A Nice to have area.

[Hagar]

Hi Mike,

What would be nice is a section where people can add larger image files to allow the better processers to down load the image from to give them a bigger file to demonstrate with. At the moment a 200KB JPG doesn't allow much in the way ofspace to store a file of a couple of MB.
This area could be space limited or time limited then deleted after say 2 days.

[leon]

Now Doug I have to agree with that, excellent suggestion, now how do we get this happening.

Leon

[mojo]

You mean something like that? ;)
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/iisftp.html

[iceman]

Terry's right. The IIS FTP service has been up and running for years, and a number of members have been using it for that exact purpose.

Most astroimagers have their own websites too, and it's very common that they provide a link to their website where higher-res versions can be viewed.

[Hagar]

Thats the sort of thing I was after just I thought it would have been easier to create a forum thread which allowed this to happen using the PHP upload dialog. Easier for the less computer literate of us. Easy to rightclick and save file as.

I have a share login for my website but people just seem to get confused and I spend most of my time talking them through the process. I thought you gurus would know of an easier method.

Thanks

[mojo]

Doug, yes it's a good idea and far more user friendly to be be able to upload files through a web interface but when it comes to large files, it's not appropriate transferring files like that for reasons that I wont go into. Which is why we have the FTP server access.

My suggestion (and I recommend instead of using us to store files like that), is to use google's picasa web albums (http://picasaweb.google.com/). They provide 1GB of space for images and you're able to easily provide a link to the images you upload. It's a much simpler alternative to FTP'ing files.

[Hagar]

Thanks Mojo. The idea wan't to store files for any length of time it was really just to provide an intermediary for file transfer due to restrictions on most email accounts. It is only an idea to allow the better processors to be able to gain access easily to bigger files etc.
Google may be the way to go but requires logon and password to post etc.

Thanks
Doug

[iceman]

That's the exact reason the FTP space was created in the first place - for astroimagers who want to share their raw data so others can help with processing, etc.

I agree that FTP isn't the easiest thing to use for non-tech-savvy people, but most astroimagers generally have enough computer-smarts to navigate their way around it.