How to 2 important things

[nibb]

I cannot seem to find this. They are 2 very simple things and I dont seem how to accomplish them.

The first one is how do I block or stop users from posting external images. My forum is full or linked pictures in external servers. First I dont want to steal bandwidth from other servers. Second it makes the site slower and the most important thing. Most pictures and links are removed with time which leaves all my boards with dead links and images.

I want users only to be able to use images uploaded to the server, not linked externally. I cannot find how to block this.

The second thing is that I have a blocked forums and I want to display the subject on them, but not allow visitors to see them. I see so many other vbulletin forums that have blocked forums and you can at least see the last topic and my forums the private forums doesnt let visitors do that.

[nibb]

I suppose this cannot be done because I had like 0 replies. sad.

[Videx]

Nothing too sad about it. By now you've been reading all the new posts here for nearly a month, so you probably know as much about these topics as any of us do.

[Xtrigit]

For the images, you can install an image hosting script and add the upload button to the text editor.
They can either, upload the image from their computer or let the script grab the image from the external source.

[midnz]

Originally Posted by nibb

The second thing is that I have a blocked forums and I want to display the subject on them, but not allow visitors to see them. I see so many other vbulletin forums that have blocked forums and you can at least see the last topic and my forums the private forums doesnt let visitors do that.

Go to your AdminCP/Forums & Moderators/Forum Manager/ select the forum you want to edit and look to adjust:
Show Private Forum (select the '?' icon to the right for an explanation):
Select 'No' here will hide this forum from users who are not allowed to access it. Users who do have permission to access them will have to log in before they can see these forums too.

Either of the yes options will allow users to see this forum if they don't have access to it. The ability to see the forum's post count is controlled by the two yes options. If the forum is passworded, it is treated as a private forum until the user enters the valid password.

Setting this option to 'Use Default' will use the setting in Forum Display Listings Options for this forum.

[nibb]

Well for the password forums I tried that option and this are my results:

a) Either the user can see the forum but locked, 0 posts and they cannot log in
b) They cannot see the forum at all

What I want is a) but instead of displaying 0 posts I want the last post to show up in the index for everybody. They cannot access the topic but this at least shows there is activity inside the locked forums.

This means the forum is locked and shows up as locked but you see the last topic or activity on it. If you click that thread you are of course asked for logins.

As for the images the explanation is exactly the opposite I want to do.

People are uploading malicious pictures from external servers to log data outside the server. What this means is that if you can upload an image on an external server you control the server and you can track hits, logs and even IPs accessing those images, change the image and possible hi jack the topic changing the image behavior.

I want people do be able to upload images, but NO from external urls or server, that means no flicker or third party images hostings. Only images uploaded locally to the server where once published they cannot be changed. Im surprised nobody asked this before.

Most people dont abuse this feature but they do in my case. They can post an innocent image to create a topic and suddenly after a while the image changes to something offensive because the user can control whats hosted in the external server. Get the picture?

[Videx]

Originally Posted by nibb

Im surprised nobody asked this before.

Most people dont abuse this feature but they do in my case. They can post an innocent image to create a topic and suddenly after a while the image changes to something offensive because the user can control whats hosted in the external server. Get the picture?

Nope, I have never seen this mentioned anywhere. Does this happen to you often? Have you tried simply disciplining the offenders?

[Xtrigit]

Originally Posted by nibb

As for the images the explanation is exactly the opposite I want to do.

People are uploading malicious pictures from external servers to log data outside the server. What this means is that if you can upload an image on an external server you control the server and you can track hits, logs and even IPs accessing those images, change the image and possible hi jack the topic changing the image behavior.

I want people do be able to upload images, but NO from external urls or server, that means no flicker or third party images hostings. Only images uploaded locally to the server where once published they cannot be changed. Im surprised nobody asked this before.

Read my post.
p.s. the external images would be stored locally.

[onehost]

Originally Posted by midnz

Go to your AdminCP/Forums & Moderators/Forum Manager/ select the forum you want to edit and look to adjust:
Show Private Forum (select the '?' icon to the right for an explanation):
Select 'No' here will hide this forum from users who are not allowed to access it. Users who do have permission to access them will have to log in before they can see these forums too.

Either of the yes options will allow users to see this forum if they don't have access to it. The ability to see the forum's post count is controlled by the two yes options. If the forum is passworded, it is treated as a private forum until the user enters the valid password.

Setting this option to 'Use Default' will use the setting in Forum Display Listings Options for this forum.

both of my options in forum manager/forum display are set to no, but
I can see the images as plain as day when I am not logged in...

I think he has a point, maybe we need a mod that will only allow members to upload
and show images only on our vb/host/server rather hotlinking an image from another.

Yes there are upload scripts out there, but that will not prevent others from not using
the internal img to hotlink an image, and if you have lots of posts per day, then
why not just automate that, and be at rest that your images are not from other servers.

I am still not sure about his claim of stat theft from images?
how would you know this by looking at a image?