Photos in Forum Postings

[kebo66]

Forgive me if I have not posted this in the appropriate section.

Can any member enlighten me as to why, when members include photos with their postings, quite often all I get is an empty frame with a small red cross in the top left hand corner. The majority of photos are fine. I have tried clicking, double-clicking, right clicking, and every other kind of clicking but all to no avail. Any help would be appreciated.

[B.Meldon]

What browser are you using?

Also can you post a link to one of the posts you are having problems with.

You can do this by right clicking on the diamond shaped icon next to the title and then click 'save link location'. Then in the text box right click again and click paste.

The two most common reasons for this are that the photos have been removed from the photo hosting site by the owner or the photo hosting site has stopped trading. (Fotopic for example.)
But it is also possible that your browser is blocking the photos.

Brian Meldon

[kebo66]

Thankyou Brian

I am using Internet Explorer (v8)

I have tried your suggestion of right clicking the diamond shaped icon next to the title but I do not get the option to 'save link location'.

I have tried turning off my firewall to see if this helps but to no avail.

Perhaps the photographs in some of the postings have been removed as you suggest.

Keith

[B.Meldon]

The actually line reads

[Hugh Norwood]

Discussing browsers does not actually solve Keith's problem. Keith, could you give an example of a topic in which yoiu have encountered this issue? Then others can have a look.

Regards

[B.Meldon]

Yes that may well be true Hugh, and as I mentioned the missing photos in the posts have probably been removed from the originating server.

But I have also known IE to block images when they are on forums and I see no advantages what so ever in using IE so I would recommend anyone to use Firefox regardless if they are having problems or not.

Brian Meldon

[kebo66]

Thanks Brian, I'll bear it in mind what you say about Firefox.

hughn,
Thanks for your comments. Most of the photos come through ok but the last posting where I encountered this problem was under:
scenery:
lint:
the posting by EDGOZZAR on 12 Mar 2010

although there have been several others. It will be interesting to see whether you can view this one.

[MickT]

Brian:

In IE8 anyway there is no option to "save link location". The one that does work is "copy shortcut" and then paste into the text box of your posting and the link will go in.

Keith,

I have checked the image in the posting from 12 Mar 2010 that you referred to - I can't see it either and I have never experienced blocking etc problems so I assume as was previously suggested that either the link to this photo has been removed by the original poster, the photo has been removed by the original poster from the hosting site (most likely) or the photo was uploaded through a now defunct hosting site such as Fotopic (also quite likely).

Check recent postings with images on them from within the past 6 months or so and you should be able to see most if not all of these.

Mick

[B.Meldon]

So it is this post then:

http://www.009society.com/forum/index.php?topic=316.msg1592#msg1592

As Mick said the photos are no longer visible in this post so as mentioned they have either been removed by the author or the hosting site no longer exists.

Brian Meldon

[kebo66]

Thanks to Mick and Brian. You are right Mick in as much as more recent photos all seem to be visible, it is the older ones which cannot be displayed.

As a 'newbie' I am slowly working my way through previous postings. I have now reached postings:

Photos; 23 July 2010 by Isle of Stoner, and
Loss of Photos: 2 Oct 2011 by gtmspyder

These may help shed some light on the problem I have encountered.

Regards

Keith

[Hugh Norwood]

The issue of images disappearing from this forum has been aired before, and it does seem to be time-related. We have not had a definitive reply from the admininstrator on this matter (as far as I recall)

It looks like the issue is with images that have been uploaded directly to the forum. They appear to be culled after some time period. They do take up space on the server, of course, and culling will keep the space down - text takes up a lot less space. It would appear that if an author wants to keep an image "permanently" visible, then they should put the image on some other site (several are available) and simply put a link to it in their post.

[tebee]

It's a phenomena known in the web business as "link rot". The older a link to an external site or resource is, the more likely it is to be "rotten" and no longer work.

External (I.E.other sites)  are not under the control of the webmaster of this site  and what is on them may change with time or the site disappear altogether

This is why, when you visit a site that was last updated a long time ago you often find that any link they list no longer work.

The same applies to pictures if they are hosted on other sites and merely linked to by this site for inclusion in the post. It is possible to attach a photo to the post itself so it will be stored in the forum itself, but you are limited to files of no more than 300kb. ( this is set by the Webmaster here)  These photo should always be available as long as the forum is here.

Tom     

[Hugh Norwood]

Wellll..

I was talking about images actually placed on this forum - they are the ones that disappear after some indefinite time period.

You may well be right about your link-rot, too (perhaps a tin of Cuprinol?  ;)  )