[pant]

Yeah mate I would suggest you move everything across to the file system rather than keep it in your database.

Our forum is reasonably sized but has a lot of attachments. It was pretty easy to move avatars/profile pictures/signatures and attachments to the filesystem and page loads are definitly snappier.

If you want any help give me a shout.

Make sure when you you're creating your attachments directory that it is above your Public HTML. So for example the following would be bad.

home/username/public/attachments/ BOOOOOOOOO

This would be good

home/username/attachments/ YAYYYYYYYYYY

The reasons are documented anyway but if you do the former then your usergroup permisions for attachments can be bypassed. If you do the latter then this isn't the case and your attachments are safe

MEOW