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PIE, Maximizing your storage space

Tips for getting the most out of your storage space including optimizing images,embedding videos from their source, an alternative storage solutions.

You have a limited amount of storage space available on publish.illinois.edu (and on web.illinois.edu, aka cPanel), and we want to encourage you to make the most of it.

Images

If you put the occasional image into your posts, you can actually store quite a few images before getting to your limit. The width of the content area in most of the available themes is between 400 and 600 pixels. A picture taken with a smartphone is probably at least 2056 pixels wide, sometimes bigger and sometimes smaller. When you insert that picture into a post, Wordpress resizes it for you, but the original is still there taking up space. If you resize the image before uploading, you can save a lot of space.

The following image was originally 2056 x 1536 and took up 961 KB, almost an entire MB. Using the free tool picresize.com, I resized the image to 25% of its original size or 514 x 384, and the file is now 58 KB. The image is still large enough to get a lot of detail, but I can now upload 16 images for the same amount of space as the single bigger image. The size savings are even more dramatic if you are using pictures from a more traditional camera. I could make the image even smaller if I wanted to have it just be to the side of the text.

Resized Example Image

Videos and Other Files

Videos from mediaspace.illinois.edu (Kaltura):

You can paste the "Embed" code from your Mediaspace-hosted video file into WordPress's editor in PIE.

To find the "Embed" code for your Mediaspace-hosted video:

  1. Log in to mediaspace.illinois.edu with your NetID and NetID Password.
  2. Click on your name in the top right corner.
  3. From the menu that appears, choose My Media
    (Note: If the video you want to embed isn't one of your own, contact the person who posted the video to get a copy of the embed code from them.)
  4. Choose the video you want to embed from your list. 
  5. You'll want the permissions on your video to be publicly viewable. To check the permissions in your video page, click Actions, then Publish.
    * If your media is listed as "Private," you're the only person who can see it.
    * If your media is listed as "Unlisted," anyone can see it if they have the URL. This option will work for web embedding.
    * If your media is listed as "Published," it depends on where your media is published. Some channels are open to the world; others require campus identities. 
  6.   After setting your video's permissions to a publicly viewable option, click Share
  7. Under Share, click Embed.
  8. Choose the player size, player skin, and/or how much of the video you want to include.
  9. Copy the code from the scrollable text block above "Start & End Time." 

To put the embed code in your WordPress page on PIE:

  1. Log in to Publish.illinois.edu with your NetID and NetID Password.
  2. Create or edit the page on which you want to embed your video.
  3. If you're looking at the Visual view of the page, click the word Text.
  4. Paste the Embed code you copied from Mediaspace into the Text view.
  5. Update the page to save your edits.
Troubleshooting:
    • If you see the code rather than your video on your updated page, you'll want to make sure you go into Text view and try pasting it again.

    • If you see a video-shaped box that you can view, but other people report that they can't see your video, check the permissions on your video in Mediaspace.

    • This may not work on cPanel (web.illinois.edu, because the MediaSpace-specific adapter is specific to PIE. However, if you're using the Illinois Theme, keep an eye out for future MediaSpace support!

Videos from YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, etc:

WordPress uses a standard called oEmbed which allows you to easily embed items from other sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare. To use it, just put the address for what you would like to embed on a line all by itself in your post. WordPress will do the rest. If you are curious if another service will work, WordPress maintains a list of supported sites.

Datasets

The Illinois Data Bank (https://databank.illinois.edu/) is a self-deposit repository designed to store and serve data produced by Illinois researchers. IDB publishes metadata about the datasets to aggregation services that serve search engines and provides you with a persistent URL & DOI for your data. Simply use this unique URL within your publish.illinois.edu site instead of hosting it within WordPress and avoid using up your storage space. Individual files up to 15GB are accepted via self-deposit and larger files may be deposited with curation assistance. Contact databank@library.illinois.edu with any questions or concerns.

Downloadable Files

If you have PDFs, presentations, and other files you would like to share with your site visitors as a download, all faculty, students, and staff can use the U of I Box cloud storage service to store the files. Once you upload your file, you can use the sharing options in U of I Box to grab a link you can paste into your Publish site.



KeywordsPIE, publish, pictures, video, mediaspace, embed, cPanel   Doc ID60362
OwnerWeb H.GroupUniversity of Illinois Technology Services
Created2016-02-02 11:35:07Updated2023-06-05 10:50:09
SitesUniversity of Illinois Technology Services
CleanURLhttps://answers.uillinois.edu/illinois/pie-storage
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