Blog files
 

Is there a way to upload files directly and then browse them later when you compose an entry. It seems once you upload a picture and get the code you are forever committed to that decision, if you know the file name you could write the code entry but what if later one you want to use that same picture but forgot the filename or something.

Also, I'm curious why you chose MT rather than some free systems like Wordpress. Is it the only one that can handle the number of users you have.

Great Sig Line...and true
 

"This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do."

No way to upload directly, you have to use the MT interface.
You can then easily browse them by simply going to the /images subdir of your site. You can't change anything though. You must overwrite an image to replace it, and you can't delete. Ask me if you have some to delete.

Easy - in 2002 there was no Wordpress, and MT was free. There were others but MT was far and away the best for multiple users. Wordpress still can't do multiple users well. There are several projects working on that and we are watching closely to see if one actually does a decent job of it - last time I looked there was nothing good - lots of grand ideas and plans, but nothing good.

A replacement for the MT blog is a top priority, but I'm not happy with the options currently available. MT is great but the price for 100's of users is thousands of dollars a year, so not an option.

The new system also has to integrate or be integrable with vBulletin and Drupal for user sign in, which isn't easy!

Keep your eyes open and let me know if see anything! We really want to get it going this winter.

File Mgt
 

I don't see how I can browse my files through the MT interface.

I think WP can intergrate with Drupal, and I will ask around about vB. Boy, Grant, this site must be a real monster to manage.

You got that right! :) We're trying to make it a lot easier with a whole new system, as it's a real monster now with nothing really connected. We're running several apps plus a lot of pages handbuilt in Dreamweaver.

You can't browse through the MT interface, just use your browser and give it the address of your blog, and add /images to the path and you'll see a listing of your images files in the images folder.

And no, you can't ftp to it either, sorry.

Blog files
 

Grant,

That leaves the photos wide open to anyone, not that it matters too much especially with the small files sizes.

With that in mind, I used to have an index file in the root of /images that redirected the viewer to the blog site. However, it also made it impossible for the blogger to know what files were uploaded already.

Finally decided to dump that, as it really didn't make much difference. If someone wants the files they can get them by simply viewing them on the web page then right clicking and save as.

Remember the basic rule - if you can see it on the web, you've got it one way or another. Remember that the image is ALREADY on the viewers computer in order to show it - it's probably even in their cache.

Linked pics
 

Grant,

Finally getting around to updating my blog and was reading the help files about photos. Are there size limits for photos stored on other site, and is it 400 x 300.

There is no hard and fast rule - but you always have to remember that big files take a very long time to upload, and for dial-up users - and yes there's still lots of them - it can take forever to download a big pic - so thy just give up and go elsewhere. Finally of course big pictures use up a lot of bandwidth, and that will cost us. AT the moment we're just under our transfer limit, when we go over it starts to get expensive, so we don't want monster files.

The first consideration though is the user experience - and big pictures suck - both from the download time and the page size - scrolling sideways is silly.

So all in our recommendation is somewhere around 330-450 pixels wide, and under 40-60kb.

We're more lenient with Gold Members of course :) but always remember the poor guy on a dial-up connection and a 14" monitor.