A (Permanent) Solution for Image Hosting

In May, we offered A Solution for Image Hosting Woes and it was exactly that: a solution. It meant we controlled access to uploads and another image host wouldn't fail us. It was quick and dirty and based loosely off a system which site staff have used for years for board-critical uploads.
But there was a lot to dislike about it, too. No multi-uploads. No finding your files again if you didn't save the URL or to manage your uploads at all after the fact. It did the job but just that one job.

So it's in the spirit of wanting a solution that would work long term (even permanently?!) for the whole site that we invested in an official software add-on called the "media gallery" where you will be able to upload, tag, sort, and edit your images as needed then use them wherever you want to on the board.

It's been enabled on the board for about a month now - so you may have stumbled across some of the ways it's integrated into the board already, but with this announcement we're officially launching the uploads feature on HNZ!

​

The site FAQ will soon be updated to reflect this change, and some uploads FAQ are being finalized to be shared in the very near future. In the interim, what you should know is:

• All uploads from our quick and dirty solution are in the new system already and have been reassigned to their original uploaders! (Thanks especially to Mia for this herculean sorting effort!)
• Eventually, previous links will be disabled but we're leaving a long runway for a transition. (We feel bad to do this to you but think it's worthwhile!)
• You can move your account's uploads to the appropriate categories or make custom albums for yourself
• All uploads in this feature are public for the internet unless uploaded to the "members only" category, when it will only be visible to members
• As usual, this should only be used for uploads meant for use on HNZ and this will now be more easily enforced!

If you have any questions before the FAQ goes live, feel free to ask them here - and we hope you find this update both useful and reassuring!

Happy uploading!

-Nick
(On behalf of the HNZ Site Staff)

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

YOUUUUU LEGENDS this is amazing! Thanks everyone for sorting this and ESPECIALLY Mia for all that sorting god dang

I do indeed have a question, as a person with a. let's call it "image heavy" approach to HNZ nobody look at how many broken images there are in my gallery thread its FINE ill fix it EVENTUALLY what are the limitations on this system? I've been hosting things mostly on Tumblr for a few reasons (ease of sorting/retrieving old links, file size limits, the need to upload like 50 images per character bio, etc) and it'd be nice to port all that over to something that's permanent and not have to worry about reliving the photobucket/imgur losses but I also absolutely do not want to Demolish HNZ's Servers With My Mighty Horde Of Images I'm Not Kidding My HNZ Images Folder Is 22GB (this does include raw versions of photos ive used for graphics and a few videos ive saved to make gifs of so its not ALL things ive made to post on site but you still get the idea)

So in the spirit of curbing my own tendencies, are there likely going to be restrictions on number of uploads per user? I see the limit is 1MB per file, but I'm living proof of how those megabytes can stack up. If I've got literally hundreds of images to copy over, is it worth keeping it offsite to save HNZ's servers? I'm IN LOVE with this gallery feature but I also don't wanna be That Guy who ruins it for everyone and/or jacks up hosting costs :V

 

[Nicolas King]

Thanks for asking, Rowan!
First, I'll admit when I read this in my half-asleep state this morning I read that you had 220GB (not 22GB ) of images and kind of panicked.
22GB is still a lot, though - and to put it in the context of hosting costs at $0.10/GB just those files would cost $2.20/month to host!
I'd be curious if you sorted your folder by file size what the total size of all images that are less than 1mb might be? (This will give us a much better sense of feasibility of moving your uploads over)

Quick points on limits:

• 1mb is the individual upload limit, as you've noted, but board rules indicate images should generally be less than that - so we expect the vast majority of permanent uploads to actually be less than 500kb.
• There is no limit on total storage per-account. That's a feature that's possible but since HNZers have 5000 accounts each it'd kind of be pointless.
• Naturally, we do have limited storage space which can be expanded as needed and as may be wise but we'd need a better sense of what the real need is before making a determination about what's realistic. Since May, there have been about 900 uploads to HNZ's server and the total storage that took was less than 120mb.
• While multi-upload is an option there is a limit on "unassociated uploads" in the software (files uploaded but not yet saved somewhere) which is 100 per account. So if you bulk upload things try to stick to fewer than 100 at a time!

If you do get a total for your HNZ images folder where all files are less than 1mb, feel free to reply here or PM me and we'll figure out the best way forward.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

First, I'll admit when I read this in my half-asleep state this morning I read that you had 220GB (not 22GB ) of images and kind of panicked.

At least you didn't misread it as 22TB

That makes sense though, I'm glad to have some concrete numbers. I'll look at my files when I'M not half asleep first thing in the morning and get back to you. Knowing how low it's been so far is definitely heartening, but as I said I haven't tried hosting any of my bio/gallery graphics on here yet so idk what the impact of more image-heavy users switching to HNZ would be (esp since it's not just me who uses a lot of images) Plus, futureproofing wise, those numbers are only gonna go up. I'd love to have the security of hosting on HNZ, but definitely not at the cost of draining site funds, so I'll look at my actual numbers more closely post-cuppa.

(That said, if hosting costs become an issue I definitely wouldn't object to periodic donation drives or some kinda small monthly donation option to help keep the floating candles on.)

EDIT: I did a lil preliminary check just to give SOME idea and all of the images from Ainsley's bio minus the ones more than 1MB (aka just her current sig) come to 21.1MB. Some will be more some will be less but using that as a ROUGH average I currently have 35 characters with full-image bios so that'd be somewhere in the 700s just across bios, plus all the images in my gallery however much that may add, sigs for characters who DON'T have full bios, all the buttons I've made, images for other purposes around the site (I've already been uploading things like lesson images & sig requests because that required a lot less organisation than.... this mess)

So for my own individual impact I'd likely be looking at less than a gigabyte at the moment, but that number's only gonna go up as time goes by, and I know I'm not the only person who'd likely have a similar impact. I'll fully understand if this is something you want to put some kind of regulation on, given it's a cost that's only going to creep up over time, and one that some users are going to be contributing to more than others.

 

[Teddy Pirrip]

Hi Nick! This is great and so helpful! With the update allowing us to see who has uploaded, is there a way of having an option for anonymous uploads? I was thinking of anonymous compliments in particular.

 

[Nicolas King]

So for my own individual impact I'd likely be looking at less than a gigabyte at the moment, but that number's only gonna go up as time goes by, and I know I'm not the only person who'd likely have a similar impact. I'll fully understand if this is something you want to put some kind of regulation on, given it's a cost that's only going to creep up over time, and one that some users are going to be contributing to more than others.

I think you should be okay to start uploading.
We may ask people to archive old signatures or something over time, but the immediate jump seems okay and we'll monitor the slow growth as it slowly grows.

Hi Nick! This is great and so helpful! With the update allowing us to see who has uploaded, is there a way of having an option for anonymous uploads? I was thinking of anonymous compliments in particular.

No way to do anonymous uploads - but we have (painstakingly!) come up with a solution for anonymous compliments which Mia mentions in the anonymous compliments thread. If you upload to the proper category, your upload will be hidden from all users except yourself and staff and before we reveal the compliments we'll have reassigned the uploader to a staff account of some sort.

 

[Archie Renner]

Yayy so hype for this feature I'm totally going to use it

Because I want to make sure I am understanding this fully, the images we have already uploaded are sorted by the account that uploaded them, which is awesome!!

I think this was mentioned but I do want to make sure, do we need to re upload all our images already uploaded before the previous links are not usable? I am happy to do this, but wanted to make sure I am understanding this correctly and that this is what we need to do

 

[Nicolas King]

I think this was mentioned but I do want to make sure, do we need to re upload all our images already uploaded before the previous links are not usable? I am happy to do this, but wanted to make sure I am understanding this correctly and that this is what we need to do

You don't need to reupload them if they were uploaded to HNZ's server before (we've already done that!). You can edit the images that have been assigned to you to be in any category/album you think is good for them (or else they'll just chill in that big messy folder).

The thing you'll have to do (eventually, no rush) is change the URLs of any places where you've used images that are in this format: https://img.hogwarts.nz/img/bmqqYs4.png
And change it to the equivalent of the new format from the media gallery: https://hogwarts.nz/uploads/bmqqys4-png.725/full

(The above example is @Professor Elvera Le Fey 's signature image )