Forum Platform Changes – PLEASE READ

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Vic on 02/04/2023 13:23:42:

How is the new software coming along. Do you need any more Guinea Pigs? I mostly use an iPad Mini for viewing this forum.

WE have several beta-test volunteers (nothing happening yet though).

I'm sure a few more would be useful, but I don't know if everyone offering will be asked to take part.

Thanks

Neil

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Those photos that I saved from the forum album were totally unusable. They were put in as the lowest resolution that the camera, a Pentax K5D would manage, equivalent to full HD and when I had got them back on the hard disc they were just pixelated rubbish, only 5Kb each, just thumbnails. I don't know how that happened, they look ok in the album.

Edited By old mart on 04/04/2023 19:57:57

Edited By old mart on 04/04/2023 19:58:48

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

If you just selected the small thumbnail from the album then that is all you will get, the small 5KB thumb. If you want a larger image then you need to go to view album, click on an image and then click view full size and then save that image, still won't be massive as the forum software resizes as a file is uploaded, probably about 150Kb

Edited By JasonB on 04/04/2023 20:21:25

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

Thanks, Jason, I was beginning beginning to suspect something like that had happened.

[DC31kParticipant @dc31k]

If anyone wants to download their photos semi-automatically (you only have to input a link to the album front page and a local location where to save them), this Python should do the trick. It is likely you will need to install the requests and BeautifulSoup modules.

import shutil # module to save images locally
import requests # module to allow http requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup # webscraping module

url = input("Enter album URL: " # paste in your album URL
folder = input("Enter a folder path for photos: " # enter photo archive path

# Note that a typical Windows path must be written thus:
# C:/Users/laptop/Documents/ME_pics/

# The album page contains a 'magic number', referred to below as member_number.
# We have to extract that to construct the full URL to the photo

# Set up base URL for photo locations
base_url = 'https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/images/member_albums/'

reqs = requests.get(url) # make http request to album page
soup = BeautifulSoup(reqs.text, 'html.parser' # drop result into soup tureen

urllist = [] # construct empty list
for link in soup.find_all('a': # find all links from album page
urllist.append(link.get('href') # add links to list
member_number = (urllist[1]) # magic number is within second item in list
mn = member_number[-6:] # extract number from that item
mn += '/' # add forward slash for housekeeping
base_url += mn # add member_number to base_url
photo_list = [] # construct empty list
for u in urllist: # look at each item in list
if u[0:6] == 'member': # find out if the url is a photo
photo_id = u[-6:] # last six charcters is its ID
photo_list.append(base_url + photo_id + ".jpg" # construct URL of photo
for p in photo_list: # now go through list and save pictures
file_name = folder + p[-10:] # full path to saved file
res = requests.get(p, stream = True) # get the image from the interweb
if res.status_code == 200: # check if successful
with open(file_name,'wb' as f: # open file for writing as binary
shutil.copyfileobj(res.raw, f) # weld it to the hard disk
print('Image sucessfully Downloaded: ',file_name)
else:
print('Image Couldn't be retrieved'

Edit: if the forum wants to put smiley faces in perfectly good Python code, that is its problem, not mine.

Edited By DC31k on 05/04/2023 10:39:13

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by DC31k on 05/04/2023 10:37:41:

Edit: if the forum wants to put smiley faces in perfectly good Python code, that is its problem, not mine.

I think that nicely justifies the change in itself!

Neil

[Rex HanmanParticipant @rexhanman57403]

When is this change going to happen? Or did I miss it?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It's getting there slowly, flurry of e-mails about 2 weeks ago and then it's gone quiet again.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Forumageddon week is going to be a hoot

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I remember the vast effort we spent at Magnox, doing a very well-ordered and thoroughly tested ‘data migration’

… But hopefully this ‘Platform Change’ will sail through [on a wing and a prayer?]

MichaelG.

[dhendleyKeymaster @dhendley]

I think it's safe to say this is probably the most complicated thing we have ever done! It's getting there but I've stopped putting dates on it!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Wise man, Darren

I can’t disclose what we spent, or how many very competent people were involved … but it’s rarely easy.

MichaelG.

[Roger ClarkParticipant @rogerclark]

I can remember, when working for a company that produced personalised 'fincial cards for various institutions, the unique file incrementing clocked over to 9 digits and the director from the Netherlands who was temporarily in charge issued the instruction to change the system to the current windows flexibility until I suggested that we did an impact analysis first as we had a number of piggybacked systems that adhered to dos file numbering systems, that was nearly the day that almost half of our manufactering lines would have crashed, oh happy days and long long hours.

Roger

[Anonymous]

Posted by Darren H on 03/07/2023 12:46:50:

I think it's safe to say this is probably …..

I love it!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Bumping this one up as there has been a bit of action lately.

It is unlikely that albums will be carried over at the time of the changeover but may do so at some time later.

All images from albums that have been inserted into posts will still show.

So if you have images in an album and want to be able to access them copy them within the next few weeks.

Edited By JasonB on 24/08/2023 15:45:21

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

That was always the problem with the netty, the massive loss of history and knowledge as technology moved forwards was mind boggling

The first 10 years from 2000 got virtually wiped out by places like yahoo etc, millions of hours of stored solutions and knowledge from hundreds of thousands of contributers

It's why I only post in here now

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Posted by JasonB on 24/08/2023 09:21:16:

……..

So if you have images in an album and want to be able to access them copy them within the next few weeks.

Well that will be quick and easy won't it? No alternative to one at a time as far as I can see.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Is there any chance the techie guys can give us access to the root storage section for each posters albums?

Add a link to a logged in posters profile to give him access

Then we can pull up the root directory page and download the whole ballgame in 5 minutes

….I'm hoping that's not too complicated and difficult…

We're already half way there with the

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/members/albums/

you only need to remove the access permissions for the server albums storage

a part of the forum system which is going to be toast anyway and It's just a pile of .jpgs

Edited By Ady1 on 24/08/2023 10:14:15

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Have you seen how many I have John and you have already had 5 months notice to back anything up.

Actually a lot of mine are just images used to illustrate something in a post so they will still be there. The other 8000 or so are on Photobucket and used more often.

On the good side it will be so much easier to add images simply drag, drop, click or tap an image on your devise and place into a post.

There will be Galleries than can be used if you want to keep a group of photos

One other thought, anyone using images hosted on this forum and using the url elsewhere will likely find the images will no longer show as link is likely to be dead once old site shut down. I know it is done by some a free hosting.

Edited By JasonB on 24/08/2023 10:04:21

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Also make sure you know the e-mail address you use to log on to the forum (not to Mortons mags) and the password you are using.

The new forum will retain those details but if you have them remembered so you don't have to type them each time you log in here your devise may not remember them on a new forum with different address.

Anyway I'm popping out to the workshop for a while to keep out of reach of the fan

Edited By JasonB on 24/08/2023 10:07:52

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

If your link to your albums section has no top end facing software(i.e. exclude it in a new albums link) then you will get a list of direct links to all your photo album storage

It's the albums info which is handled and displayed on the page, give it nowhere to go as unhandled links and they will list up as a root directory access page

Then we can get our stuff out really easily

My IT consultancy invoice for £100,000 is in the post

Edited By Ady1 on 24/08/2023 10:35:45

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, well I've just had a count up of all the photos in my albums, and it comes to 1782, most of which have been cropped, resized and or both, but every one is either on my laptop and or in an external hard drive, so I've not bothered saving any from this site. I do have one album that is not public, and I can't even review it, as whenever I try, I get a message saying that the album cannot be found, so if I want to look into it, I have to pretend I want to add more photos, strange that.

Regards Nick.

[Anonymous]

So does that mean that my albums will disappear and I will need to upload all the photos again?

Andrew

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

here we go… here we go… here we go…

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Posted by JasonB on 24/08/2023 09:21:16:

Bumping this one up as there has been a bit of action lately.

It is unlikely that albums will be carried over at the time of the changeover but may do so at some time later.

All images from albums that have been inserted into posts will still show.

So if you have images in an album and want to be able to access them copy them within the next few weeks.

Just for info, I'm sure Jason will be aware; if you do decide to download any album photos, the original file name will be lost, as when you download a photo, the new name will just be of the form 123456.jpg
Your photo title page in the album seems to be lost, as well as any explanatory text.
Also any exif appears to have been stripped as well, and the photo will have been optimised in size for display v storage size, so likely stored at a much smaller size than you uploaded.
I've tried to download a few, just as an experiment; it doesn't seem to matter if you "Save Image as" from the main album page, or the "Show Full Size" page.
The image has the same name and size.

Bill

[Author]

Posts