Allow file upload to a website - what are the problems?

**DimPrawn** · 20 September 2011, 18:03

Someone is bound to upload a photo of their nob

**Cliphead** · 20 September 2011, 18:21

If your site hosting provider can provide MySQL and PHP you could setup a Coppermine gallery. Lots of options to screen out spam with some careful configuration.

There are probably lots of other options like a Joomla based site with a suitable gallery extension.

**DimPrawn** · 20 September 2011, 20:34

The problems I've found with allowing file uploads.

People try and upload enormous files.
People upload files infected with a virus/trojan.
People upload silly file types (e.g. instead of an image they upload a word doc with an image in it).
People upload dubious images.
People upload the same image 20 times because they are not sure if it worked.

Basically users are

s/idiots

The best solution I found to some of these issues was to use a Flash image upload component, this prevented multiple uploads, image resizing, file type checks, progress bar, cancel upload, multiple uploads at once, etc.

**PAH** · 21 September 2011, 07:40

Or outsource the whole problem to professional image hosting sites like Flickr, Picasa, .... loads of them to choose from so many people interested in taking photos probably have something already.

Then get them to provide a link to the image.

A lot easier/quicker to implement too.

Maybe there's a way of using one of the professional sites as a host, allowing people to upload to your album, which you can then maintain.

Other option is to get them to email them to you, so you can monitor submissions before making public on your own galleries. Also stops them submitting massive files as email doesn't like them either (either rejects them or takes ages to process).

**xoggoth** · 22 September 2011, 16:31

Cheers for answers.

Allow file upload to a website - what are the problems?