The Re Opening of the GIMP FORUM

[La Reine Margot]

The work goes on. We're working on our site right now,
https://redfeline.com

The migration did not work out like it was was with
https://pachamamafilms.com
or
https://amyhesketh.com

So we have to go over that again. But we do have a page at https://redfeline.com with links to our stores and a trailer or two.

We might have to just rebuild the site from scratch because one problem could be that the theme we currently have in Red Feline is too old for the new upgraded system.

One thing to keep in mind is that everything gets old in the wide world of the web pretty fast. So, imagine, a site that was built twenty years ago, like ralphus.net at the old server that used to be interland and was bought by web.com that also bought network solutions... it was oooooold. The configuration was kind of ancient.

It doesn't mean that we're free of issues. We're not.

In the few days since we re opened this Forum, the number of posts and pictures are fairly large. Imagine in a year.

We have to sort those issues.

Which brings me to the old posts.

I'm hesitant, to be honest. The files folder from the old forum is huge, 31 Gigas! it took three days to download and other three days to upload it. Bring them all back might overwhelm the capacity of the forum itself.

We're thinking of ways to solve the situation to prevent another shutdown.

I had a discussion with Ralphus concerning that. I set up the size of attachments to 1mb or less. Ralhpus likes to make gifs, which have an average of 25mb in size. One solution is to upload those images to a separate area of the site and link them here.

An example.



That gif is 7.7mb

There are posts/images in the old forum that are 96 mb is size... huge!

To open the files folder in the cPanel takes a while. It was impossible to open it in the old forum.

Linking pictures is better than attaching them. Just saying.

More on the subject later.

[Edukator]

Nice to see the forum back and (allmost) alive again, thank you for your hard work.

Re. attachments size we all understand a limit is mandatory to avoid similar issues in the future and I think everybody here can live with a 1Mb (or sligthly less) space for static pictures. Among the hundreds of pictures I have posted on the old forum none had reached the 1Mb size (not even the half, and most under 250k). Gifs (and I noticed there were more and more of them before the forum shutdown) are another issue to be adressed separately.

Re. the old posts it would really be a pity to lose them all, there were so many great contributions (and contributors)... I don't know if that could help saving space and time but maybe should you consider saving (and reposting) only the most recent ones, going back to 6 months or one year (as technically feasible) but maybe it makes no sense (I'm no website expert)

Again, thank you for all the efforts devoted to save what can be saved...

[MAV]

Nice example Queen Margot! I sent that Yvonne Strahovski "24" scene to Lora from lady2fight as the example for the strappado scene I wanted her to act out in my last custom. She pulled it off well.



I have an AOH/hogtie torture custom in the works with Lora as the director this time around. We'll see how that turns out!

[coolbrez]

Please add my thanks for all the hard work. Any info on whether or not the old posts will be restored?

We re opened the forum with a clean slate because it will take some time to recover the old posts.

When the forum went offline we could not access the control panel of the site and because of that we could not make a backup of the DB, which is necessary to move a forum from one host to another cleanly.

We have to import those posts but it will take some work.

Not sure how many actual members were on this site when it was fully running, but I saw you post that there was over 31G of data. Hosting that amount of data must be costly. It might be a lot cheaper in the long run to set up your own network machine with the older files, and just link to them from an archive page like before. It would not take huge machines to handle one or two websites. Keep the forum active with whomever is best suited to keep you current, but you would never (not really, but a long time) have to update the file system.

[La Reine Margot]

Not sure how many actual members were on this site when it was fully running, but I saw you post that there was over 31G of data. Hosting that amount of data must be costly. It might be a lot cheaper in the long run to set up your own network machine with the older files, and just link to them from an archive page like before. It would not take huge machines to handle one or two websites. Keep the forum active with whomever is best suited to keep you current, but you would never (not really, but a long time) have to update the file system.

When I was setting up the old forum, it took sometime before I restricted registrations. So, for a few days, maybe weeks, there were lots of bots that registered. Before the forum crashed we had over 1,000 members, maybe half of them inactive bots.

Right now we have over 200 members, all approved, none a bot. We'll see how many register before the year is over.

Very few members post and some do it frequently, in some cases daily. And that's great. That's what the forum is for.

But some members post huge pictures. We had posts that were 96 mb in size, that's really big.

Bringing back all those posts is problematic, so we might set up an "archival" forum.

We're checking the behavior of the Forum now, to see how it grows and how fast. That's one control I didn't have before. Not the way I have it now, where I can easily see everything, not to mention that during this process I learned a lot too.

One thing that can be done is to set up a folder outside the forum, we can name it 'contributions' where people can store pictures. The problem is that someone has to do it.

I have a folder at Red Feline named 'promos' where I have tons of pictures. That doesn't affect our websites. It's just storage space, which is unlimited. But I can link to the thousands of pictures I have there from anywhere I want.

Like this:



The size of the directory, or folder, is only 5 gig in size and it has ALL our images!

This post will end up being only a couple of K in size because it's only text. We can have millions of posts without affecting the behavior of the forum, but once we start putting images as big as 96 mb, then we have problems.

[ZootieZootZoot]

Whenever I post a picture or a gif I never upload it as an attachment. I created a Bdsmlr account specifically to host content that I want to post here, and then I just link to them.

I guess if (when) Bdsmlr goes out of business it will suck, but until then I don't have to worry about the size of the uploads.

[wulf]

Whenever I post a picture or a gif I never upload it as an attachment. I created a Bdsmlr account specifically to host content that I want to post here, and then I just link to them.

I guess if (when) Bdsmlr goes out of business it will suck, but until then I don't have to worry about the size of the uploads.

Do you have a link to that?

[ZootieZootZoot]

Whenever I post a picture or a gif I never upload it as an attachment. I created a Bdsmlr account specifically to host content that I want to post here, and then I just link to them.

I guess if (when) Bdsmlr goes out of business it will suck, but until then I don't have to worry about the size of the uploads.

Do you have a link to that?

Sure, it's at: https://bdsmlr.com/

It's basically a bdsm themed tumblr knockoff.

[bakerboy]

Congratulation on the re opening

[wulf]

Whenever I post a picture or a gif I never upload it as an attachment. I created a Bdsmlr account specifically to host content that I want to post here, and then I just link to them.

I guess if (when) Bdsmlr goes out of business it will suck, but until then I don't have to worry about the size of the uploads.

Do you have a link to that?

Sure, it's at: https://bdsmlr.com/

It's basically a bdsm themed tumblr knockoff.

Thank you, I appreciate it.