topic Re: Adding pics to a post limit in Community Site Feedback

Adding pics to a post limit

shutter — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 20:22:55 GMT

Just made a post and started to add images. not realising the limit number... so I just kept adding each one as the "browse" buttone let me....

I added 15 pics that way, but when I clicked the Post button, it shouted at me.... ERROR !.. max number of pics per post is 9..

So.. why does it allow me to add a further 6 ?

Surely the system can count... and should have stopped me adding when the max number was achieved. ? ? ?

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

HarryB — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 10:40:00 GMT

That does seem odd that it allowed you to add so many considering the limit is set at 9 attachments.

@jaread83 Is there anything you can do about this? Warning message or prevent it from allowing the option to add further images after 9? Or is this something we'd need to go back to Lithium with?

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

shutter — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 16:23:18 GMT

I Knew there was a limit on the old forum, but could not remember how many it was. and did not know if the limit had been "carried over" to this forum..

There should be some kind of note about "How to...... " add, and "What you can add... file type and file size, before you actually get to the "browse" button. and here also, it should specify the max number and total file size that can be added.

That kind of information is not available, and it can be very frustrating when you have tried to upload some files, and then get the message "Failed"...

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 08:56:00 GMT

@HarryB,

Not much I can do about this I'm afraid. We do have the ability to change how many pictures can be posted in the admin panel if you want to increase it?

I just checked the settings and 9 is the maximum amount. I agree with what @shutter is saying, we could add something to the attachment area like a help popup which will pull in the information about file type, file sizes and max items? Adding this to my enhancement list as I think its useful information to have to hand when adding file attachments.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

shutter — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 09:03:08 GMT

OK... so,

Question was... why does the forum allow me to upload 15 pics but causes an error because the limit is 9.

Answer... A... there`s not much we can do about it, I`m afraid.

Answer....B... We do have the ability to change how many pictures can be posted in the admin panel if you want to increase it?

Erm... kinda contradictory statements....

So, if you can " change how many pictures can be posted in the admin panel" why say "There`s not much I can do about it "...

Why can`t you make the limit 15.. and then there is no problem.....

Of course , you will still need to put an "advisory" panel next to the "browse" window, so that people know the limits ... as already mentioned.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 09:11:09 GMT

I have added having a tooltip popup for message attachments to my enhancement list to do when I got some time. What I meant by 'there isn't much I can do about it' is that I can't change how the system works - something I have no control over.

I do have an idea to get around it though.. I could write a script that will detect how many items have been added to the attachments and physically remove the browse button after the limit has been reached. That could work? I have never tried to attach more than a few files at a time so have never encountered this issue.

Thanks for flagging this up though, I will look at how I can improve this functionality with the tools I have available to me to change this.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

MauriceC — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 10:34:54 GMT

By my assessment this is clearly a 'bug' in the core lithium code! No well designed software should continue to accept input beyond the system set limit - it's just wrong.

I appreciate your suggestion to add yet another bit of JS to hide the problem, but it will add to the already slow page load and even worse make the whole package more cumbersome to maintain over time. The old SMS forum and its predecessor suffered from this approach until it became 'Too difficult' to enhance without making lots of other things fail.

Let's not start down that path quite so early this time, add this bug to the lithium 'must fix' list

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

HarryB — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 10:36:16 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

I have added having a tooltip popup for message attachments to my enhancement list...

I do have an idea to get around it though.. I could write a script that will detect how many items have been added to the attachments and physically remove the browse button after the limit has been reached. That could work?

They're the type of things I was asking if you could do. On staging it was me and Chris who went through the admin panel and set the attachment sizes etc. to match the old community

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 10:55:35 GMT

No worries, I have added two enhancements to my list...

add a help popup that will obtain the admin settings for limitations
add a script that will restrict the number of files that can be added to a post - basically hide the browse button when the number has been reached.

This work will need to be sized and scheduled in and will be done as part of the next release so not included in the current release that is waiting to go live.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

shutter — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 14:59:16 GMT

Seems to be a long-winded approach to me... why can`t you just change the max number to 15... Job Done..

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 15:03:12 GMT

@HarryB, I will let you and your team decide on this as you originally wanted to mimic what was on the old platform. I have no issues increasing the number of files to add to a single post but its up to you guys.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

Oldjim — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 15:26:57 GMT

A word of caution

Is the file limit - using the file add function - the same as the image limit using the add photo function

If it is we certainly don't want to allow a very large number of images in a post

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

shutter — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 17:27:03 GMT

@Oldjim I am inclined to agree with not wanting loads of "large" file pics on a post... however, it seems that the " tech guys" have some problems in actually rectifying the problem I initially outlined. and it also seems that their solution, ( writing some script to hide another script, or something of that nature).. could cause problems at a later date, when something else goes wrong.

My suggestion of increasing the number to 15, was, to me, a much simpler solution, and would not cause HUGE problems, if used properly, hence the "pop up" advice that pic files etc be limited in size... and the total file size to be also limited..

So, if I wanted to upload ( say ) 30 pics, I would need to use two posts and also use FastImageResizer to reduce the file size as it is quicker to upload them, than to leave them in the original file sizes. and the total (file size )of those 30 pics would (if exceeding the total file size limit set by the popup info). stop any further uploads on that particular posting.

Your posting seems to be implying that lots of people will upload 15 pics ( or similar type files) as a matter of routine, yet the number of posts on the forum, that actually have attachments, is very very small, compared to the total file size of a certain thread that required every post to include a pic of the next number from the preceding post.......

https://community.plus.net/t5/General-Chat/Forum-Game-Counting-with-pictures/td-p/833642/highlight/true

Which ran to 4,373 posts, reaching the number 4784 ! ! ! ...

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 17:37:19 GMT

They are separate settings for the media uploader and attachments as far as I know.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

MauriceC — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 09:28:33 GMT

Can we go back to my post #7 in this thread please. I still believe that this is a problem in the core lithium code and needs to be addressed as such by lithium.

On the limited evidence so far, it would appear that the input code is accessing a Thingy_MaxCount system default variable whilst the validation code is using Thingy_Local_Admin_MaxCount variable. So quite likely to be a simple fix and test?

Fudging the issue with more JS just complicates later service maintenance.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 12:59:25 GMT

I agree @MauriceC. I will ask Louisa to raise a support ticket with Lithium about this and make a record of this thread on my bug tracker.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 13:14:14 GMT

Okay... so the system is set to 9 files in the attachments component.

I added 9 files and it will not let me add anymore. So what's the issue here exactly? The attachments work as expected...

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

jaread83 — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 13:28:40 GMT

Okay, so I checked the settings and everything is working as expected.

File attachments - limitted to 9 files. You cannot attach more than 9 files. This works as expected

Media uploader - There is a limit to 10 images being uploaded at once. This works fine. If you want to upload more, insert the ones you just uploaded and then upload the rest. You can insert as many inline images as you want into your post, its just that there is a setting in the admin panel that stops users uploading more than 10 images at once.

What is the issue here exactly? What browser are you using that is allowing you to add more attachments to a post? The browse button dissapears for me when I hit the limit.

Some screenshots would be helpful if you can describe how you managed to get around the limits.

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

shutter — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 19:19:00 GMT

Hmm.... so.... someone, somewhere, has sorted this problem out... but nobody is admitting to doing it... nor is anyone taking ownership of the original "error"..

Not that I`m that bothered,...... just saying... that`s how it reads... from this "non-techy" side of the forum screen.....

Re: Adding pics to a post limit

rongtw — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 21:11:35 GMT

Think this is the main problem Shutter ,, Forum is not thought about for non tech people .

They have tried to make a too fancy forum with unecessary extras which only regulars use , Forum should be basic !! so 90% of customers find it easy