Uploading MP3's to the forum server will not be possible

[T.C. Elliott]

So at fawm.ORG and 50 Songs in 90 Days powered by fawm.ORG they have a player set up and you simply put the URL of the file you want to stream and add information like title and then post. What this does is make each user find a spot to put their stuff. Google pages is awesome but they are not taking new accounts, but google sites will work. It is somewhat more intermittent in it's streaming, but seems to be decent. You have to upload your file then set it to public.
If anyone has webspace provided by their internet provider you can upload a song then copy link location and that should work as well.

So I guess I'm saying that there are options (not many) that would allow for us to stream unlimited, but it's up to the users to provide the space. Most players won't stream a myspace song without traveling to that site.

If that hotmail option (6G per person is quite a bit) works for uploading files.. well that's a really cool deal. I'll play with it later and see if it works for how I use it.

I propose that we consider a two tiered approach. Have a limited amount of file hosting here (as mentioned above) but also make it possible to input our own url to stream. I for one could host all of my own files and just stream it here.

[64Guitars]

I propose that we consider a two tiered approach. Have a limited amount of file hosting here (as mentioned above) but also make it possible to input our own url to stream. I for one could host all of my own files and just stream it here.

We can already do that with the [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags.

For example, here's a song you posted in the Yahoo! BossBR group:

Time:

0:00

Volume:

50

0

 Stop   Play   Pause   Vol   Vol   Mute   Repeat   Download

Nothing is attached to this message. It's streaming directly from the Yahoo! site.

More info here and here.

Unfortunately, sites like SoundClick and MySpace hide the actual URL of the MP3 file so there's no way to link it to our MP3 player. But any web storage site that lets you access the MP3's URL directly can be streamed from our MP3 player. SkyDrive is nice because it gives you 25GB of storage for free. Unfortunately, I suspect that they periodically change the URLs of your files to prevent hot-linking. I'm not sure about that though. Time will tell.

[Pedro]

I see what you mean. Pretty misleading advertising by bluehost then, to say that space is unlimited.

How does the SMF software store the attachments? Does it store each MP3 as an individual file? Or are the attachments stored within the database? If it's the latter case, then I don't see a problem because the database is a necessary part of the website. But if the MP3s are stored as individual files, then they might say that violates the terms of service. Are there any options in the SMF software that would allow attachments to be stored in the database instead of separately?

Looking through the bluehost forum, I get the impression that a bigger problem might be the file count limit of 50,000 files. Where do we stand on that? (apparently, you'll find the count in the file '/tmp/userquota').

The sites uses various MP3 files stored in a folder called attachments, so they can't be seen as necessary to run the site.

I think I've figured out a solution:

• The attachments folder is limited to 3GB.
• The archive is limited to one month, any MP3 file in the post your MP3 and Collaborations boards older than one month are automatically deleted.
• Users have a space quota of 15 MB (around 15 minutes of music) and they will be able to delete their attachments
• I will store a copy of all the MP3 attachments before deleting them in my hard drive and DVD's.

What do you think?

[launched]

That sounds like a good idea because you can always increase/decrease the storage levels and timeframe depending on the economic weather.

I really like that solution!

Mark

[64Guitars]

The thing that worries me is that deleting any existing attachments will leave a whole bunch of broken messages with MP3 players linked to non-existent files or comments referencing songs that are no longer in the message. Existing members might understand this but new members will probably be posting messages daily complaining about MP3 players that don't work. And visitors will be left with a bad impression of the site if they encounter a lot of messages with broken links or references to non-existent songs.

If we must remove existing MP3s, I think it would be better to move them somewhere else (SkyDrive?) and adjust the MP3 player links so that they point to the new location. That way, the messages still make sense and the MP3 players still work, even though the files are no longer stored onsite. SkyDrive gives you 25 GB of storage for free, which should be enough for the current MP3 collection. And you could disable future MP3 attachments and have members host their own files instead. There are two potential problems with this idea. 1) I don't know if this would violate SkyDrive's Terms of Service. 2) I don't know if links to SkyDrive files remain consistent (I think they periodically change them to prevent hot-linking). But, if SkyDrive isn't suitable, maybe you could find some other storage site that you can use in the same way. If necessary, perhaps even a paid web storage site financed by sponsorship or donations.

Failing that, I think that all non-working MP3 players in messages should be replaced by an image of the player with a message like "Sorry, song deleted." overlaid on top of the image. It would be a shame if we had to resort to that, but at least it would be better than a bunch of broken MP3 players (with no explanation), or messages that refer to a deleted MP3 player.

One last thought:  Before you do anything, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask bluehost about the situation first? Explain to them that your site is a web forum where members can post their own MP3s (so not a copyright concern) and that the songs are an integral part of the forum. Who knows - they might not have a problem with it. If they do, then you can move the MP3s offsite. But it would be a shame to delete everything based on an assumption if it turned out that bluehost doesn't even mind the current situation. As a precaution, I'd backup everything before contacting bluehost - just in case they decide to delete stuff themselves.

[Pedro]

When deleting the attachments with SMF, the post becomes like this:
https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=6.msg8#msg8
I might even add a "contact the user for more information." to the text.

On another note, I think that archiving all the MP3 files is sometimes unecessary. The truth is that, by statistics, most attachments stop being played a month or two after post. And so, I think this change would be almost unoticed.

The thing people would notice most is the 15 MB limit, but I think this change is very important, as it would bring greater balance and variety to the Post Your MP3 board.

[Oldrottenhead]

One last thought:  Before you do anything, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask bluehost about the situation first?

i second that

[64Guitars]

Deleting files will break all of my jukebox pages too.

https://songcrafters.org/Festivals/Early%20BossBR.html

[Oldrottenhead]

i'm feeling quite sad about this and feel it could be the end of a golden era, i hope my feelings are unfounded tho.

[launched]

My head is hanging low at this point...

Signed,

Sad Marky