Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

I've been seeing a lot of people who've been having issues posting images on the forum... so... hopefully this helps those souls out.

First things first... you need to have your images posted on the internet. The host site must have remote hosting capabilities. Remote hosting enables you to post a link to the image on another site. I recommend Photobucket for this as it hosts both movies and images. Creating the account is free, and it's relatively simple to use.

Prior to uploading, you may want to check out your image's size-- make sure it's not too large. There are a couple ways to do this. First, you can open it (from your computer) in explorer or firefox and right click on the image. Selecting properties will enable you to view the image height and width in pixles. As a guideline, I recommend nothing taller than around 400 px or wider than around 350 px. This size generally shows up fairly well on other computers reguardless of their resolution and keeps the forum blocking from expanding to fit the image. If you need a program to re-size images, I recommend the shareware graphics software "The GIMP". It's a lot like Photoshop, it's free, and can compress images without losing much quality.

Once you have your image sized accordingly, log into your photobucket account and upload the re-sized image.

That's the tricky part!

Now, for putting images into posts.
For posting on these boards, you have to use BB code. The concept for coding properly is the same. (Please note, these directions are partially based on getting the URL from Photobucket)

To post a single image as a photo you can use one of two methods:
1- In Photobucket, click on the IMG code. It auto-copies. Paste the code into your post by either right clicking and selecting paste or pressing control+v

OR

2- If you know the URL of your image you can copy/paste it in the window. Hilight it and click on the "Img" button above the text box where you type in your posts.

(In the following steps, underscores are only there so you can see the code).

To post multiple images, repeat the above method for each image. Each image you post should be surrounded by the img codes the first code [_img] indicates the start of an image. The slash in the second [_/img_] indicates the end of an image URL. These codes are called "tags" because they tag something as being something other than text.
[_img_]image URL[_/img_]

To Post an Image as a Link:
There are two ways to do this. First, you can post your image link as a URL or you can make the link say something.

1- To post your image as a link, just copy/paste the URL. (In photobucket, the image URL for an image is selected by clicking the "Direct Link" box. It will auto copy the URL.) The forum will automatically change the URL into a link when you post your comment.

OR

2- To write a link descriptor, copy/paste the direct link of the image. Hilight the URL and press the URL button above the text box. Your image link should look something like this (minus the underscores).
[_url_]http://www.whateveryourimageURLis.com[_/url_] This more or less does what the previous option does.

Now, let's add one more step. After the first URL tag, insert an equals sign and move the URL tag bracket to the end of the URL. Then, between the URL tags, write a description. Your code should now look something like this:
[_url=http://www.whateveryourimageURLis.com]I want my link to say this![_/url]
Remember, the underscores are so you can see the code.

This code will look like this:
This is my example

You can also do this for links to other websites. Just put in the website URL.

Each separate image or link will need it's own start and end tags.

Cheers to future flawless image posting! =)

Yeah, easy to use! Great for new members (and/or) for those members who don't know how to post their pics or what to do with the pics.

Way to go, Jade!

Saw this come up again somewhere else on the boards, figured I'd give it a nudge since it's been a while.

Geez, thanks for all the info Jadewik. You know your stuff.

Awsome idea Jade! Thanks! I got kinda tired of explaining how to do this.

Every time someone asks, I'll post a link to this topic for them.

Dr Strange wrote:Geez, thanks for all the info Jadewik. You know your stuff.

Thanks. Just don't get me started on hard coding... my post would take a week to write, be a mile long, and everyone could build their own, simple website using nothing but notepad when I finished. I love to hard code... *swoon*

jadewik:

I want to be able to post pics directly, so you can see them right away, not just the photobucket link, but I can't seem to make it work!!!

I'm gettin' frustrated here!!!

HELP!!!

I took time to take some photobucket screen shots. Hopefully this will clarify things for ya. =)

(Some of this you may already know... but I figured I may as well while I'm at it.)

To Upload in Photobucket:
After you've created an account and logged in and you're looking at your page, you should see something like the image below... click on browse. Find the image on your computer and either double click or press open. Then, when you've filled browsed for all the images you want, you press "upload". (This is the part ya pro'lly already knew)


To Get the code to direct link to an image (IE imbed the image into a post):
Find the image you want in your photobucket account.... (images should show up like the picture below). For this forum (and most other *PhP forums), just click your mouse in the IMG code area (where it's blue). Photobucket should automatically copy the code.




When you go to post (I usually have 2 windows open... one with the photos and one with the forum)... just press control+v OR right click and select "paste" to paste the URL into your post.

Make sure you have the brackets on both the left and right of the IMG tag and the /IMG tag. THe most common mistake is when a [ or ] is missing.

Example:


*Note: PhP is a programming language/code

With Yahoo as my ISP, I am able to make websites. One is a normal website. The other is just for images I want to share on the forums I belong to. I just copy the URL address of the image and put it between IMG tags.

BTW @ Mama Hootch:
If you're using BMP images, I don't think those are compatable with the forum programming. Use a photo editor program and convert the images to a format that is compatable for the forums to use. Usually you have a choice of image formats to convert to when you save an image.

Personally, I convert to JPG file format.

This MIGHT be the problem you MAY be running up against.

Also, don't get confuddled or befused between the Img tags and the URL tags. It's easy to get lost. (Been there, done that many many times.) We're here for ya Mama Hootch. And we'll always wait patiently, because you "turn us on" to soooo much cool stuff.

Thanks, guys!!

But, this evening, Mama Hooch has been partaking of Bahama Mamas with some friends, so I think I'll try and figure this out...tomorrow!

GREAT post, Jadewik!!!!!!!! YOU are ON it!!!!!