Website changes.... | GTAMotorcycle.com

Website changes....

cutekill

cutekill

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Hey all,

I've made a few more changes to the website to hopefully get the bots under control. There will be more changes coming, which will start to restrict the size of pics that can be posted as those seem to be getting a bit too large and take up quite a bit of bandwidth to load, especially if they are linked.

Cutekill
 
Damn.
The picture limit is small as it is.

Thank you for the efforts anyways.
 
Lightcycle said:
Not linked pics. It's the attached files that are saved on GTAM servers.

So the bots download these pics over and over again.
Click to expand...
I thought those were already tiny. I stopped trying to post pics on GTAM once they went to xenforo as pic size was so small. I'm ok with that, no need to spend lots of money on hosting, imgbb is free and easy. Many forums need you to be registered to get pics. That is incredibly annoying as a guest for a one time question (eg what is the wiring diagram look like on a buddies bike, I found it on forum xxx but can't see the pic unless I register) but probably keeps many of the bots from churning through bandwidth.

I think bot curtailment is the key here. Even if most hosted pics get shrunk, bots looking at ten of thousands of pages with ads will use a ton of bandwidth and ads can't be effectively shrunk (although they could be hosted externally but that causes other issues).
 
GreyGhost said:
I thought those were already tiny. I stopped trying to post pics on GTAM once they went to xenforo as pic size was so small.
Click to expand...

When you upload a pic to xenforo, you can insert it as a thumbnail or a full picture. There's no resizing when inserting as a full pic.

I was just able to upload a 3.18MB file as an attachment... Not sure what the upper limit is, but 3MB adds up when its downloaded over and over again.
 
Lightcycle said:
When you upload a pic to xenforo, you can insert it as a thumbnail or a full picture. There's no resizing when inserting as a full pic.

I was just able to upload a 3.18MB file as an attachment... Not sure what the upper limit is, but 3MB is pretty large to be downloaded over and over again.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Maybe I gave up on posting pics from a previous iteration then. I remember a limit of a few hundred kb or less.
 
Some forums don't allow serving up the full-sized attachments of pics or files for guest users/crawlers, only registered and logged in users.

@cutekill, is this configured for GTAM?

xenforo.com

Fixed - Guests are able to open some attachments

Hi, I have set the rights for "View attachments to posts" to "No" for unregistered users. But since I made the upgrade to 2.2 (last Monday), they can open MP3 files posted after the upgrade. Check yourself as guest: MP3 attachment posted before the upgrade ("You must be logged-in to do that."...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

Seeing how there's only a dozen regular users, this should drop traffic by a chit-ton!
 
Lightcycle said:
Some forums don't allow serving up the full-sized attachments of pics or files for guest users/crawlers, only registered and logged in users.

@cutekill, is this configured for GTAM?

xenforo.com

Fixed - Guests are able to open some attachments

Hi, I have set the rights for "View attachments to posts" to "No" for unregistered users. But since I made the upgrade to 2.2 (last Monday), they can open MP3 files posted after the upgrade. Check yourself as guest: MP3 attachment posted before the upgrade ("You must be logged-in to do that."...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

Seeing how there's only a dozen regular users, this should drop traffic by a chit-ton!
Click to expand...
I can't open this pic when I'm not logged in so I think so. Thumbnail is also smaller when I am not logged in.

www.gtamotorcycle.com

Any Photographers (Pro/Am) here?

Oops. Accidental post.
www.gtamotorcycle.com www.gtamotorcycle.com
 
That ol discord server wasnt such a bad idea afterall... 🤷‍♂️

Some of us still use it from time to time
 
GreyGhost said:
I can't open this pic when I'm not logged in so I think so. Thumbnail is also smaller when I am not logged in.

www.gtamotorcycle.com

Any Photographers (Pro/Am) here?

Oops. Accidental post.
www.gtamotorcycle.com www.gtamotorcycle.com
Click to expand...

Another option is to use 3rd party image hosting SW as a remote storage for attachments.

Not sure how much GTAM's server bandwidth costs, but I pay ~$100/year for unlimited storage and bandwidth at Smugmug.

Might alleviate the hosting bandwidth charges if you can configure xenforo to upload attachments to remote pic storage like this. They mention Amazon S3, might be an even cheaper option:

xenforo.com

Implemented - Remote Attachments storage

Storing large amounts of attachments on the same server as the forum giving space and server load problems. So it will be really nice if we can store attachments on Amazon S3 or separate server. This will be really helpful for addons like Galleries, Resource manager etc.. too.
xenforo.com xenforo.com
 
Server Tech support has been very helpful. Most of the bots should be gone now.

We've always had a bunch of lurkers. Happy to browse and read, not post.
 
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