Reducing Load-time for Dial-up users, and hacking.

[treat2]

The Load-time for Dial-up users, and several nasty hacking, and other tricks,
can be easily done.

Display the Yes/No Buttons on the Profile or Board Options Page for:
1) Display Pictures in Posts?
2) Hide Avatars in Posts? (you may already have this)
2) Hide Pictures in Signatures?

When a large numger of avatares are to be displayed people pick them from all over the net, and every address means hitting the DNS Servers, then that Website, and doing the same 20 or 30 more times. That takes time, when you get users that have avatars.

When ppl insert images in side the posts themselfves via hyperlinks it can take a while for pages to load, I've seen some pages with a dozen pictures on it and it takes a long time to load the big pics for an entire Web page.

There are some nasty hacks that I've seen attempted onm my machine when pictures are allowed to be displayed in avatars, signatures, or in the posts. Hackers can spread whatever they want to other machines, and get personal info too, suing certain techiques when pics are displayed, and Forums and chatrooms are notorious for places in which machines pick-up
a nasty "cold". So, you're doing a favor for informed ussers, and certainly making the load time faster, when there are lots of pics and avatars that start coming up.

[PoliticalForum]

This is getting a little ridiculous as you are posting things without even researching what you're talking about. Please check into your problem/suggestion first before posting here. The avatars on our website have size and dimension limits, and once you've loaded them your browser will cache them. We do not intend to block avatars. If you really want to block avatars, use an ad blocker or something like that and block everything form our avatar directory: http://www.politicalforum.com/images/avatars/

In addition, we do NOT allow people to host avatars from other websites, only from ours. When you want to put your own avatar, you upload it to our website. That way, no new DNS lookups, no hits to others servers where they can see what you're doing or send cookie info in the headers. The same is true for signatures (sort of) in that we do not allow images in signatures nor do we allow HTML in posts that allows images to be loaded off other websites. And as for attachments we only allow you to upload attachments so once again no site offloading. Again, treat2, please check into this before posting something like this. All you had to do is right click on a couple avatars and see they're loading off our website and go to your profile and try to put an avatar from another website. Your posting tons of "suggestions" in our help forum isn't really going to help others much, and its a little spammy esp. when you haven't taken the time to see how our website works but you do take the time to write detailed unnecessary solutions.

- PF Admin

[DBG]

methinks the child just really really REALLY likes seeing it's moniker.............

[Garbler]

I have a picture (MSN WeeMee as it happens) that is perfectly within the dimension limits (its 92x92 pixels) but is too big a file. It's not even that good a quality at just over 11 pixels per cm. It's only 9.2KB!!! So could you not increase the amount of memory that an avatar can take up to that very small amount. I mean come on, the length of posts I have seen, a single long post must take up more than that.

What's going on Mr PF Sir?

[PoliticalForum]

I didn't realize that the limit was around 6K, but that's how the forum software came. I've increased it to 12K which should work for you. Most optimized images though at that size can be under 6K easily, you just have to use the right software (which many program do not do at all).