How To Post Images on the Forum

Once you have pictures uploaded to your computer from a digital camera or scanner, you'll need to upload the picture file to an online server. Once it's stored in cyberspace it will always have an address (or "URL" = "universal resource locator") that tells any computer exactly how to find it. Most ISP's provide some server space for this, and you would need to check with your Internet Provider to find out how to use it. Another option is to use a free photo hosting service. Photobucket and Imageshack work well for this. You need to register and sign up for an account if you choose to use Photobucket. Registration is optional if you choose Imageshack. Once you're registered or on the upload screen of either server, follow the instructions to upload your pictures. Once uploaded they will be stored on their server, each with its own address. If you registered for an account with one of these free image upload servers, you can edit and/or delete your photos if you like.


Once your photo is uploaded to an image host, you need to link the photo on the server to your post on the forum. To do that, you need to copy and paste the IMG code. Since you're posting on a bulletin board, you need the "forum code". It will contain brackets [ ] which are commonly used for BBCode (bulletin board code) rather than the less than/greater than symbols < > that are used for HTML. Left click to select the entire contents of that box. Now right click and while the mouse is still over the blue area, left click on"Copy". Go back to your forum post and put the pointer within the box where you type your response and right click again and then left click "Paste". The string of code will be placed within your post and your picture should appear when you send/submit the post. You can click "Preview" at the bottom of the screen to check that it uploaded correctly.


When I post images on the forum, I tend to just copy the direct url for the image and use the IMG tags (see the code examples below) to embed the picture. However you decide to go about embedding your photos is fine.





The URL ("address on the internet") for the photo above is:

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img225/3368/565u.jpg

The code I used to place the image was this:

Code:

[img]http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/3368/565u.jpg[/img]

Imageshack gave the following to use as forum code:

Code:

[URL=http://img225.imageshack.us/i/565u.jpg/][IMG]http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/3368/565u.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Uploaded with [URL=http://imageshack.us]ImageShack.us[/URL]

Which looks like this:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Or if I chose the thumbnail option, it would have looked like this code:

Code:

[URL=http://img225.imageshack.us/i/565u.jpg/][IMG]http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/3368/565u.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Uploaded with [URL=http://imageshack.us]ImageShack.us[/URL]

Which looks like this:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Another (perhaps easier) option is available when you are typing your post. There are several icons above the text window. These are to edit your post and also to embed images, links, and video. There are two buttons with a photograph icon next to the hyperlink button (the chainlink icon). The first button shows a photo icon and a small diskette. This button is for using the forum to host your image or to enter the direct url from an image hosting site (Photobucket, Imageshack, etc). If you use this button, I would recommend using an image hosting site because there are limited resources for the forum and I couldn't guarantee that the photo wouldn't be lost in forum maintenance. The second button shows only a photograph icon. If you click this one, it prompts you to enter the url (link) to the image you want to post.



Remember that if you delete your photo from your hosting space, it will no longer show up in your forum post, so please leave it on the server for as long as you can. In most cases this can be "forever".



Hope that helps and if anyone else has more helpful tips on image hosting and embedding photos in forum posts, please do share!