Site Upgrade, Attachments, & Photobucket
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 4:43 pm
We have several site changes in the works that we wanted to share.
First, we've significantly upgraded our site hosting package, which will should make the site faster and allows us to host user images. Unfortunately, as part of this upgrade, our hosting company moved us to a new server without telling us. As a result, the sites (main site and forums) went offline yesterday (July 31st) evening. For most users, everything should be back up and working normally now. Sometimes it takes a while for a new address to propagate across the Internet so there could be some more hiccups over the next day or so.
.
Second, we've enabled the ability to attach photos to your forum posts. This means you don't have to use Postimage or Photobucket anymore. As you're composing or replying to a post there should now be an "Attachments" tab at the bottom. Each post is limited to 20 attachments and attachments may not be larger than 4MB.
Finally, we're aware of the new "paywall" that Photobucket has created trying to get users to pay a significant annual fee for 3rd party image hosting. We're in the process of replicating those images on VTCI. This is a multi-step process and it may be some time before we're able to modify all of the historical posts (over 6000) to point to VTCI, but we are working on it. Note that if you've used Photobucket in the past, you should be able to access and download all of the images you have posted directly from your account. It's the links on other sites (e.g., VTCI) that are gradually "breaking." Eventually we may work to copy all externally hosted images to VTCI so that our links/images don't break with the passage of time.
First, we've significantly upgraded our site hosting package, which will should make the site faster and allows us to host user images. Unfortunately, as part of this upgrade, our hosting company moved us to a new server without telling us. As a result, the sites (main site and forums) went offline yesterday (July 31st) evening. For most users, everything should be back up and working normally now. Sometimes it takes a while for a new address to propagate across the Internet so there could be some more hiccups over the next day or so.
.
Second, we've enabled the ability to attach photos to your forum posts. This means you don't have to use Postimage or Photobucket anymore. As you're composing or replying to a post there should now be an "Attachments" tab at the bottom. Each post is limited to 20 attachments and attachments may not be larger than 4MB.
Finally, we're aware of the new "paywall" that Photobucket has created trying to get users to pay a significant annual fee for 3rd party image hosting. We're in the process of replicating those images on VTCI. This is a multi-step process and it may be some time before we're able to modify all of the historical posts (over 6000) to point to VTCI, but we are working on it. Note that if you've used Photobucket in the past, you should be able to access and download all of the images you have posted directly from your account. It's the links on other sites (e.g., VTCI) that are gradually "breaking." Eventually we may work to copy all externally hosted images to VTCI so that our links/images don't break with the passage of time.