Charles,<br /><br />A great modification indeed!!! Well done and thanks!<br /><br />[]All seems fine, panels are generated, but the preview image appears as a broken link for me.[/]<br /><br />Unfortunately for me the panels are not generated and I do get the same broken link error like Josh does. It all seems to work fine but... <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />I am running IIS on Windows 2K advanced server<br /><br />Thanks for this<br /><br />Warm regards<br /><br />Nikos

Okay try the following for those who don't have the preview, copy the link of the preview image into your navigator so to get preview.php?blablabla and see if you get any errors or a blank page.

Check your paths in the config file.<br /><br />I had a similar problem, but tweaked the file and all is okay now.<br /><br />The file should lokk like this...<br /><br />define("_URL",$config['phpurl']."/pano/"); //URL to the Pano Folder<br /><br />**** this is simply the path from the root directory of threads - normally just /pano/ if you added it to say /threads/<br /><br /><br /><br />define("_PATH",$config['path']."/pano/"); //Path to the Pano folder<br /><br />**** again the path from threads directory<br /><br />define("_PATHPANO","/the/full/path/from/server/root/wwwthreads/images/panels/"); //path of dir where panels are saved<br />define<br /><br />**** this the full path from the server root.<br /><br /><br />("_URLPANO","http://www.eaxample.com/wwwthreads/images/panels/"); //URL of dir where panels are saved<br /><br />**** this is the full URL.<br /><br />define("_wrongrefer",$config['path']."/pano/refer.png"); //path of the wrong referer image<br /><br /><br />*** this is from the root of the threads directory.<br /><br /><br />Hopefully this should then work - it does for me now - so hopefully you should be okay as well.<br /><br />Ian

well you can always make them on the fly if you think its better but it better be your own server lol <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />from what I remember I think its more than 15000 panels in less than 10megs <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />I plan on doing a utility to clean unused panels but haven't had time yet.

I know the problem well! Never enough time and darn if my body doesnt just shut down when I try to force it to code nonstop all night long!

Thanks a lot Canvey and Charles. I will try it as soon as I can and let you know.<br /><br />Warm regards<br /><br />Nikos

Just a word of caution. During testing I experienced a server outage that lasted about 20 minutes. When I could finally get back into my server my HTTPD processes were running at 500MB each! While I could PING my server, the websites were down and I could not access SSH. At the time of this outage, I was testing the code here. <br /> <br />I waited a while and then reloaded onto my primary message boards last night. This morning my servers experienced a 3 hour outage (all because I took a nap 10 minutes before it started!). This was a hard crash. <br /> <br />There are no server logs to tell me what might have happened. Oddly enough, the site with the generator on it has no long entries at all for today while my other sites logs are fine. <br /> <br />I suggest that if you have a HEAVY server load you be cautious as this script caused the only outage my server has had (and mine is a loaded Dell with SCSI RAIDs, 1.5GB of ECC memory and the works).

True, image manipulation can be very heavy on system resources but I've never exeperienced a crash myself with the auto update function switched off.<br /><br />I would be interested if you could investigate this more<br /><br />now I am sure the load could be reduced by removing smilies and images in the panel and working in lines instead of words.

I had AutoUpdate set to the default. And, truth is, I have no data to support just where the crash is occuring. I only base this word of caution on the fact I had two server problems after installed this mod when I've never had an outage on my system before.<br /><br />Also, my panel below s Dynamic and served up over 30,000 times a day (last check), so I wonder if the problem has more to do with file I/O than the graphics portion.

if you check my code each word is a differente image, that might also be a reason for high load.<br /><br />I suppose your sig does this in 3 go (1 per line)<br /><br />I don't think the I/O has something to do with high load since the resource intense bit is the image generation.

Correct, each line is an image.<br /><br />Its hard for me to say what kind of load my server was under at the time of the crash. MTRG MySQL and Traffic data shows it to be about normal (not excessively high).<br /><br />Also, looking in my panels directory I only have 63 panels. Once a panel is made, there hsouldnt be any further problems. I wonder if there isnt something that causes a problem in the way the panel code is called - i.e. good error recovery in the event you get passed some bad data?<br /><br />I can try and take a look when I can find some time. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

thats a good question, normally the function should be able to handle any kind of data but then who knows.<br /><br />if you find anything strange please let me know <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

[]Okay try the following for those who don't have the preview, copy the link of the preview image into your navigator so to get preview.php?blablabla and see if you get any errors or a blank page. [/]<br /><br />I still get a broken preview image.<br /><br />When I copy the img src link of the broken preview image to the address bar, I get a blank page. <br /><br />Otherwise this is cool.<br /><br />My users have requested "Cartman" from soutpark in future addiions. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Are the png's being created in your panels directory? (Make sure you made one that is listed by the URL). In that directory should be all your PNGs.

I'm going to try and load this onto a test server and then run a script to call it repeatedly to see what it does. My server is back online and no problems (removed the link to the generator); but I cant see loading it again until I know more about what caused my outages.

Is it not on this site anymore?

The pngs are being created... because they work once you add them to the post. It's just the preview that doesn't work. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />I'm testing this with a small group of paid supporters. I'll probably leave it limited to that group as a "perk" of supporting us. That should minimize server load for us.

yeah I think I know the bug try the preview php file enclosed here.<br /><br />It all depends on how your webserver handles the get function, I haven't found a fool proof way yet. <br /><br />and the link is back here <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Strangest thing on my site... The preview was working just fine... I hadn't messed with it in a couple days and was using it this morning and guess what... The preview feature isn't working.... I was trying to figure out why Josh's wasn't working because we use the same type of setup and now it's got me too.... Grabbing the new preview.php file to try it out....

That didn't help the problem Charles.... I am racking my brain trying to think if I changed something that would have resulted in the preview to stop working but I just haven't made any changes to the site since installing that the day you released it. It worked perfectly for a few days and then? I will keep thinking back and maybe recall a change I made..... <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />[]http://www.threadsdev.com/images/panels/9936-2150.png[/]