Dear Jomsocial, I hope you are feeling patient and will read all of this thoroughly as there a lot of points to make!
We have a lot of users who say they can't upload a profile or cover picture. I have spent several hours working out what is happening.....
1) If a user tries to upload a photo that is too big, they are not told that the file was too big, and they think our site has a problem.....I myself couldn't work out why photos wouldn't upload (even after upgrading Jomsocial which we were told would fix the problem). I have now realised that part of the problem is that people are uploading photos which are too large, but the user cannot know that, as they are not told by Jomsocial, so they think it is our problem!
2) WRONG ERROR MESSAGE: First nothing appear to happen for a long time after you try to upload a photo. Then if the photo is too big eventually the message "uploaded file type not supported' flashes up in the upload box. This is the wrong message - it should say 'file size too large' if the file size is too large. So the user is confused because they were trying to upload a normal jpg and so they think our site won't take jpgs for example, which they think is bad.
3) TOO QUICK: the 'uploaded file type not supported' message flashes up for only about 2 seconds, so the user does not spot it while he is staring at the screen wondering if anything at all is happening to his photo!
In some instances this message does not flash up at all and the user is left staring at the screen!
4) When a user goes to Edit My Profile 'Change My Profile Picture': the user sees that it displays 'Maximum File Size for Upload is 8MB'. In the backend configuration it says 'Maximum Upload Size 8MB', but below that it also says 'upload_max_filesize defined in php.ini 2 MB' and this 2MB is overriding the 8MB above it. So on our site people can generally only upload 2Mb or less.
We had not touched the Maximum Upload Size settings before. I have changed the 8MB to say 2MB now so that users see it, but suggestion: why can't Jomsocial set this field so that the Maximum Upload size' can't exceed the value in php.ini? That would stop other websites facing the problem we faced with the two max upload figures being different.
So now we know on our site only works to upload cover photos and avatars that are up to 2MB. We can live with the 2mb IF people are told that...........but:
5) if you try to change your Avatar by clicking on the image on your profile you do not see any File size limit, so you waste time trying to upload a photo bigger than 2MB. AND you have no idea why it didn't work.
6) in the Cover Photo Upload pop up box it also does not display any information about maximum file size at all - that would also help the user and save him from wasting time uploading photos which are never going to upload.
7) when they do try to upload an avatar photo or cover photo, they do not see any kind of 'timer' within the Upload box showing them progress, so they cannot tell if anything is happening or not. Sometimes they probably close the box before the photo has uploaded as they think nothing is happening. (After several attempts doing this myself I saw that in the bottom left of the Google Chrome screen it did show the % uploaded, but if it took me several attempts to spot that then my user has no hope of spotting it! Not all browsers have this anyway, eg Safari doesn't ).
There is a different pop up box if I try to upload avatar direct by clicking on the avatar OR if I try to do it whilst editing my Profile, but neither of these show progress of upload either, nor does Cover picture upload popup box.
(A timer and file info DO show if I try to upload photos to a group, or if I add a photo to the Home page Activity Stream, but not for profile cover, avatar, event cover, and probably group cover I am guessing).
Why can't you use the same photo upload pop up box with timer and file size everywhere on Jomsocial. It feels like the developers for the photo department and profile department have never compared notes on what the user sees?
So we need good information for users on Max file size allowed and progress of uploading:
8) If I click Close during upload avatar it doesn't stop uploading the photo! It keeps uploading it and Saves it.
9) When I upload a Cover photo, when it is uploaded it says 'Cancel' or 'Save'. If I click 'Cancel' it Saves it anyway!
10) Avatar and cover will always only allow up to 2MB, but the stream will allow bigger files to be uploaded, (Even when the Configuration says 'upload_max_filesize defined in php.ini 2 MB' below 'Maximum Upload Limit 8mb'). So the 2MB php.ini is not having an effect on photos uploaded on the Stream.
Does the 'upload_max_filesize defined in php.ini 2 MB' only relate to avatar and cover photos? Please explain.
Some of this is above is feature requests linked to photo upload. But these feature requests are basically required as soon as possible, because the functionality of Jomsocial regarding Photo uploads and max file size is too poor for users to understand, so there is a high failure rate to upload profile pictures, which is unacceptable.......
Other feature requests:
11) If someone tries to upload a photo and it fails due to size we do not see this in Jomsocial Monitor Activity - it would be useful to know how often this is happening
12) If I upload an Avatar and I don't like it, and immediately delete it and add another one then everyone can see that I deleted one. Sometimes people delete 3 photos and other people see this in their stream, which is bad.......
13) After you save a cover you can reposition it. However, before you have saved it the photo might look terrible, as it can be positioned badly. If you think the photo looks terrible you are unlikely to 'Save' it! So you may cancel before seeing that you will be able to reposition the photo! Why can't you reposition it after uploading it but before saving it.
So this is a lot of information about why it is so hard it is for users to upload a profile photo correctly! Please can you give me answers to every point. And please can you improve these things urgently!
Thank you very much.
