General: why if i post my pics does a different bike show up???????

why does this happen? its so fustrating to take the time to resize my pics, post them...for another persons bike parts to show up. what gives? i went through the process 3 times to make sure i wasnt making a mistake and the same stuff happens. i see this happens a lot to other people as well. WHY?!?!?!?!

yeah i'm having the same problem...and changing the title isn't doing much.

so i guess people will think i'm riding a bmx with camo rims instead of a straight up track bike...

It's a result of the architecture on the Velospace server, which is basically just a folder on a hard drive with a lot of stuff in it. Basically, all the photos from all the listed bikes are in one big folder:

http://velospace.org/files/(your pictures here)

As with any computer, you can't have two things in the same location with the same name - either the second one's name will be changed without your control (Windows), or the one being copied in will overwrite the one that's already there (Mac, Linux, Un*x). If you've never noticed this phenomenon before, try it on your own computer; create a folder named "File Renaming Experiment", create one text document named "file.txt", put it in the "File Renaming Experiment" folder, then create a second text file with different text in it. Name that file "file.txt" as well, then drop it into the "File Renaming Experiment" folder and see what happens.

Essentially, that's what happens on the server every time a file with a duplicate name gets posted into the one big folder where all the photos live. As terrible_one and Otto point out, generic names will get you in trouble every time.

Personally, in a situation like this, I like to identify my photos very precisely, so there's no mistaking what it is. Let's compare an example of one of my photos to one from someone else's listing:

http://velospace.org/files/t_PEA_Bianchi_Chorusdrivetrain.jpg

Here, I've used my initials, then the manufacturer of my frame, then a brief description of the specific photo. I could beef this up by including a date, either the date I took the photo, or the date I uploaded the photo. That would allow me to keep track of when I swapped photos out.

PS: the t_ appears to be added to the file name as part of the upload process.

Now, let's look at another example:

http://velospace.org/files/t_IMG_7132.JPG

Here we can see a photo that basically went straight from a digital camera to the Velospace server without anyone ever changing the name.

Most cameras automatically impose names like "IMG_xxxx.JPG"; my own camera names photos "DSCxxxx.JPG". When you attach your digital camera to your computer to import the photos, the photos come over with whatever name the camera gave them. Since most cameras restart the number sequence every time you reformat the storage card, you tend to produce a lot of photos with names like IMG_0001.JPG or IMG_1001.JPG. But most of the camera import apps organize photos into separate folders for each import, or for each photo day (the date/time when the photo was taken is stored in the photo itself); so you're not likely to see photos disappearing from your photo library just because you imported new ones - otherwise, people would have cleaned up their acts years ago. But you often see it happen when people try to copy multiple photos out of their libraries into new folders, such as when they burn CDs.

But Velospace's server doesn't even separate uploads, so the "dude, where's my photo?" thing is a regular problem. My guess is that when Greg originally set up the site, he used just one photo folder because he didn't know how many people would come here; it's a scaling issue. There are architecture changes that could be made, such as giving each user a unique photo upload folder, which would be automatically created when the user account is created. In that case, my photos would be in "http://velospace.org/files/eaglerock/" or http://velospace.org/eaglerock/files/", instead of loose in a folder with everyone else's photos. But that could be quite labor-intensive to sort out at this point; we can't demand that Greg re-engineer the system just because we can't trouble ourselves to rename our photos sensibly. And even if he did, it doesn't eliminate the generic names issue: If I upload two photos with the same name, and upload them to my own photo folder, one of them's going to disappear.

General advice from this Internet know-it-all: If you look at your photo name without looking at the photo, and you can't give a good description of the content of the photo just from looking at the name, then you need to rename your photo. And don't skimp on detail.

this should be a sticky

thanks guys, fixed, and now i'm no longer riding a mystery bmx!

yay!

does the older picture with a given name always show up?

it should be fairly easy for add a the time and date of upload to the name of the file, so bike1.jpg becomes bike1121804142009.jpg. I did perl about 10 years ago but I remember none of it. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

The problem here is not the scale of the name space, but the fact that people use words, not random strings of letters.

I've got a friend who works with Drupal all the time. I'll get him in touch with you.

I came into the forums to get an answer to this very question. Now I'm disappointed that any of my pictures showed up since I used such unoriginal file names.

file names

it doesnt need to be sticky'd because greg has already outlined this in the 'welcome to velospace' thread. Though no one thinks hard enough to go and read it.

bugm, I didnt mean that in a harsh way, just trying to perhaps explain the logic.

haha i know i was just messinnn, sorry sarcasm is tough on forums