In an effort to conserve bandwith for the site (to keep the bills down) trackbird and I have gone over the logs and he is currently resizing/optimizing several images and avatars that are using more than normal amounts of bandwidth. So if your pictures or avatars start changing or dong funny things, thats probably the reason.


Things you can do to help:

1. Limit your avatar size

The smaller the better. There are several free and easy to use image resizers out there, they can help not only by making the image physically smaller, but by making its file size smaller my compressing the image. Take a look at your avatars properties by right clicking on it, if it is more than, say, 50kb or so (50000bytes), it might need some attention.

Also, animated images (.gifs) are cool to look at, but if they arent properly optimized, they can be bandwidth hogs. Keep an eye on animated gifs especially.

Here are some free tools:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloa...ppowertoys.mspx
http://www.mihov.com/eng/ir.html
http://www.jasc.com/products/paintshoppro/



2. Host your own images

There are several free and easy ways to host your own pictures, which makes it easy to tote them from site to site, and keeps them all nice and neat where you can remember their location. I love Imageshack, give it a try. Very simple, and helps alot!

Here are some free image hosts:

http://www.imageshack.us/index.php
http://www.photobucket.com/
http://photos.yahoo.com/


Doing these things not only helps keeps the bills down for FRRAX, but any other site you apply them to. Trust me, as a former webmaster myself, any help in saving bandwidth is appretiated.


Something to think about:

To put things into perspective, a good sized image can be the same size and take the same ammount of bandwidth is the rest of the entire site! Meaning each time they are loaded, its just like someone loaded and read every single word that there was to read!


Have a nice day;

The goldmember.

Guys,

Not trying to get anyone stirred up, I just ran the usage logs and the #3 file on the bandwidth usage list was an avatar that was 50k or so (not a post, or forum or anything like that). I resized a few of them that were over 20k (3 or 4). Most of them are 2-3k and I thank you guys for that. It was eye opening to find an avatar that was the 3rd highest use of bandwidth on the site. I didn't think anyone could load a file larger than 100x70, but I guess it allowed it.

If anyone has anything too huge, could you resize it and repost it for me (if you don't mind). I'm just trying to keep the monthly usage totals reasonable. I'll gladly upgrade server size and space as needed (at the rate we are growning, it may be soon), I just hate to do it for a few huge avatars. Is that reasonable?

Oops, I guess I came off a bit to rough around the edges with my first post.


I guess I made it sound like the ship was sinking because of a few big pics, but thats not the case at all. Just like Kevin said, its no problem to upgrade to more bandwidth when its needed, but to do it mainly because of 3 or 4 big avatars is silly, since its so easy to prevent.

Just by looking at the logs, I can tell that this place is going to become a major contender in the web forum arena, so expect some growing pains until things level out and become more predictable!

I wish I had more relavant info to contribute to the forums, but since I don't, I'll stay out of the way.

Opps, sorry. Mine was 140 kb. Didn't mean to make it so big. I have deleted it till I can resize it.

Jim

Even at 140k it doesnt sound like too much, but if 2000 people look at it (which is a low figure, just for the arguement), thats over 270 megabytes spent just on an avatar! Even if there were only 4 people that had avatars that size, there would still be over a gigabyte wasted every 2000 loads!

Jim,

E-mail it to me at trackbird@columbus.rr.com and I can resize it for you. Or, reload it and I can go find your avatar, find it on the server, download it, resize it, and change it (I did 2 or 3 tonight). And, again, I'm not trying to be picky, and I will buy server space and bandwidth as needed (unlike some of the messes we've seen elsewhere). If the board needs upgraded, I'll happily do so. I just hate to use a gig a month for a single avatar (it was not that bad, but it was a "bunch").

Again, I appreciate the help.

I'll cut this one loose. Thanks for everyones help!

Kevin