Thread

I have run into a rather interesting issue with my current hosting service - enginehosting, which forces me to look for another hosting service.  I have a photography site which at times, requires more than 20 pictures uploaded in each weblog entry. I am using the Simple S3 Uploader to upload files to Amazon s3.

Unfortunately, my uploads are being cut off at row 20 ( using FF Matrix ) because of a limitation of shared hosting on enginehosting - they allow 20 files per entry.  And I simply can’t justify the cost of dedicated hosting for my project site.  they also can’t change this limitation .

Does anyone know of any service without these limitations ( max_file_upload and file size upload limits ), or with pretty generous limits, preferably with rock solid service like enginehosting?

Before anyone jumps on me, this is not a knock of enginehosting at all - they have been great. Also, I will like to know how others with photo sites on enginehosting with shared hosting service are getting around this issue?  Are you simply capping your uploads to 20? thx.

Victor:

As you know, I work for EllisLab, and EngineHosting, and have been assisting you with your numerous issues the past few weeks. 

Fact of the matter is that in a shared hosting environment, a competent host would not allow you to affect your neighbors with system intensive actions.  Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the PHP team have these settings for a reason.  If you truly want to set your max uploads to whatever you want, I would recommend you learn how to securely administer your own single or set of servers, or look for a managed VPS or dedicated solution.  Something that the entire crew at EngineHosting dedicates day and night to.

The biggest concern is that if you were to upload 50-100 images, you’re not going to crash my website if we happen to be on the same server.  It would simply be irresponsible for EngineHosting or any host worth considering to allow you to do this.

Now, something you may want to consider is experimenting with uploading 20 images on the single entry and if you have more, edit the post and add them to the matrix field.  Or, simply upload the files to S3 with an ftp client like transmit, and take PHP completely out of the mix. 

-greg

The maximum amount I anticipate to upload will be in the range of around 35. this is also not on every entry. So far, the highest I have come across is 35.  Anyway, I will look into your last suggestion about directly uploading to s3. not sure how to tie it into a weblog post.

I tried your first suggestion - made a weblog post with 20 pictures and then tried to add more in an edit - it didn’t work.

I am also interested on how others are dealing with this issue. my site is a very small site which certainly is not going to hog resources as you describe.  A cap of around 40 will work. thx.

I am also interested on how others are dealing with this issue. my site is a very small site which certainly is not going to hog resources as you describe.  A cap of around 40 will work. thx.

Hi, vacquah - the problem here is that in the course of submitting the entry, it will have to send all 20 files at once.  That transaction with the server is what we need to be concerned about. 

Say, for instance you were browsing your website and doing nothing other than clicking links, and suddenly it failed to respond - you’d be pretty darned unhappy, right?  If EH allowed someone a cap of 40, it could be someone else uploading 40 images at once causing this.  They are server experts and have determined that 20 files at once is a safe upload limit that will not cause adverse effects to other customers.

This is a great policy all around and is for protection of all involved.  If you are not uploading - but simply working with files already uploaded, then you will not run into this limit.

As the professionals here, my strong recommendation is to trust them to do what is right by both you and their other customers.

vacquah,

why not upload5-10 pictures save the entry and then add another 5-10 pictures. You’ll then be able to have as many pics as you want per entry, just takes a little longer, but then you’d be waiting a while for 40-45 pics to upload at one time anyhow.

vacquah,

why not upload5-10 pictures save the entry and then add another 5-10 pictures. You’ll then be able to have as many pics as you want per entry, just takes a little longer, but then you’d be waiting a while for 40-45 pics to upload at one time anyhow.

Thx for the response. Tried that, still got chopped off at 20.  thx.

This specific limit was actually put in place in recent months by the php developers, and OS distributors because of a possible resource abuse/DoS issue in how php was handling multiple uploads at once prior to these changes.  Also its not the fact we “can’t” change the limit, its the fact that we simply will not in our share resource hosting offerings. In our VPS and Dedicated solutions we would be more than happy to as the server resources are dedicated to you and you can only harm your own sites availability in the process of doing so.

But to address the actual question, the ONLY time we have seen any clients reporting they are reaching this upload file limit issue is with the use of FF Matrix.  We have seen no issues with people using other batch upload processes into EE, or other web applications for that matter, like image gallery scripts as an example.

Edited: Actually talking with Greg Aker more just now, it seems it maybe an interaction with FF Matrix and another add-on, not simply FF Matrix.  Wanted to clarify that as to not point a single finger at FF Matrix itself.  Thank you.

Outside of identifying why or what specifically triggers FF Matrix to look like its uploading 21 files for instance, if you already have uploaded 20 previously, but are only trying to add a single new image to that existing entry, I can not think of any other reason that limit should be being triggered.  That really should not be happening as you are not uploading 21 files at that point, you are uploading a single new image to an entry with an existing 20 images already uploaded/saved.