@ surferboy,
Both questions really aren't Mod related but will do my best to answer them...
The first one,
if I understand what you are trying to do, I would say the best way would be to let the long name be entered but to change the thumbnail.bit template to cut off the name at a certain # of characters.
That way they will still be able to search on the long image name but the shortened version would appear on your thumbnails...
If it was me I would look in your thumbnail_bit.html file for {image_name} and replace it with this code...
<?PHP echo substr(format_text($image_name,2),0,10);?>
Replace the 10 with length of characters (I think that should work)
You may also have to edit the random_image and random_cat_image templates also.
your second one (issue) did the same thing to me also,
I even tried adding it in the admin panel (outside my mod) and the same thing happened. The link is saved correctly in the database when I looked at it, but you can not download it or thumbnail it.
I remember something about directories that begin with a underscore like that one has and some problems linking to them but I can not remember much about it.
I do not work with remote stuff so this is new to me. I tried linking a remote image from my own site and it worked...
http://www.budduke.com/gallery/data/media/15/big/ntcosmo01.JPGbut it did NOT create a thumbnail. Even from the admin panel or the normal member upload screen but it did link to it and I can download it.
I found these to MODS that seem to address this issue...
for the admin panel...
http://www.4homepages.de/forum/index.php?topic=6921.0for the member upload...
http://www.4homepages.de/forum/index.php?topic=6920.0I know that I do not have them installed inside my multiupload file. Give me a little time and I will see if I can add it to my uploader form...
but as for why that remote image cannot be linked to, you may want to post it in a topic all by itself under troubleshooting to see if anyone has any ideas