One of the more difficult parts of operating a grabber is making an online archive and keeping it purged of old files. I like to keep 24 hours of grabs which should give everybody time to look for their signal while they were asleep or whatever.
Until recently I had been using Picasa for archiving my grabber files using the feature which uploads images from my SL folder to Picasa Web and keeps the two synced. As files in the SL folder get automatically deleted by a program called Autodelete when they are over 24 hours old the sync feature deletes the same files in the Picasa Web folder. As Google made changes to Picasa the syncing process stopped working requiring me to delete old files manually every day....ugh! So now I use Dropbox.
I've seen Dropbox mentioned favorably as a place to store images and files for others to view so decided to check it out. They offer a free account of 2 GB which is much more than adequate for my QRSS archiving. The files at Dropbox are maintained in sync with the corresponding folder on your computer. After establishing an account I linked it to my SL folder and then changed the URL link in my html file at qsl.net to that of the Dropbox folder...easy as pie and works like a charm. I also like the images better and the ease of scanning through them. The syncing is spot on.
The Dropbox account provides two folders, one for images and one for files. Within the image folder you can add other folders and I use two, one for the 10 minute grabs and one for the 6 hour grabs. The other folder for files has come in handy also as a way to include files with the posts in this blog ...Google doesn't allow files attachment in their blogs.
Autodelete is a neat little program that deletes computer files older than x days in specified folders when run, where x is 1 day or greater. I run it 4 times a day automatically via the Windows Task Scheduler. If you haven't used TS it is in Assesories/System Tools menu.
For a week now the Dropbox/Autodelete process has been performing flawlessly leaving me with one more thing I don't have to forget to do.
A special thanks to Dave, N4FRE, for watching the archives for problems, of which there were a few.
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