Putting pictures on the forum.

There are three options for this.

!. Use the "Attach" button at the bottom of the Forum posting window. This opens a box in which you can browse through and select the pictures on your computer. When this is done, click the "Attach" option at the bottom and links highlighted in blue will be added to your post which, when clicked, will display the pictures in a new window. This option does not display the pictures directly in your post on the forum. Unfortunately however this option does not give you any control over the size of the image or the size of the image file so pictures may show too big or the file size may exceed 256kb which is the limit which the forum can accept. This means that you have to reduce the size of your pictures and the image files before making the link, easily enough done with the imaging software that comes with most digital cameras, but if you are not happy to do this you will be better to use Option 2 as the sizing is done for you.

2. You can upload your pictures to a web photo hosting site, most of which are free to use but require you to register and use a password. These sites allow you hold a gallery of your pictures on the internet which can be copied to other sites such as the forum on Jeff's site for direct display as a picture within your forum post. I use Photobucket as my photo hosting site and find it works very well.

3. If you don't fancy either of the above methods you can email your picture to Jeff and he will insert it in your forum post.

Photo hosting sites are a bit confusing at first so here follows a description of how to use Photobucket.

To put a picture on the forum you have to get the picture onto the internet first and then copy and paste its internet location and code into your post on the forum. There is no facility on the forum for us to directly place pictures into our forum posts, so just copying and pasting of your picture doesn't work which is why we need Photobucket or similar services.

Photobucket is free to use. You have to create an account, log on with a password and then upload your pictures - Photobucket lets you browse your computer to select them. Once they are on Photobucket you can caption them and, if you wish, organise your gallery into subject sub galleries. You can choose to offer restricted or open access to your pictures and can maintain copyright if needed. Finally you can either link your forum post to your picture on Photobucket (functionally the same as option 1 above) or copy and paste the code into your forum post so that the picture is displayed along with your text. Don’t forget though, your pictures are out there on the internet for others to see and copy so think about what pictures you put in your gallery, hide your indentity with a made up username and use an obscure password.

This is how you do it.

Register with Photobucket and log in.

Open a new window in your browser, go the forum and write the text of your post.

Go back to Photobucket in the original window, leaving the forum window open. On Photobucket you will see the option to "Upload Images and Video"

Click "Choose Files" and make sure that the "reduce to" box is set to 640x480 pixels which is the standard picture size for email and for web forums.

Now browse your computer files for the picture you want to upload. If there is more than one, hold down CTRL as you click on the picture files. Click "open" at the bottom of the box.

The screen now says Uploading and shows progress as Files %. When this reaches 100% the screen changes to show your gallery of pictures with the new ones added. The new screen says " ----- images have been uploaded, now you can add titles etc etc"
Ignore this for the moment, you can always go back later. Click "skip this step now".

Your pictures are now on Photobucket's server ready to use.

To transfer a picture to the forum look for "link options" just below your picture. You need the 4th one down which is IMG Code. Click between the word IMG Code and the greyed out line of code in the box which starts [IMGhttp// etc. You will see a yellow tag saying "copied".
The code for your picture is now on your computer's clipboard and is ready to go onto the forum.

Go back to your forum post, put the cursor at the end of your text , right click and choose "paste" in the options panel. You will see the line of code appear on your post, but not the picture at this stage. Now Click "preview" and you will then see the whole post including the picture. If you have more than one picture to show, go back to Photobucket and repeat the copy and paste procedure. It is best to move the cursor to the start of a new line before pasting the code into your post and remember the photos always come at the end of the post so don't write anything below the pictures. When you have finished, click "post" and the text and picture will go onto the forum.

Don't forget to go back to Photobucket to Log Out.

If you find that the process of uploading to Photobucket takes a long time your picture files are probably larger than needed, Up to 500kb loads quickly enough but images from the newer digital cameras can be far bigger than this. If this is the case open the picture with whatever image handling software you have, resize the image to 640x480 pixels and save the image (“save as“) a compressed jpg image with less than 500kb. More resolution than this is wasted on the screen. I find 80-100kb is fine.

Good luck!

Mike