Forum pics - archiving of 'full size' image files and 'file not found' messages for these

[admin]

Unfortunately we need to start managing the number of files we have - in the 13-odd years since the Forum started we've acquired a large number of attachments to posts (and PMs) - some 30700 at present.

Nearly all the image attachments also generate an additional 'thumbnail' file (which shows the image that is embedded in the posts, the full-size image then appears on a click), so there are over 62000 attachment files in the Forum at this date.

I'm going to archive image files from earlier posts. This will be on an 'ageing out' process on a rolling basis, leaving probably the last 4 years in place and I'll be looking to run the procedure once a year.

The process will only affect image files (so anything attached as eg. a document will be left in place) and all the 'thumbnails' will remain. For posts where the full-size image has been archived, the software will still think the file is present but a click will generate an error that the file is missing - this will have to become expected behaviour.

The two Forum areas that get historic pics ('What was it then...' and 'W/NG Period Pictures') will be left alone as these get relatively few postings and we usually benefit from being able to view the biggest images possible!

Folks will no doubt have noticed that a large number of the pics on earlier posts are distorted or even completely blank. This goes back to (I think) July 2020 when forum files were restored from backup and it was discovered that the then service providers had somehow configured the backup incorrectly and a lot of the image files were corrupted. Unfortunately the 'restore' had overwritten everything so the damage was irreversible. In some cases the full-size image files that came up with a mouse click were better than the 'thumbnails' in the posts but it's not possible to work our which these are (it has had some thought) so unfortunately what shows in the posts is all that will be available.

SG