Posting pictures here shut down my website (urgent reply requested)

[donhakman]

Has anyone else had this experience?

They said I exceeded my 5.5 GB bandwidth....

?

[Clete]

1. Some web sites don't allow posting to other websites.

However you should post this in the Bugs forum to get a reply from someone who knows what they are talking about. Sorry.

[wellst0nev0ter]

2. Message Board Rules:

"Do not steal someone else's bandwidth by posting images that are hosted on another website. Democratic Underground is a high-traffic website, so posting images from other sites will cause their server load to increase dramatically, and might even cost the website owner money. If you wish to post an image from another website, you must contact the owner of the other website to get their consent."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html#copyright

[charlie]

3. You're lucky they shut you down

Some services will allow you to exceed allotted bandwidth and charge you overage at premium prices after the fact.

You'll just have to take care to minimize the server load if you're linking images from your site. Make sure the graphics are as compressed and shrunk to as small a size as you can manage. DU is heavily trafficked, and if you've got a signature image in posts in popular threads it can wind up being accessed thousands of times.

[Atlant]

4. The most informative reply was back in the locked thread...

You contracted with your website hosting company to "buy"
a certain maximum number of bytes transferred each month.
Apparently, you bought a maximumum of 5,500,000,000 bytes
per month.

Every time anyone accesses your website, the number of bytes
that they read is deducted from your monthly allowed maximum.
For example, an HTL web page may be 1,000 to 10,000 bytes.
A typical photo may range from 10,000 to 1,000,000 bytes.

Then, you posted some pictures on your website and linked
them in a DU thread.

Apparently, everybody read that thread, so your website served
out one or more pictures for each and every person that read
the DU thread.

(To keep things simple, I'm ignoring some details like
intermediate caching servers.)

When 5,500,000,000 bytes had been served out, your website
provider shut you down 'cause you'd used up all you'd paid
for. (Some hosting companies shut you down hard when you
reach your limit. Others shut you down briefly so that,
averaged over a month's time, you won't "blow" the limit.
In that later case, your website may be back up sooner.)

You either need to buy more "bandwidth" or stop being
so popular. :-)

Atlant

[donhakman]

5. A solution?

Posting a link to a picture should then only use bandwidth if people click on it no matter how many people access the thread.

Thanks for the replies, I needed some reassurance this problem wasn't nefarious in nature.




If this site allowed select cartoonists to "upload" to this site
(as I do at About Political Humor.com, along with Fiore and Toles...)
then my server would remain intact.

Something to consider if you ever planned to host exclusive new and original political cartoons and satire.

fondly
Don Hakman