Uploads

[Eddy Matthews]

Hi all,

There is currently an issue with file uploads to the website, any file attached to a message (this includes images), or photos uploaded to the photo gallery will fail with an out of memory error if they are larger than about 400Kb.

This problem is currently being investigated by our host, so hopefully it will be sorted soon... But until further notice please keep uploads below 400Kb.

I'll post here when the problem is fixed....

[Eddy Matthews]

After weeks of seemingly endless messages backwards and forwards between myself and our host, the conclusion now is that the photo uploads problem is caused when the php script attempts to create a thumbnail image....

To do this the image must be fully uncompressed and stored in memory, and large images quickly exhaust the 20Mb limit that is set on our hosts server - Each pixel takes up 32 bits of memory, so a 1600 x 1200 or larger image WILL use more than the 20Mb available and cause an out of memory error.

So I've been forced to restrict image uploads to a maximum of 1280 x 720 - Any image that is larger than this will be rejected and you'll get an error message telling you why. Much better than just locking up the system and getting the previous fatal error....

So from now on, please keep images down to a maximum of 1280 x 720 - It shouldn't normally be necessary to upload anything larger than that anyway, as the images just gobble up space and don't display any better on a normal computer monitor.

[Eddy Matthews]

I've been playing around with the image settings trying to find the best compromise, rather than users just getting the dreaded "Fatal error" message when the memory was exhuasted...

At the moment there are no image size limits set, but the creation of thumbnail images is turned off - It's the thumbnails that cause most of the problems! Any image of 800 x 600 (or less) will be displayed full size in the message, larger images will just have a link that you can click on to view/download the image...

It's not ideal, but it seems to give the best results working with the memory limitations we have....