I have an upload facility on my website and have found it quite useful for customers.They upload the photo then I contact them asking what they require done and I give them a quote. But the downside it I find people often try to use the upload as a online photo sharing. They will upload and I presume give the URL or access to friends to view their photos.
So how long should I leave their photos on my site and how do you discourage abuse of an upload facility?
Am I reasonable if as soon as I'm notified of an upload I diable the viewing of the images and email the person asking for their requirements?
Thanks
Sanda

If I upload an image to your site for processing, why should I have to look at it again?

Just my two cents ;)

Patrick

Perhaps you could do without the "preview feature"? We support upload to our site, but we've removed the code from the CGI script which allows linking and viewing of the uploaded pics. In it's place, we merely provide a message informing the user of a successful upload. We did this out of fear that users might do the very thing you're seeing.

BTW, you have a very nice site Sanda!

- Kurt

Thanks for your comments.
Perhaps you could do without the "preview feature"? I wish I could the script is a commercial one as I' have no clue about writing CGI scripts. I may contact the script writer and ask what to do. I've had this sort of abuse a number of times and am getting very tired of it. I email the person uploading 3 times before deleting their photos but never get a reply for those who just want to use your site as their own photo album.
Thank you for the comment on the site, I'm in the process of doing a major upgrade but it all takes time.


Regards
Sanda

Sanda, if you have the CGI script, I'd be happy to take a look to see if we can 'adjust' it to prevent this sort of abuse. If so, email it and I'll check it out. No charge, and no guarantees :o:

- Kurt

I would love to have this feature on my site, but I don't know the first thing about CGI.

Ken

Here's a link to the upload script we're using:

http://www.perlscriptsjavascripts.com/perl/upload_lite/index.html

Three things to be aware of:

* This script is written in Perl which requires CGI. Be sure your web service provider supports CGI.

* If you upload your page files to your service provider via FTP, send the script files using ASCII mode (not BINARY) otherwise the script gets corrupted.

* You'll need to set appropriate permissions on the directories (folders) your users will be uploading to. See their site for more info on this.

Hope it helps you get started.

- Kurt