📢 Announcement: Essential Maintenance Required

[Aviador]

Essential Maintenance Required

Over the next few days Forums4airports will be undergoing some essential maintenance which may require some forum downtime. I apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

Over the last two decades the forum has built up a substantial data requirement where the site has had around 15GB of data. This has become unsustainable so in the interests of maintaining the forum, and to secure it's long term future, I have decided that it is best to remove the forum media gallery. Over recent years more and more people are choosing to opt for uploading attachments over using the media gallery anyway.

What does this mean for me?
When we are clear on how much data storage is workable we will look at increasing the attachment limits for those who subscribe to the forum. As attachments are now self managed, you will be helping us to maintain the size of the forum database into the future. Currently, every time maintenance back up the forum we risk losing all the attachments.

Unfortunately losing the gallery means we will lose a substantial historical pictorial database. We have resisted doing this for a few years now, but with Ashley saying it is too risky for the forum to keep backing up the files, I have decided this is the best thing to do for the long term viability of the forum.

Can I continue to upload attachments?
Absolutely! There wont be any difference when using the main forums other than not being able to view the media gallery via the tab at the top of the forum. If you only viewed the forum as a guest previously you won't have had access to the media gallery anyway.

Thank you for your support and understanding in this matter.


Site Admin

 

[Seasider]

@Aviador I bet you get complaints about this because very few members will read this thread.

 

[Ashley.S.]

@Aviador I bet you get complaints about this because very few members will read this thread.

The last upload was made about a month ago, as mentioned in the announcement above, everyone has been uploading into the forum posts instead. I shall tag the users who have the most media and have used the service recently:

@Jerry , @elmdon74 , @andyc941 , @lbaspotter , @Silvercity

At the moment we have two choices: Maintain the status quo and eventually the forum will be outdated (beyond security updates, we're over a year out and at least one feature update behind), missing the latest features and our host will kick the forum off for excessive storage use. I've already crashed the server at least once trying to do a backup to update to the forum and @Aviador is paying extra money to maintain some kind of backup. The other alternative is taking drastic action as per the announcement and changing the way uploads and the media gallery works, and focusing on external media to keep storage and maintenance costs down.

 

[Aviador]

The important thing is it won't affect new attachments.

 

[lbaspotter]

Oh god what have I done wrong his time!

 

[Jerry]

Well will the gallery be pulled down?

 

[Ashley.S.]

Well will the gallery be pulled down?

Likely within the next couple of days it'll be removed.

 

[Aviador]

An album style account like this is available at Flickr where you can upload up to 1000 images before you need to subscribe. From there you can share images directly into Forums4airports without it impacting your forum attachment quota.

This is an example:

https://flic.kr/p/2rG1Cxf

 

[Ashley.S.]

Over the next 24-48 hours, direct uploads to the media gallery will be disabled, replaced with an external media embed system. For images, please consider uploading to alternative locations such as Flickr as per @Aviador suggestion or somewhere such as Instagram.

Current uploaded images will gradually be removed, starting with personal albums: https://forums4airports.com/media/albums/ so if there are any images you would like to keep, it is strongly recommended you download backups before they are removed as we will not be able to restore them once removed.

 

[Aviador]

Appologies for the downtime today. This was due to an outage at Cloudflare not the intended work that is still required.

 

[Ashley.S.]

Hi all, just an update: Yesterdays downtime, which was outside of our control, has delayed the time line for the changes to forum features. A further update will be provided in due course.