The Avatar loading system...

[felix]

All the Avatars are loaded as attachments to AS... right?… If they were to be hosted by some image host site (as in members only forced to upload the avatar to some image host then load the avatar to AS via the link provided by that site… like the sigs… but automating the process of testing if the Avatar meets standards should be doable)… wouldn't that make the forum faster (by reducing the load on the servers)… I'm presuming that text and the average forum icon is insignificant compared to the avatars…

Q. Isn't this the function of the disabled URL thing in the Control Panel ?

[NightWish]

Avatars are not attachments per-se but they are held on the server.

The function of the "upload via url" is to transfer the avatar image file from a remote server to the forum; just as the file would be transferred from your local hard disk to the forum using the other option. In both cases the files are stored on the forum server (in the database to be precise).

The upload via URL feature is disabled for security reasons.

Originally Posted by BlackCatXIII

I'm presuming that text and the average forum icon is insignificant compared to the avatars

Actually no. The avatar data is dwarfed by the post text/index data (avatars equal about 10% of post data in pure storage terms).

Also, validating remote urls is not easy. Just because the images are "checked" doesn't mean they won't change (if we don't control the remote site). You would need to keep checking or make a deal with the image host... not going to happen. It makes the system bandwidth inefficient (bandwidth is more important to us than disk space due to the popularity of the site). If you use remote urls you basically have to manually validate, which we don't have the time to do... even if we did VB doesn't support remote avatars anyway :P... so it is a moot point.

[felix]

Wow... so someone writing a 10 character post is actually adding more then 50k... If I were to copy the text in this post several times in a text file it would take quite a lot to reach 50k... So... Index Data is about 48k per post ... awesome

The text above is just 251 bytes...

Spoiler for Just How Much Text is 50K:

Sorry I wanted to post just how much text you need but the forum software won't allow it ... too many characters

Also, validating remote urls is not easy. Just because the images are "checked" doesn't mean they won't change (if we don't control the remote site). You would need to keep checking or make a deal with the image host... not going to happen. It makes the system bandwidth inefficient (bandwidth is more important to us than disk space due to the popularity of the site). If you use remote urls you basically have to manually validate, which we don't have the time to do... even if we did VB doesn't support remote avatars anyway :P... so it is a moot point.

That makes sense... even for a n00b like me... thanks for taking the time to explain ^__^