on main storage

€0.00002 GB per hour on backup

24hrs * 31 days = 744 hrs on a long month

(0.000118 + 0.00002) * 744 = €0.102672 per month

Or €1.20888 per GB of storage per year on the hosting goes up by.  

26.6GB extra content was added last year. So €2.68 per month or €32.16 extra per year in hosting costs for a year's extra worth of data.

In theory storage should get cheaper as technology makes it become more plentiful but like the price of everything, that never seems to happen! Thankfully (?) inflation is making those GB effectively cheaper over time. 

BUT remember the content and especially the photos is what makes the forum. It'd be very boring if it was all just words. So it's a cost that is just part of the forum running costs.

However it does mean with the large amount of uploads, small changes in file size (especially including quality) make a big cumulative difference to those costs.

[High Jetter]

Much appreciated, thank you for getting round this.

[Talbot]

  On 15/08/2023 at 12:12, High Jetter said:

Not sure if it helps in any way, but I tend to transfer pics to my PC then open them in ACDSee editor and crop. Even the slightest crop seems to reduce the file size dramatically. (Can you tell I started using computers back in the days of 1.44 floppies and miniscule capacity HDD's?)

Expand  

The crop is not what is reducing the file size.  It's the re-save with a higher jpg compression factor which is making the size difference.

1.44MB 3.5" HD floppy drive.  Bloody luxury!

 

[Talbot]

Also, for discussion of whether the compression on the forum qualifies as "UTTER MINGEBAG" or not, this is a very useful article on compression.  It's also what I based the 60% figure on, as it seems to be a decent compromise.

https://www.keptlight.com/does-size-matter/

[loserone]

  On 15/08/2023 at 21:28, SiC said:

€32.16 extra per year

Expand  

That seems pretty darned reasonable to me.  

 

I certainly had the impression that uploading videos and people DMing ISO images was the biggest impact to the storage space, where a few GB extra in image storage, whilst an ongoing cost, was probably having less of an impact.

[juular]

  On 15/08/2023 at 10:10, Talbot said:

 

There is a reason for both the resize and the "UTTER MINGEBAG" compression.

This forum hosts a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of images.  Every kb saved per photo makes a huge difference to how much space is used on the server.  Old photos are not purged, so the amount of storage is only going up.  Photos are resized to 800pix in the longer dimension for viewing in thread, and are saved at 1280px in the longer dimension (viewable by clicking on the image)  The .jpg compression is set to 60, as this is the best compromise between allowing photos to be uploaded and hence put context to threads and discussions, or having to delete older pictures to be able to have higher quality images stored.  60 is also the limit of where .jpg artifacting starts to become really noticeable.  at 50 it's utterly awful, but at 70 it's not a lot better than at 60.

External hosing of photos is a bit of a ballache, but is pretty standard for forums.  It's a lot easier than it used to be.  If you really do want to show off a 22mpixel super-high-quality .png image, then external hosting is free and a much better option.

Keeping most images under 100kb means we can have a lot of them hosted.  Photos have gotten a lot bigger in the last few years, which means we'd be hosing 3Mb for every photo uploaded, which is just not possible.

Info also here:

 

 

Expand  

All of this seems totally reasonable to me.

If you really need to upload full quality images, get a free wordpress account and fill the media section to your heart's content. Each image has a copy link button that you can dump in your post.

 

[SiC]

  On 16/08/2023 at 12:39, loserone said:

That seems pretty darned reasonable to me.  

Expand  

Which is presumably why the settings are what they are. If quality was increased the image size from say 80kb to 190kb then ofc that cost would double.

It's also a cost that never goes down unless pictures are purged - but I don't think anyone would even consider that as an option. So year-on-year cost is forever increasing rather than being stable. That needs to be sensible and manageable increase.

Last month the hosting bill got to an incredible €173 for a months usage. Which quite frankly is a bit ridiculous. So I had a big clear out of old instance snapshots, very old backups and unused storage devices. This look on track to have bought it down to (a still high but slightly more sensible) ~€120. It's billed hourly so exact costs what it will be this month have to be extrapolated.

I'm fully expecting to bring that down much further. Currently I'm gathering stats but from spot measurements in the evening when the busiest, the VPS its on is running around 25% processor load utilisation. So rather over provisioned for our current site usage. My short/mid term plan is to move down to a smaller VPS that should substantially reduce costs with no noticeable impact to responsiveness and bring costs down. Currently half the hosting cost is just that VPS instance. 

Actual processing load is pretty light. The forum software has a caching front and there aren't that many posts. So that cache doesn't get invalidated that often (every few mins?). The biggest load is bandwidth serving the images. A useful attribute of the current provider is they give a set speed data pipe for an instance rather than charge per GB of transfer. So costs are relatively fixed if a lot of people suddenly visit a thread with a picture dump. 

I think the forum software compresses much less than Tapatalk image uploads do. They also shed their images after so long too. I predominantly use Tapatalk as I've found it easier to cross post but if you look at the start of some of my threads, those Tapatalk images from a few years ago have been yeeted already. I pay for Tapatalk premium too!

Once the costs get back under a sensible control, we can have another look at the balance on quality Vs storage usage Vs cost. Picture heavy threads are what make the content interesting and something that needs to carry on. As devices get more powerful with higher resolution screens, people will expect/presume better quality images as tiles move on. Imagine how crap it would be if we were doing 320x240 sized images that were common a decade and half ago. However that needs to be balanced that it isn't too extravagant for essentially a tin pot operation. (Presumably that tin pot may need rattling again soon?!)

[loserone]

I suppose in part it comes down to what is the purpose of uploading images.  If it's to tell a story on the web, then the current set up is OK as long as you're not on a decent high resolution monitor, and even then it's only a mild irritation unless you're trying to get some details out of a photo e.g. a reg number from a distant spottage or similar. 

 

If you have any intention of printing the images, for example, for a calendar, then you might as well have a six year old with a crayon for the quality that they print at.  

 

It's a shame we can't have a off by default option to upload at full quality as that might enable the best calendar type shots to be kept.  Still, I appreciate that would be reliant on folk not abusing it.

[loserone]

  On 16/08/2023 at 13:01, SiC said:

tin pot may need rattling

Expand  

Clink!