Announcement May 2nd, 2023 Site Updates

Hi all! Sorry for the extended downtime, but we have some good news to share!

As you're probably tired of hearing by now, Imgur's Terms of Service Update has left us in quite the situation. With many members choosing to use imgur to host all sorts of runs dating back almost to the beginning of the forums, a lot of content stands to be lost if we allow the change to take effect on May 15 with no actions. We've been asking members to save content they enjoy just in case. The primary purpose of this downtime was to address this issue, and I'm happy to say we are well on our way to independence!

So what does that mean? Let's break down a few major changes that have occurred, and will be occurring over the next several days/weeks:

• We have decided to host ALL imgur images that are currently present on this site! This is a massive undertaking, the storage and database requirements for this necessitated we upped our server resources, at least temporarily, to accommodate the influx of new image attachments. The conversion process is entirely automated and no action is required by you whether you read or have posted imgur image tags to the site. We don't actually know how many images are externally hosted and linked here, but the number of posts approaches 200,000! As of now, we're at well over 60,000 attachments self-hosted, and we're only about 10,000 posts down the list! Speaking of...
  
  
• We currently have a script running on the server that is finding every post with image links, re-hosting it on our local server, and converting the post image tags to attachments containing the same image. Currently it is prioritizing imgur links, but it is possible we extend this to every externally hosted image domain in the future. We'll have to see what kind of costs we incur over the short term, and how the server handles the increased complexity of the database. The process is going from oldest to newest posts, so you may not see a change right away on more recent threads.
  
  
• If there is time, we will also attempt to convert media gallery embeds from imgur as well. Please note this is NOT a guarantee! If you have any content hosted in a media gallery that you wish to save just in case, please take the opportunity to do so while there is still time!
  
  
• While we have increased our server resources, we do expect some degraded performance from time to time as these scripts continue to run. While we are monitoring when we can, if you notice any extended issues or downtime in excess of 5-10 minutes, please send @Fullmental a ping over in the discord in #Assistance
  
  
• Going forward, all image tags will be automatically converted to be locally hosted on new posts. This is in large part to prevent the need for such a large undertaking again in the near or far future. This will have an impact on the running costs of the forum, but I have personally committed to paying for the excess storage costs for the foreseeable future. Going forward, there should never be an issue with any image hosting provider turning our forum's comics and screenshots into a virtual graveyard ever again.
  
  
• At this time, the new image hosting feature will support up to 100 images per post, with a total post size of 20MB (this includes the text content). Please plan your posts accordingly as you may run into an error if you attempt to exceed these limits, and your post content might not be saved as a draft either if it is over that size requirement.
  
  
• Lastly, please be aware there will be at least one further maintenance window. While we were able to achieve all of our goals in this extended downtime, we did have to roll back a few changes that were not quite ready performance wise. Eventually, we plan to switch our storage to a more price-friendly pay as you go model. We will provide more details about the timing of this change in the coming weeks.

TL;DR: We are now intending to self-host images, and are in the process of converting all past images posted, so you may see a little bit more load time than you're used to for a while. If you do see anything off, please utilize the report function on the post in question so we can look into it. This is all new territory, done on a time crunch, so your help is appreciated!

 

[Fullmental]

I hope posing a question here won't be too bad, I'm not in the Discord to ask there.

Do the changes made to accommodate this Imgur TOS change affect how the site handles changing the size and alt text of images? Specifically, I use the 5th gen animated sprites from PokemonDB's gallery in my current written log run, but I often need to increase their size so they don't look goofy next to nearby images. I just posted an update and it appears that despite me manually adjusting the sizes of those images, the site chose to render them at the source file's default size anyway. And the process of making the post appears to have wiped out my alt text as well.

For the time being, yes it is affecting the image tags of new and edited posts. We're working on a fix for that. Give it maybe a week? Until then, I would recommend resizing the images before you post them.

 

[Rubombee]

I hope posing a question here won't be too bad, I'm not in the Discord to ask there.

Do the changes made to accommodate this Imgur TOS change affect how the site handles changing the size and alt text of images? Specifically, I use the 5th gen animated sprites from PokemonDB's gallery in my current written log run, but I often need to increase their size so they don't look goofy next to nearby images. I just posted an update and it appears that despite me manually adjusting the sizes of those images, the site chose to render them at the source file's default size anyway. And the process of making the post appears to have wiped out my alt text as well.

You can use [ATTACH type=full width/height="#px" alt=""]

 

[Fullmental]

Hey all, we have an updated version of the image conversion addon that now properly handles image attribute tags automatically when you post! Give it a try, resize to your heart's content! If you run into any issues, please do let us know.

A fix for current stray attachments is on the way. In the meantime, if you edit any posts and a bunch of attachments appear, don't worry! A fix will be coming soon...

In the meantime, do consider the image conversion addon now auto converts all images not already hosted by the nuzlocke forums server. This means, if you maintain an offsite post index or code that you update and copy/paste into a post, you will need to **check your post** before you make any updates! If the post has already converted to use attachments, and you copy/paste old img tags, you will duplicate those attachments as the script attempts to parse those tags again, not knowing it already did so! If this happens, it's a manual fix for the staff, so please keep an eye out to keep the unintended duplications to a minimum.

Thank you, and if you have any questions we're always here to help!

 

[Fullmental]

Hey all, we have some good news for you! There is now a brand new, EXPERIMENTAL feature on the forums! If you go to a post that you have edit permissions on, you will see a shiny new link at the bottom of your post that says "Remove Unused Attachments". Like the name implies, clicking it will automagically remove any attachments on that post that are not inserted as ID's in your post message content. This means those pesky extra attachments can now be wiped away with a single click if something goes awry!



Please note, this is a HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL feature! This addon was developed and tested entirely in-house, and we aren't exactly experts. Use this feature at your own risk!!! If you run into any troubles, do let us know and we can look into a fix, but we cannot guarantee that all attachments will be handled as expected. Be prepared to re-insert broken attachments if it messes up. We've tried to set the matching pattern to be as liberal as possible, looking solely for the ID number of your attachment. Therefore, if you have an attachment with a relatively low ID number, you might find that those attachments match for other random number strings in your message, and won't be deleted. This is intended behavior - we'd rather not remove an attachment than remove one that shouldn't be removed. Please do keep this in mind when you use the tool.

Hope this helps you all out while we work on a more permanent solution to the attachment crisis. Happy posting!

 

[TheTRUEgge]

Something weird happened on my FFC Nuzlocke’s final part—the images turned into attachment hyperlinks that, when clicked, resulted in a “this content can’t be found” type error. I ended up fixing it by just copy and pasting my Imgur links back to where the images were supposed to be, and the OTHER post I made after the attachment handling switch is still fine, so I'm not entirely sure what happened there. Figured I would give you all a head’s up—I didn’t think to take screenshots before fixing it but you can see the post in question here (and here because I had to split it up due to length issues. Both were affected so I don’t think it had to do with that)

 

[Fullmental]

Something weird happened on my FFC Nuzlocke’s final part—the images turned into attachment hyperlinks that, when clicked, resulted in a “this content can’t be found” type error. I ended up fixing it by just copy and pasting my Imgur links back to where the images were supposed to be, and the OTHER post I made after the attachment handling switch is still fine, so I'm not entirely sure what happened there. Figured I would give you all a head’s up—I didn’t think to take screenshots before fixing it but you can see the post in question here (and here because I had to split it up due to length issues. Both were affected so I don’t think it had to do with that)

Hi, looks like your posts were affected by a little issue I didn't get a chance to post about yet over here. So sorry about that, but I'm glad to hear you were able to get it restored without too much trouble!

On that note...

Hi all,

We had a bit of an oopsie with the attachment cleanup script. Turns out its was not detecting attachments that were hidden inside spoiler tags due to how the HTML gets parsed. As a result, some posts between May 15, 2023 7:45 AM and May 16, 2023 10:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time) that used images within spoiler tags may currently be broken.

If you happened to post or edit an existing post been these two times with a spoiler tag containing images, please double check your post to see if they are still there! If they are not, please message me here, or @ me in ⁠assistance over in Discord with the link to the post in question, and I will attempt to restore it from a backup in the morning, if the data is available. Any posts from earlier and later should be unaffected, but if you catch anything please report it!

Note: unfortunately I cannot guarantee we have the image data if the post falls within the time range. It's likely, but not 100% guaranteed. If you are affected and we do not have the backup data, I do sincerely apologize. We did not anticipate such odd behavior by the software in our cleanup efforts.

Thank you as always for your incredible patience and understanding. I know there's been a lot of changes going on recently, and with that there is always risk of things breaking. We try to account for every possibility, but we cannot foresee or test every single post. The good news is these efforts will ultimately prevent a lot of lost historical data on the forums. We hope you understand.

 

[Fullmental]

Hi all, last update for this thread, I hope.

All of the backup data we had has been restored, and we've finished cleaning up a lot of things. Attachments, extra database tables, files, all sorts of things. The site is now running nice and lean again.

So, back to the original intent of this entire process: Saving any imgur images. Although the automated software did not work as we expected and we had to roll it back (thereby creating the majority of the work we've been doing in the background the past week or so to fix things), we do now have a copy of every imgur file posted to the forum up to May 1, and these are currently saved in a separate space. At some point in the future, we will integrate those as attachments in all the forum posts using a custom solution. We have no ETA for this project to be completed, but we will provide more information at a later date.

In the meantime, if you catch a run that loses its imgur images, let us know and we may be able to work with the author to get it restored manually.

As always, thank you for your patience and understanding. Any issues you encounter, please let us know!

 

[Fullmental]

One more update for you all:

We've been doing some testing behind the scenes, and I'm happy to report that we've been able to increase the image limit in posts! Now, you should be able to put up to 250 images per post instead of 100! We wish we could allow for more, but during our testing the server started timing out if we pushed it much beyond that. As it is, you may see a server timeout or other error if your images are too large. This is unfortunately a byproduct of the PHP image processing, which is single-threaded. It is not something we can really change to our knowledge. Frankly, we don't care about the storage. I'm personally paying for whatever extra storage we need, and I'm committing to that long term. It's the time it takes for all the images to process behind the scenes that's a problem. As it is, you're likely to be waiting up to a minute for the posts with images to submit, because it really just takes that long...if it weren't for that, I'd be happy to just set it to unlimited.

If you have any problems with submitting posts within the new image limit, please let us know. Otherwise, I hope this provides a happy medium for everyone.

Thank you for your understanding!

EDIT: Oh yes, one other thing: If you upload images directly as attachments instead of hotlinking from image hosts, the limit is calculated differently. This is because the processing is done one at a time as you upload, instead of all at once when you submit the post. That limit right now is not by image count, but by total post size. So if you're doing a lot of screenshots in a run, you may be able to get more via the direct attachment method. Just be aware that exceeding the max post size will result in an error, which we cannot fix for you. Be aware of the total size of your post before you submit! Right now, the max post size is 25MB, and this includes text and bbcode, as well as images. We recommend using .jpg images with a quality value of 75-80% for the best compression without sacrificing too much in terms of visual fidelity.

 

[Fullmental]

On second look, it seems attachment sizes aren't considered for the post maximum size. I guess give what you have a try? Just be prepared for it to not work, save your post locally before you hit submit.