The reason I'd love this feature is because I'm on a host with excellent support/uptime/etc but not the most bandwidth/storage. For $10/month you can get a ton of storage/bandwidth at other hosts that may have marginal support. What I'd like to do is keep a $10 account at Dreamhost for my attachments but stay at my real host for the vb processing since Dreamhost is a terrible vb host.

($10 account gets 1Tb bandwidth which climbs weekly and 20Gb storage which also climbs weekly, just don't use them for vb because of their cpu usage issues)

I'm 100% agree with you! and im facing this issue. :(

What happens when they acidently rm-rf your account and you have no attachments?

Same as if the attachments were on the primary host and it were done there?

It makes things much more complicated to have hosting at multiple sites and such, not to mention backups and you'd be sending possibly private data though the internet a second time by uploading to the remote site

No more complicated than setting up Coppermine, bridging, and maintaining that to allow users to upload large files which are automatically resized to save server space.

Yes it does add to the mix, but for my situation it's a tradeoff well worth it.

Websites store and send private data almost everyday, sending from one server to another is really no different. What can be viewed/accessed on one server can be viewed/accessed on another. Enabling the option to port the attachments to another server is really no different than housing them on the same, security and privacy-wise.

If you happen to be sending extremely private data from server to server, chances are you're not going to be sending it through a forum, or storing the data as an attachment to a forum.

You're data is only as secure as the server it resides on, so while there may be a privacy or security concern, these concerns are more so ones that those using cheap budget hosts should be concerned about. For those using dedicated servers, or multi-servers, I hardly think that would be a concern as the server is in your hands and the network in the other.

I agree I would like this feature. We get more downloads than anything else and the bandwidth and space taken up gets rediculous. I would like to place the attachment files on another server.

Yeah. First "big please" to vB.com about that comes from middleage of two years ago. Since then nothing happened...

zachery would not hosting lighthttp to handle images and statics on another server be the same as hosting downloads on another server for security it will all get passed about ?

unless its just called from another server and not passed around ?

but i think its a good idea to host downloads somewhere else as some sites have large downloads and is benificial to host them on another server and close one call, i get around 500 people online and have two servers one for database and one for php/apache etc

it runs nice now but i am considering hosting the attachments elsewhere and also your idea of lighttp for static images maybe both on the same server.

but its a good idea i agree, and if erwins done it i am 100% sure its a good idea you seen his forum lol

Regards
Mickie D