Site Outage - January 2023

Unfortunately, the site went down as we ran out of disk space due to the number of uploaded files. I am looking at ways to mitigate this but I will probably have to delete most of them as I can't justify hosting them.


I think I have temporarily turned uploads off but am not sure!

Simon
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Comments

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,835MI6 Agent

    Thanks, @SiCo. It's good to see the site is up again as I was getting a bit worried there.

    Thanks for all you do behind the scenes as admin to keep the site going! 🙂

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,453MI6 Agent

    Thought I'd lost you there boy....

    About to smugly upload gif of desolate Henry Jones and gang atop a cliff... oh you so and so.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,835MI6 Agent

    I suppose that the prop, clothing and merchandise side of the site must use up a lot of uploaded image space. However, as it's one of the biggest draws here and the main USP of AJB limiting that could be rather awkward.

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • The Domino EffectThe Domino Effect Posts: 3,638MI6 Agent

    I blame Spectre.

  • SiCoSiCo EnglandPosts: 1,371M

    The site keeps going down, I am working on backing up the files and deleting them to then see where we stand. Hopefully this way nothing will be lost just temporarily won't work.

    Simon
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,563MI6 Agent

    I think deleting old image files would be a good way to start, but where to draw the line? perhaps we should be encouraged to shrink images or maybe just upload links instead of image. I thought something like this was up...

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 4,085MI6 Agent

    I've certainly made use of the ability to upload images, because (1) theres no danger of broken links and (2) I can make my own screenshots

    but I've long feared so many images would cause a problem, they certainly add up the megabytes.

    I was once thinking of starting a "Comic Book Art History" thread that would be almost all images, glad I never tried that now.

  • SiCoSiCo EnglandPosts: 1,371M

    The problem is I can't find a plugin for the software that handles saving images somewhere else, otherwise, it would be easy.

    I'm loathed to turn it off altogether as it is a good feature and copying links from other sites is annoying and a barrier to entry.

    However, I am not Amazon and can't handle the huge amount! It's essentially 29Gb+ worth of images ad I only pay for 30Gb of storage!

    Simon
  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,835MI6 Agent

    Yes, I was thinking of something like that maybe being a solution myself.

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,563MI6 Agent

    Don't you have to pay for Photobucket these days?

  • Westward_DriftWestward_Drift Posts: 3,112MI6 Agent

    There's also Postimage and imgur to host photos.

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,909MI6 Agent

    I wouldn't worry; I use a few forums and this is the only one which has featured image uploads. I don't think anyone expects it as a feature.

    I usually use imgbb.com

  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy Behind you !Posts: 63,792MI6 Agent

    To be honest it was my fault. In AJBs top secret headquarters I was trying out one of these new Pagers and accidently tripped over

    and pulled out the Fax machine.


    As always thanks to SiCo for all his hard work behind the scenes in keeping AJB going

    "I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,835MI6 Agent
    edited January 2023
    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent
    edited January 2023

    Could removing all 'for sale' posts after one month help? Also There are many 'off topic' discussions which could be removed without making difference to AJB.


    EDIT. All the 'events and screenings' have been and gone. They could be removed also.

  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    I suspected it could be Thunderpussy all along!

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 37,734Chief of Staff

    Some good ideas there, Joshua, will discuss with the others and see what comes of it. Off the top of my head, there may be reasons to keep "For Sale" ads for longer than a month but I think the events etc should possibly be disposable.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 4,085MI6 Agent
    edited January 2023

    I just wanna point out some of those Events and Screenings threads had really good reviews and discussion

    eg Vue Cinemas screening classic Bond movies

    and Sound of 007 Royal Albert Hall

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 37,734Chief of Staff

    Thanks, caractacus, I'll keep that in mind.

  • thespyboys11thespyboys11 Lindenwold,NJPosts: 1,894MI6 Agent

    Hi Simon,

    I tried uploading a photo but I am unable to do so. Is there still a problem? Will we not be able to upload photos anymore?

  • PoorMansJBPoorMansJB USAPosts: 1,203MI6 Agent

    So I presume this is why we're unable to upload images?

    I get that there are work-arounds like ImageShack but to be blunt, the operative word there is "work."

    I just want to share pics of whatever but if I have to host on another site and then go back'n forth copying links, etc. I really am not going to bother.

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,909MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    It’s how the site worked for many years, and how every other forum works. And you'd be asking SiCo to pay for the cost of hosting your pics out of his own pocket to save you the very slight bother of copying and pasting a link.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 4,085MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    please see above where @SiCo says:

    _________________________________________

    It's essentially 29Gb+ worth of images and I only pay for 30Gb of storage!

    _________________________________________

    over 29 gigs of images are currently cluttering up our site! and less than 1 gig is actual text content, the bit where we talk about James Bond and other related topics

    the text content goes back at least as far as 2006, when I joined, I think a few years earlier. At least 16 years.

    those 29+ gig of uploaded images only go back two years when SiCo enabled the ability to upload. We sure filled up that capacity in record time.


    above @Joshua a suggested some mostly text content that could be removed. I wouldnt touch that as it is not the text content that has overwhelmed our limited sitespace.

    He also suggested there have been a lot of pictures in discussions about clothing collecting. I have never looked at those areas of the site, but I always notice those sections get new posts every few minutes even when nobody has posted on-topic for days, so that seems the likely culprit. Perhaps we could have a breakdown in which sections of the forum the 29+ gigs have been posted?

    I have a feeling even if SiCo reenabled the privilege with rules (i.e. no graphic larger than 1mb or some pixel max) that we'd still manage to fill up the remaining space in a matter of weeks.

  • TheExit148TheExit148 Posts: 563MI6 Agent

    Sorry but, like a ton of other forums, you host images on another platform (eg imgur.com) and link over in the comment. Its not that hard. That's how it should be going forward, especially with the cloud storage Sico is paying for.

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,909MI6 Agent

    It's actually even easier here than other forums because you don't need to put [IMG] tags around the links- you just copy and paste the link, maybe press enter, and the site software hotlinks it as an image automatically. It's really easy.

  • PoorMansJBPoorMansJB USAPosts: 1,203MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    How it worked. Past tense. And I can tell you from the number of other sites I participate in, it is far from how "every other forum works": I honestly haven't seen my ImageShack account in years because there's basically been no need to.

    How about we all just chip-in and pay for more storage space? I use Wikipedia and pony-up whenever they have a pledge drive.

    I recognize it would be potentially problematic from a programming standpoint but you could grant a given amount of storage space to paid members while restricting those unpaid.

  • PoorMansJBPoorMansJB USAPosts: 1,203MI6 Agent

    I've been conscious of site glitches and so on but not really paying close attention to the interface; wasn't it that the way in which we uploaded images changed around that time but the basic ability to upload dates back earlier?

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,909MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    Which forums can you upload to?

    If you feel like organising this fund raiser and getting the money from everyone to SiCo would be less hassle to you than uploading to imagevenue.com or https://imgbb.com/ or any other non-login site etc. and just pressing cmd+C, sure; go for it.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 4,085MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    instead of us each paying a fee to be member, how about the uploader pay a fee per megabyte uploaded?

    I don't feel like subsidizing somebody else's uploads

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,909MI6 Agent

    I like the idea, but even that requires the site admin to build some sort of revenue collection system unless the forum software already has that as a feature. I think it’s just less effort for everyone to use external image hosts, isn’t it?

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