Forum Avatars

[JackDunaway]

Ravens, the new avatar looks much better (new vs. old):

[RavensFan]

Thanks for the side by side comparison.  The new one does look a bit sharper.

[JÞB]

Thanks for the analisys jack.

I reciently updated the spinning 8 ball (and have selected my 8-ball from my image gallery).

Have I managed to improve the performance? Thanks

[JackDunaway]

You can tell I noticed and put my "stamp of approval" on your new avatar - it looks good, and I'm sure it performs better! I'm planning on doing a "where-are-we-now" type analysis within days/weeks to see if there's been any improvement.

Stay tuned...

[Laura F.]

The change I mentioned about image hosting has taken place, but I bet it only affects images hosted by NI now that I think about it.  We'll be performing some internal performance analysis to see where the areas for improvement are.

Thanks,

Laura

[JackDunaway]

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@Laura F. wrote:

We'll be performing some internal performance analysis to see where the areas for improvement are.

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Keep in mind, your servers are already pretty darn good! From what I can tell, the lowest-hanging fruit seems to be tightening restrictions on external hosting. (This observation holds true for avatar statistics, but I would bet it holds universally true for all attachments in general.)

[tst]

I would say that blocking all external hosting is a bit harsh. I would say that if someone tries to embed an image from an external site (or maybe particular sites, such as imageshack), the forums should inform them "it's better to upload here", but it should allow them to proceed. If it didn't do that, linking to legitimate outside sources would be crippled.

[JackDunaway]

Agreed, banning altogether would be harsh, which is why I left "tightening restrictions" a big vague. Another "warning" that needs to be included is that when linking externally, MANY forum users are subject to corporate web filtering that often sites such as "Social Networking", "Message Boards and Forums", "Downloads".... it's ridiculous what high percentage (somewhere around 50% for me) of externally hosted image attachments are blocked when I view here at work!

[JÞB]

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@JackDunaway wrote:

You can tell I noticed and put my "stamp of approval" on your new avatar - it looks good, and I'm sure it performs better! I'm planning on doing a "where-are-we-now" type analysis within days/weeks to see if there's been any improvement.

Stay tuned...

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Actually Jack, I had not seen this thread when I updated the avatar (I guess serendipity still exists).  But Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad I'm no longer on the dark lists.  I would have been disapointed to worsen performance and re-re-updated the avatar  Yeah! I like the newer one and don't feel bad about keeping it.

[aeastet]

I got mine fixed as soon as I saw my name on the list.

I had alway expected that the avatar was too big but I though that the sysem might automatically resize the picture. I know better for next time.