On Aug 9, 2008, at 1:33 AM, Denise Paolucci wrote:
On Aug 9, 2008, at 4:22 AM, Anna Simpson wrote:
Denise Paolucci wrote:
The more different userpics someone's using, the more they cost,
because it means less chance that a given userpic (that a user is
using) is cached in the browser, more data transfered when someone
goes to look at the allpics page, more data transfered when
someone goes to the userpic selector, etc.
I've always wondered why LJ didn't allow extra userpics in the same
way that it allows extra mood themes, by letting people host the
images off-site. Is it to avoid support having to deal with
hotlinking issues, to avoid people being able to host offensive
images where LJ can't reach them, or what?
Mostly it's the need to have to keep constantly checking the image
to make sure it's still the same image that was uploaded -- you can
check that something's 100x100 pixels when someone first upload/
uplinks it, but that person could then swap out the image for a
2000x2000px image and totally break the display of any page that
image is called from. It's an invitation to all sorts of new asshole
troll tactics.
That's the big reason: subreasons include the problems of not
wanting to rely on an offsite host (because when the host goes down,
you get broken image links, which look unprofessional, and it's
something that reflects poorly on the site even though the site
itself had nothing to do with it since it's stored elsewhere -- it's
one thing for someone's journal header image to be a broken link,
because the journal is *their* space, but userpics display in tons
of areas throughout the site and can be reasonably assumed to be the
site's responsibility) and, somewhat related, the fact that even
though a userpic can only be 40k, they're called often enough that
it would burn through the amount of monthly transfer that most hosts
offer pretty quickly.
I've never understood why moodtheme images had to be hosted offsite;
it seems like some of the same problems would apply. But IIRC you've
already said you're changing that?
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