OpenUru.org

It felt odd to post abotu trivial matters in the more lofty "Thinking about infrastructure" topic. So hope you don't mind I created this topic for the more everyday stuff about project issues.

First up, I've enabled subforum display for your project in the main index as an experiment. I got tired of clicking through two pages to see new posts. Let me know if you like it or don't want it.

Looks fine to me. Thanks, JW!

Greetings,

Nalates has another nice post with lots of pictures, I see. Please be aware that a project can obtain, if it wishes, FTP access for asset storage related to the project.

Please see:
viewtopic.php?p=1711#p1711

The catch is your pictures will only be served to web pages on the OpenURU.org domain (forums, blogs, wiki, etc). You will not be able to hotlink them globally the way you can from services like Photobucket. And everything uploaded to your FTP accounts must be linked from at least one page on the domain (don't upload it if it's secret, personal data or has nothing to do with your project).

We probably should get ftp for these images. I can never find the 'how to upload' when I'm looking for it.

You would need an FTP client of some sort. I'd supply the access info.

I think Nalates might be referring to the file attachment option for forum posts, which is disabled here.

I now can't remember what the logic was for disabling attachments in the forum and image uploads on the wiki, but I remember it seemed to make sense at the time It's just that I'm seeing a kind of conflict here: On one hand, we would like to maintain integrity of postings by keeping assets, like images, used in the forums or wiki hosted here so they don't "expire", but on the other we make it difficult for all but a few people to make those assets available. Is this something we should re-think?

Attachments are a security and content concern about keeping things appropriate and legal.

Yeah, FTP is a hassle when all you want to do is write a post with pictures. It would also be a hassle for a mod with access to download the pictures from the post and edit the post with the internal links. (The work load is assumed by the mods/admins instead of the poster, but there are rights issues to clear per user in this case).

I'll look into attachments, but it looks like it can use just one folder (no per-user settings) and I really wanted to sort them out by project. And I still want to put the hotlinks restriction on the said folder. That's slightly custom, but worth the convenience - if we can put up with everything in one folder - ugh. Or am I mistaken about that?

All-in-one folder will get to be a nightmare over time.

I have multiple FTP clients. I just closed one and have another open now sucking down a WP site before I start making changes. While I am comfortable reaching into the guts of Linux and Windows web servers, most are not going to be familiar with file uploads or how to construct the links. Flickr, Photobucket, KOINUP, and others make it easy to use their service and they create links for the user to copy-paste.

Anything out of the norm is going to be some level of problem. I tend to do what I'm framliar with.

Let me broaden this beyond the proposed solutions. The goal is to preserve an archival-quaity set of projects here that do not lose their context because of links to transient accounts on external sites. I'd rather not single out technical users like Nalates to do more than their fair share while "regular" people don't have to follow the same rules. Are there any other ideas for solutions other than making the user responsible for FTP or other such "technical" knowledge? I mean, short of Photobucket.OpenURU.org? (Though that's one idea ).

Photobucket.OpenURU.org ...

Well... that is an idea. Is there an app that might make image upload and storage easy?

May be have some way to easily organize images?

A big plus with Flickr is one can move images to sets and galleries with out breaking external links. Photobucket lets you move things but breaks the links. For mods working to keep things organised being able to move things seems important.