Beginning March 10, 2009, all images used within posts, member avatars, and member signatures must be hosted on our new
Media Portal. We're giving members a little time to make the appropriate changes to their avatars, and
get into the new habit before we make the hard cut-over to the new policy.
From time to time, over the years, we have encountered a handful of confirmed problems related to remotely hosted images in avatars and posts. Most of
the problems have been directly related to compromised servers at large free image hosting sites. One problem was related to a former member (about
two years ago) actually creating malicious code on his own server, then hosting his images. By requiring hosting on our protected and enclosed
environment, we will avoid any of these potential issues.
There are also many reports in computer security circles of smaller free image hosting sites popping up in droves under multiple domain names and
URLs, which are little more than malware distribution points. It's possible to configure a web server to attach hidden malicious payloads to all
items served, even images... and this is predicted to soon replace spam email as the #1 source of malware distribution online.
Also, more and more we're seeing the mainstream image hosting services writing one or more cookies when serving up images. While I've been a strong
advocate for reducing what I've called "cookie paranoia" (I never delete my cookies), there is no logical need to write cookies when simply
delivering an image.
Since we've always taken the security and privacy of our members seriously, we're moving to this new policy.
The Hosting Domain
All images you upload, even to your personal picture collections, are hosted on our high-performance CDN (content delivery network) with unlimited
bandwidth. The domain for the CDN is...
FILES.abovetopsecret.com/
As of March 10, 2009, only images on that ATS subdomain will be displayed on ATS (we may grandfather older posts with lots of images).
Just like many higher-end image hosting services you may subscribe to, this is a very high-performance global content delivery platform. You may use
this to host images just as you would any other image hosting service.
Uploading Personal Pictures
The Member Center upload space will be disabled later today (but old files will still be available), and all members should use the
MY PICTURES section of your personal space on the Media Portal for all images you wish to
display on ATS, or store online. You can define multiple photo albums and even assign privacy settings.
You can see one of my photo albums
here, and when you click on
an image, you can grab the custom ATS embed code (
[atsimg](file url)[/atsimg]) for displaying the image in a post,
or the full URL for using the image as your ATS avatar. One of my photos is embedded below to show the new distinctive embed style:
The system may have problems with PNG images, so for now, please avoid that format for anything you expect to embed on ATS, or use as your avatar.
All Normal Guidelines Apply
Please do not upload copyrighted images for which you lack usage rights. As always, we anticipate that our members will respect the work of others by
linking to copyrighted material. Use the normal image-linking tag (
[img](file url)[/img]) for inserting links to external
images.
Please use the
My Pictures space for your avatars and personal images as of the date of this
thread. If you upload personal images to the general media area, we will likely deleted them.
ATS Usage and Rights
While our Terms & Conditions indicate we (The Above Network, LLC) have non-exclusive distribution rights to the material you post on ATS, we're not
extending this to any artwork or photos you upload to your personal "My Pictures" space in the media portal. If the need arises where we would like
to use any material you uploaded there, we'll first seek your permission.
VIDEO Tutorial For The ATS Media Portal My Pictures
VIDEO Tutorial For Avatars and Mini-Profile Backgrounds
[edit on 11-3-2009 by SkepticOverlord]
before trying to set off my album in the media portal and then trying to find where the pictures went
in my upload page.
I like the avatar hosting site I use. Now will I get saddled with one avatar and not have the cool effect
of having them switch when the page is reloaded? 
