Forum update

[Neils]

Eh! Just when I thought i'd got the hang of this forum thingy you and start talking about tags and clouds - ill get there, just bear with me.
C

Don't worry Easy They're not essential to use, but if you search the forum a lot, especially if you only have a general notion of what you're looking for they can come in handy. I've added tags to a lot of the Varroa treatment and Integrated Pest Management threads for example, so if you wanted to find out what people were talking about in that area you could just click on the "Varroa Treatment" tag and all the related threads and blog posts would be shown. Compared to, say, searching the forum for "Apistan" and then "Apiguard", "thymol" etc etc.

It's just quite a handy way of being able to both categorise and display at a glance what categories threads come under. When a tag is small, there aren't many threads using it, when it's shown in big text, there are lots of different threads and posts.

[Bumble]

I've been trying to search the site but keep getting a "database error"

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/se...earchid=117881

[gavin]

I suspect that anyone trying to do anything was getting a 'Database error'. I'm just back from checking the bees and my inbox was full (>200 messages) from the software warning me of a database error. It was like that for about an hour this afternoon and also for a period this morning.

It is due to the database that contains all the data in the forum being offline but the other server, the one that runs the forum software, still being active. Fasthosts, the company hosting the site, used to provide a dreadful service but these breakdowns have become infrequent in recent months.

[gavin]

Following a suggestion we're going with making the pictures loaded onto the site visible all and sundry. Even non-logged in members. If anyone would rather not, do let us know and we'll reconsider. Being an old fartie, I resisted at first but may grow to like it.

G.

[Jon]

You know it makes sense!

[prakel]

Following a suggestion we're going with making the pictures loaded onto the site visible all and sundry. Even non-logged in members. If anyone would rather not, do let us know and we'll reconsider. Being an old fartie, I resisted at first but may grow to like it.

G.

I was once told (but admit that I'm not sure if it's entirely true) that there's software available which allows the location at which digital photos are taken to be decoded... a possible security risk but anyone could sign up and use it so not specifically relevant to wider publication.

[Neils]

I was once told (but admit that I'm not sure if it's entirely true) that there's software available which allows the location at which digital photos are taken to be decoded... a possible security risk but anyone could sign up and use it so not specifically relevant to wider publication.

Newer cameras and mobile phones that have GPS capability record this information in the metadata information in the photo file.

If you put photos on a hosting service like Flickr you can set whether you want to make that information in your photos available.

I don't honestly know how vbulletin treats photos other than it scales/resizes the image so if you're concerned about GPS location information being included you might want to wait until I've done some investigation. You can download applications that will strip metadata out of image files but I don't have a recommendation on a specific one.

[prakel]

Interesting stuff -I really don't know, way outside my techno-tolerance!

The story was originally related to me by a local bird watcher who frequents a bird watching forum. He reckoned that someone claiming to have photographed some unusal bird in his local area was caught out when the photo's data was analysed and found to have been taken abroad. It was a good story the way it was told!