Way to dig up an old thread
For a site that relies on their images, storing them in the DB is not feasible-- they have to be in the file system. It's harder to protect the images in private forums but not impossible.
Update... gallery now gets 40,000 hits a day and uses real thumbnails with Imagemagick routines. Each user has a personal gallery which they control and I have a new postbit routine which displays thumbnails in the forum:
http://www.overgrow.com/edge/gallery.php
http://www.overgrow.com/edge/showthr...5&pagenumber=3
(don't click if easily offended)