Problem with posting topics with oversize pictures

Joined
Jul 21, 2007
Messages
3,227
I've just typed out a new topic, and attached 3 pictures. I'd already reduced them in size, so assumed that they would all be under 125k. Unfortunately, 2 of them were just over.

When I clicked the 'submit' button, I got an error page stating that the images were oversize. I then clicked on the 'back' button (on the page, NOT on my browser) and was taken back to my post editting page.

I corrected the photos & clicked on submit again, and got another error message, saying something along the lines of "oops, you've already submitted this, you must have double-clicked".

Now I've lost my post...

Seems the software 'remembers' the first attempt to submit, and therefore when re-submitting thinks it's a duplicate. Is there any way to correct this?

I think this problem has been mentioned before, and Matthew said it was a problem with the software. No disrespect to him, but there have been other issues that Shane has resolved that Matthew couldn't.

Anyway, I'm off to re-type my post....
 
jonny round boy said:
I've just typed out a new topic, and attached 3 pictures. I'd already reduced them in size, so assumed that they would all be under 125k. Unfortunately, 2 of them were just over.

When I clicked the 'submit' button, I got an error page stating that the images were oversize. I then clicked on the 'back' button (on the page, NOT on my browser) and was taken back to my post editting page.

I corrected the photos & clicked on submit again, and got another error message, saying something along the lines of "oops, you've already submitted this, you must have double-clicked".

Now I've lost my post...

I'm sorry you've had trouble posting a message. I know from personal experience that losing what you've carefully typed is ultra-annoying, and a sometimes tempts one to throw the computer out the window!

I think I've replicated what you went through, and the message you got at your second attempt (after re-sizing your pictures) was probably this one:

[attachimg=#]

In my case, there was a "Back" link at the bottom of that message too, and that successfully took me back to my message so that I could edit it. However, like you, I was still faced with the problem of not being able to post my edited message, as the forum software thought I'd already posted it.

One work-around would be to copy the contents of the message to the Clipboard, and then start again from the beginning by creating a brand new message, pasting the Clipboard contents into it, and going through the somewhat laborious process of attaching the images one-by-one.

I'll mention the problem to Shane and see if he can solve the "You have already submitted this post!" problem, but that might take a little while due to the holidays.

Thank you for bringing up the problem.

Forrest
 
jonny round boy said:
I think this problem has been mentioned before, and Matthew said it was a problem with the software. No disrespect to him, but there have been other issues that Shane has resolved that Matthew couldn't.

It's a little unfair to cite this as an issue I couldn't solve.

There is no built-in functionality to handle embedded photos.  I had to to a lot of custom coding to make it work here, and spent many hours getting it to function as smoothly as possible.

Also, keep in mind that when I ran the forum I had very limited personal funds and could not support larger photo sizes on our server.  Now that Festool is running the forum, they might be able to afford much larger sizes.  That would solve the problem!

Thanks,
Matthew
 
I find it very unfair to classify this as a problem on the forum's side. As far as I know this is the only forum I frequented that lets people host pictures on their server. And I frequented quite a bit more than just 1 or 2 forums.

I find it an EXCELLENT service and I am very happy and grateful it works this convenient here. Other forums expect you to find a hosting service of your own, be it online or on your own web space. This will either cost you more effort or more money.

I think that people should put more effort into getting to know the software that will let you resize pictures before they start to blame this forum or its management. There are plenty of programs out there, commercial or freeware that will do this task for you and it is NOT difficult at all to resize pictures. However, because freeware authors very often neglect to write a proper manual or help file, I do realise it is sometimes difficult to find out how it is done exactly. But Google is your friend and with the more popular programs it is not that difficult either to find some website that will explain it to you.

125 kb is a good size for pictures on the internet. They will provide plenty of detail in pictures up to 1200x1024.

 
Personally I find 125Kb a little on the small side,... considering the current capacity of cell phone cameras and the cost of large capacity hard drives. Anything that makes it a hassle to post a picture is a discouragement to do so, regardless of the relative ease to which an image can be resized.

Since the software now already has the capacity to make a thumbnail from a posted image (read: can resize an image), I dont think it would be a big coding stretch for a function to be added to resize an image for storage. I dont know what language the forum engine uses, but if it happens to be in PERL, I might could help out with that. I am completely lost in php though.

[2cents]

 
I personally don't have an issue with the photo size limits.  One thing to throw in the mix is that although more and more people have faster internet access speeds and larger hard drives and more horsepower in their computers, there are also people accessing this forum in more ways.  Many more people using portable devices, which do appreciate the smaller file sizes to speed up the load times.  I speak for myself and mine here.

There will always be compromises.  I like the ability to see the pictures in the threads versus having to zoom off to another site, but can see that it might be necessary to set up photos that way also.

Peter
 
I've had that happen before to me and this is how I work around the issue. 
First, I use http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ to resize my pic's and you get to view prior to saving and see the size. 

Now I'll admit some times I'm not observant enough.  Prior to posting  a new thread with multiple pics where this might be a problem (going over and you can't go back), I simple drag and highlight my post, and rt click copy (or you can ctrl + C) and then if this happens I simple start the post over and rt clck paste (or you can ctrl + V) and the whole message is back and i redo the picture attachment.  I'm better now about viewing the properties of my pics.  Since my pics come from a Nikon D80 and are huge, I have a special directory just for festool posts where I store the shrunk down sizes.  The website I gave above is really simple to use and has solved most of my posting issues on a lot of forums.  Good luck. 
 
I don't know it it's hard to implement, but a year ago I noticed a feature on another forum. When uploaded to the gallery, the picture automatically gets resized, and the site adds a watermark (this way, the site also gets attention when someone hotlinks the pictures).

For example: I forgot to resize a picture (uploaded it straight from memory card of my camera), and after upload it looked like this:
006568-4.jpg
 
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