Hi All,

The question continually comes up from those just joining us, about how to get their photos into a forum topic. To save everyone a lot of repitition I thought I would just post this reference topic with all the info you need about the mystories of hosting and posting. Now when someone asks, you can just point them here.

Cheers Dat

=============================================
WhoDat's HowTo's - Photos

The First Part.... HowTo Host a picture.

So you have a digital picture and you want to share it on the forum. The first step is to get a copy of it up onto the internet. It is no good just sitting on your PC, because in most cases we cannot browse to your hard drive to view it, and we certainly will not be able to see it if you switch off and go to bed.

In order to share youre pictures you need to have them hosted on a web server somewhere. It doesn't matter who's web server the picture is on, only that the picture is on the web somewhere that we can all get to on the net. Now you could set up your own web server, use the web space most ISP's provide as part of your internet access account, buy some commercial web hosting space or, like most people, use the most convenient option and choose a free picture hosting service.

There are several services that provide free hosting so find one you like and find easy to work with. The instructions on how to use each service is found from their respective web sites. Here are a couple in common use by our members [So there are others around here you can quiz if you need help].

http://www.photobucket.com
http://www.imageshack.ws/

Or you can do a Google search for: "Image host free" and start exploring other options
to host your pictures.

Please note: Some services provide can you with an option to secure your pictures to make them "private", using memberships or passwords etc. For our purposes here on a
public forum, these type of private hosts do not provide us a location all forum members and guests can access and so are not any good to host picutres you want to share on Ausmini. Make sure you host on a Publicly available host.

Now that your picture is hosted - you can refer to the HowTo on posting it into one of your forum messages.

Hope this is of some use.
Cheers Dat

===============================================
WhoDat's HowTo's - Photos

The Second Part.... How do I post pictures?

1. Host the image
First of all the picture has to already be on the internet somewhere on a web page. We covered this above but just to recap - It's no good just on your PC because we can't see it if you turn that off and go to bed. So the problem is to get it uploaded onto a web page. This is called "hosting". There are several options to get your own pictures hosted for you, from using web space provided by your ISP through to using free hosts that are there just to provide space for your pictures. If you are just going to refer to a picture that is already hosted on the web, then this step is already done for you.

2. Get the Image URL
Now that your picture is uploaded to a web server and available 24/7 to all, you need to refer to where it is located in your forum post. So just what is the address of your picture? Browse to the web page that is showing the picture and then click on the picture with your right mouse button. A pop up options window will apear, now click on the word "Properties" which is the bottom option in this list. You will now be looking at all the details of this object called your picture. You are interested in the "URL" address listed here. This is the text that you will need to post into your topic and it uniquely describes to any web browser how to get to view this picture. Just highlight ALL this URL text and copy it [hit the "Ctrl" and "c" keys together]. Make sure you get it all from the "http//:..." part all the way to the file name and extension [eg usually a .jpg or .gif] The URL can be quite long sometimes and you may need to drag your mouse over it while it scrolls down to highlight the last part of the address before copying it to your clipboard.

3. Post the image address
Last step is to just post this information into your forum message. You start a new topic or reply to an existing one by clicking on the button you want from the forum and get the compose window that has a row of buttons across the top [a bit like a word processor]. These allow you to do basic formating of your message. The one your interested in here is the IMG button [stands for "Image"] so click this button once and it will place the code [img]into%20your%20message.%20This%20is%20interpreted%20by%20the%20forum%20host%20as%20a%20special%20code%20meaning%20interpret%20the%20following%20text%20as%20an%20address%20to%20an%20image.%20Ok,%20so%20now%20paste%20that%20URL%20address%20we%20saved%20in%20the%20previous%20step%20[hit%20the%20Ctrl"%20and%20"v"%20keys%20together]%20and%20now%20hit%20that%20image%20button%20again%20and%20you%20get%20another[/img] tag, but this time it has a slash in it. This tell he forum host that it is the end of the image address.

So now you should have something that looks like this:



Now your URL address to your picture will be different to to the one I used above. Each address to each picture file will be uniquely different. The imortant thing here is that you have the image start and image stop tags present in your post, and a valid URL between them giving the correct address of the picture you want to show.

Get it right and a picture appears like this


Have fun
Dat

I asked for help & got it thanks, but keep the SPAM in the shed please

Blue

I asked for help & got it thanks, but keep the SPAM in the shed please

Blue

wow...what gratitude