Why don't pictures show?

Brint Hannay · From: Maryland, USA

Can anyone explain to me why some pictures in people's posts (and, for that matter, pictures in e-mails or websites) show, and others don't? Too often I get that blank rectangle outline with the little icon in the upper left corner. Even more perplexing, photos I've been able to see previously, e.g. Ricky Davis's Feb. 13 post with photos of James Morehead's Coop-ized Sho-Bud, now I only get a logo thing that says "image cave bandwidth exceeded". Huh??!! (My internet connection is high-speed cable.)

[This message was edited by Brint Hannay on 22 March 2006 at 01:35 PM.]

Roger Kelly · From: Bristol,Tennessee

Brint, Bandwidth is a commodity that some image hosting sites charge you for using. You are usually charged by how much bandwidth you need say 50 MB. If you post an image and you have a lot of hits of people looking at that image your 50 MB can be exceeded. Then you would need to buy more bandwidth or find a site that will host your pictures for free with more bandwidth, if possible. Photobucket will allow 50 MB disc space with a 2,500 MB monthly bandwidth for free.
Usually when you see a rectangle or logo where a picture once was in a post it is because that person removed it from his picture host for some reason or it may have exceeded that allowable bandwidth for the month? I hope this explanation is helpful.
Here is an example of a picture that was removed by me.

[This message was edited by Roger Kelly on 22 March 2006 at 02:40 PM.]

Al Marcus · From: Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)

Brint-Good question.

Roger-Thanks for the answer. I used to wonder about that too....al

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My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

To expand on the previous answer, images can be broken on websites if the person who creates the html uses the wrong lettercase combination, or misspells the exact name of, or server path to the image.

For example, say I decide to put a photo on my website to sell an item, and upload it to a directory called "/images" and name it "pic1.jpg," and create an IMG link tag on my forum post to display the image from my server. Sometime later I sell the item and remove the image. Since it no longer exists in the images directory if you come along later on and read the ad there will be a placeholder for the missing image, with a small red X in the upper left corner.

Sometimes, in our haste to get content online we forget to check the lettercase in the filename, upload it as is, and create a link to what we think is the spelling and case ... and get it wrong. The image might have the filename "Image2.jpg" when uploaded, but I might have forgotten about the capital I and created a link to "image2.jpg" which is not the same name. Anyone viewing a link to it will see a missing image placeholder and X.

There are certain exceptions to the above rule, but that should explain what can and does often happen to cause the missing image placeholders to appear.

Mark Vinbury · From: N. Kingstown, Rhode Island, USA

Guess I don't understand this server bandwidth thing. Are bandwidth and memory the same thing?
If I have an image taking up 825kb of memory isn't that all the bandwidth I'm using?
Sounds from the above posts like every person viewing uses up more bandwidth. It's as if they leave somthing which takes up memory space.

[This message was edited by Mark Vinbury on 23 March 2006 at 05:44 AM.]

Roger Kelly · From: Bristol,Tennessee

Mark, read this it may give you a better understanding. http://www.findmyhosting.com/bandwidth.htm

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Mark asked:

quote:

Guess I don't understand this server bandwidth thing. Are bandwidth and memory the same thing?
If I have an image taking up 825kb of memory isn't that all the bandwidth I'm using?
Sounds from the above posts like every person viewing uses up more bandwidth. It's as if they leave somthing which takes up memory space.

Let me try to explain this in layman's terms. When you "obtain" (buy, lease, rent, get for free) commercial online storage space of any kind, be it for storing images, audio, or video files, or for creating a website or blog, you get two main items, as described in your service agreement.

You get a certain amount of disk space on their server. This may be called storage space or disk space. It is akin to a filing cabinet. The taller or wider it is the more files you can store in it. Some of your file folders will have few pages, while others may be overflowing with pages, but as long as the drawers will close after you access a file you can store all that you can stuff into them.
Commercial hosts also allot a certain amount of monthly "bandwidth" which is also called "transfer." It may be rated in megabytes, or gigabytes. This represents how much of your stored files are being requested by people from the Internet. For every file that is one megabyte in size a megabyte of your bandwidth will be consumed everytime somebody views that file online. This includes everytime it is displayed on a forum page using an IMG link. Eventually, if enough people view your online content, or open a forum page containing your imported image, you may reach your prepaid hosting limit and your hosting company will either charge your credit card for the excess bandwidth, or suspend your account until you pay up, or terminate it.

In a nutshell, you may have an online storage agreement that allows you 1000 Mb of storage, and 1000 Mb of monthly transfer. You might upload ten photos or mp3 files that only consume 10 Mb of disk space, but if 101 people download all of your 10 Mb of files, pictures, or soundbytes, within one billing month, you will run out of allowed bandwidth (1000 Mb file transfer), and get shut down.

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Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.

jolynyk · From: Prince Albert Sask. Canada

Wiz, I don't know if this pertains to this topic, but for example there is a BMI for sale under Instruments.. All I get is a white box with a red X in that ad.. I right click on it & click on Show Picture., but I still get nothing...

Brint Hannay · From: Maryland, USA

Or you get a little icon-like thing in the upper left corner that looks like a page with a corner turned down and has red and blue in it. (Actually, sometimes you see that same thing just before the picture does actually load.) Does this still relate to the bandwith question?

[This message was edited by Brint Hannay on 23 March 2006 at 04:17 PM.]

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

jolynyk:
I found that ad and saw the same square placeholder. When I right clicked and chose View Image I was able to open it in a new window. It is hosted on Kodak's server and was very slow to load. Their website/storage space is overloaded, that's all.

I took the liberty of uploading it to wiztunes.com for you to look at it. The BMI S10 is here for one day.

Brint;
Yes, slow loading images, or ones requiring you to reload the page to get the images to display are caused by overloaded servers. There is only so much bandwidth available in a given bunch of optical cables or telephony wires, and if too many browsers request files from the same IP address server it will bog down, or even crash.

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Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.

[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 23 March 2006 at 06:12 PM.]

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Your questions about bandwidth are valid inquiries about a little known subject. I intend to blog about it on my website and will post a link to the blog once I have some decent content for you. Bandwidth affects everybody who uses the Internet, including the ISP you logon to, and the backbone that supplies them with their upstream connection to the rest of the Internet.

Oh yeah, there is no free lunch. If you see an ad for a hosting service that says unlimited bandwidth, don't fall for it. Your usage is only unlimited until your files transfers slow down their server and the other websites hosted there. It reminds me of the unlimited-hours dialup ISP I used to belong to that would disconnect me after 10 hours, no matter what I was doing online. Then there was AOL's unlimited service that would popup a timer with a button that if not clicked upon within 45 seconds would disconnect me from the service.

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Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.

Mark Vinbury · From: N. Kingstown, Rhode Island, USA

Wiz and others-Thanks for taking the time to get me up to speed on this subject.

The part that was tripping me up was the apparent dual definition of bandwidth.

Sometimes it was defined as the size of the artery going to your information(which would limit the number and speed of concurrent downloads) and other times it was a spoken of as a fixed amount of somthing that was consumed with each hit (concurrent or not).

If I understand it correctly "bandwidth" can be used to mean either.

Wiz Feinberg · From: Mid-Michigan, USA

Mark;
The term bandwidth, when pertaining to TCP/IP traffic, really means the capacity of the "pipe" that feeds a web host, ISP, business line, backbone service, etc. It is erroneously used by hosting companies to refer to file transfers out of a server. However, it has been used so often in this manner that, like the miss-(spelled/pronounced) word nuclear/nucular it has gained common acceptance.

The correect term is monthly transfer allowance.

------------------
Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.

[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 24 March 2006 at 07:18 AM.]

Mark Vinbury · From: N. Kingstown, Rhode Island, USA

Thanks again Wiz.

Dave Potter · From: Texas

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