Notice: Forum photo albums will be deleted
Up until now, we have had the option to upload photos to photo albums on user profiles. However, we are now using 90% of the server's disk capacity. If we wanted more space, we would have to get another server to host all these files, as our current host does not offer additional server space- which would be costly, and complicated to set up. We've opted instead to prioritize keeping the space available for other needs of the forums- the software and upgrades, photos in threads, profile pictures, and all the other data that grows as the forum grows.
While it has been very enjoyable to browse the albums on here, the fact is that we do not have the space or money to be a type of site where we can host all kinds of photos for our users.
User albums will be deleted in 5 days, (unless we reach 95% disk capacity before then) so please retrieve any photos that you do not have saved elsewhere.
Also, that when uploading photos to threads, when possible, please do so via URL, and uncheck the box that says, "Retrieve remote file and reference locally". Doing this will use the space on the host's site, instead of uploading the photo to our server, which of course takes up our server space.
However, be aware that if you do this from a photo on Facebook, that the photo will eventually be broken (no longer visiable) on the forum. Doing this is "hotlinking", and Facebook routinely changes the URLs to break hotlinked photos. Instead consider hosting your photos on other sites that allow this. Some sites include: Photobucket, Imgur, Google Photos, Flickr, 500px, Free Image Hosting, TinyPic, PostImage, and ImageShack- just to name a few. All of which are free to use.
Although it unfortunate that we have to disable the user album feature, we thank you for your understanding in this step needed to keep MerNetwork a free forum for our mer-family :)
