Help on protecting my images.

[Chuck S]

This is not a mod forum by the way. Your posting in the HOW DO I work the program forum and I am answering how it works so don't say GRR.

Basically it would be relatively easy to code as in replace the medium size in showphoto with the large image and constrain it with height and width percentage tags and you could do this yourself but there is a huge bug to overcome and the sole reason I would not take this on as a project I would do. Say you constrain every large image to say 50% or 40%. What happens when someone uploads a 800x600 image. So your going to show as a medium image thats 40% of this or 320x240 which is small. Next someone uploads a 2048x2048 image the mock up medium would be 819x819

See thats not a desirable way to do things the way you want. Thats why a medium is created so it can be uniformly done say every medium is 500 or 600 height width.

There is no way to control desired display with constraining an image based on percentage width. Which for the reasons meantioned above is not the way to do it.

[Johnny Doomo]

1. I didn't post this in the mod forum because it didn't start out to be a mod. It makes little sense to start a new thread to continue the same discussion / problem we are having.

2. Aren't you capable of making a mod that can do the math of processing the full size of the image, the size that I want, set one of the sides to the size that I want and do the math of what the other side should be? Considering how complicated some of the programming in PP seems, this should be a breeze for the PP developers should it not?

3. It's possible because I've seen imageshack do it.

You say this isn't the desired way to do it. Perhaps I can ask you a question then. What is the desired of of making it so:

1. My thumbnails are hotlinkable.
2. My fullsized images are not hotlinkable.
3. There is a view of the image in-between clicking the thumbnail and viewing the fullsize image that fits in the page without creating any width scrollbars.
4. All shown images have to be proportional to the original.

What IS the best way, because this is all I'm trying to accomplish, but it's turning into a run around of what PP can and cannot do and what you can and cannot code/possible to code.

What do you suggest? Here's what I am not ready to accept:

1. No middle image between clicking the thumbnail and viewing the fullsized image.
2. No hotlinkable thumbnails.
3. No hotlink protection on medium/fullsized images.
4. No turning off user albums

Is there something that can be done that meet these requests?

[Chuck S]

2. Aren't you capable of making a mod that can do the math of processing the full size of the image.

Yes it is called a medium sized image and the program already has it The image process must touch the file and process it to exact size and write a file.

I think I explained myself very well above. You want to link a picture constrained by percentage tags. Its simple to do you do like 40-50% of the image size. However I think I explained a big pitfall and the reason I would not take it on something with such a huge downfall.

Now maybe I can look how hard it would be to move the medium directories with the large images in the IPS

[Johnny Doomo]

That would be a big help if you could look into moving the medium images. I am building a site that will in all likely hood grow much much larger than my current www.gamersgallery.com site. (approaching 10,000,000 views).

I really need this new site to shine. If you can look and see what it will take for moving the medium images and maybe quote me on what it will cost me to pay you to modify MY files I would really appreciate it.

If worse comes to worse, I can live with the thumbs loading up the full size image, but that will really make the site a lot crappier than what I've polished it up to be already. I won't use the percentages because I am for sure not having unproportioned images. Any site that has those has a true sign of a crappy website.

Thanks Chuck. Please get back to me as soon as you can as I am just kinda sitting on the site waiting to resolve this feature.

[bwolcott]

http://www.photopost.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121909

New Mod

[rbl]

Originally Posted by Chuck S

IPS move the data directory for large images for all the other images. Example my large images are stored at /var/www/photos. My website webroot is /var/www/html my photopost is /var/www/html/gallery
.

Hey Chuck, if your PATH setting is "/var/www/photos" and your root is "/var/www/html", what have you set as URL setting?

I've tried several things and I always get the "Unable to create/write to /home/httpd/vhosts/data! Check your data directory permissions before continuing.
When you have fixed your permissions Refresh this page to try again"

Thanks! =)

[Chuck S]

The url setting stays the same.

You need to first create /var/www/photos and make it 777

[rbl]

Ok, I've tried that also but with no change in the result.

Here's what I have set "/home/httpd/vhosts/ppdata/data/" where data is 777 and ppdata is 750 (the same as the root "httpdocs")
I've tried different names and permissions, in the end I always get that same error. The only way the thing works is to create something within the site tree, which defeats the purpose of this.

Any idea what might be wrong?

[Chuck S]

maybe group permissions on the server?

Does your user that owns httpdocs also own the vhosts one?

[rbl]

The root and ppdata reside at the same level inside /home/httpd/vhosts/
Owner and group for both are the same, me.

I was looking at the code that generates the error. Is this ok?

Content visible to verified customers only.

[Chuck S]

It seems to me that it is non writable meaning not 777

[rbl]

Are you saying that the function is ok or not? =)

[kisii]

hey chuck,
im trying this feature since some idiots are hotlinking off my site and also able to make illegal downloads.
I have run into a problem in that my current url setting points to my old directory that still contains my medium and large media.( which I will delete once I get this working), I tested it out by changing the directory name and the images stopped being referenced - meaning that they are not refeneced from my new root directory . I have tried changing that current url setting to match the default url setting but It doesnt work. What url should i enter in the current url setting - I know ina post above you said that it stays the same but that only refeneces the direcotry in teh public html.
The duplicate of this (large and mediaum) directory is referenced it well on the IPS as the current path setting and then the default path setting is pointing to my thumbnails directory

[Chuck S]

It's best if you start a new thread and post any issues you have so we can assist you here make sure to provide examples and links.

Thanks

[bwolcott]

See this mod thread
http://www.photopost.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121909

This is a mod that can help you all out. You can do one of 4 things to block or allow hotlinking.

1. Brand or watermark the hotlinked photo with your name or what ever text you want.
2. Serve a new image in place of the hotlinked one. Something like "No hotlinking allowed" then all the images that person is hotlinking will have that.
3. Totally block any image from going out giving the hotlinker a broken image.
4. Pass thru no watermark or blocking with full hotlink access.

The cool part is you can set it so different urls have different types of access. Example: say you want to block one MySpace profile, you can do this and still allow the rest of the MySpace profiles to hotlink with a watermark or what ever option you set for the root of the MySpace domain.

[pedro1]

http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html

that works.