dumb question: adding images to posting

[Anonymous]

I've been trying to add an image to posting & it's not working... am I being dense? I'm on a Mac, if that makes a difference.

thanks

[tstage]

malexenko,

This topic gets asked a least twice a week around here. You're not dense, nor is there a problem with your Mac. Please read this through a couple of times. It may seem daunting at first, but it's really not that difficult to do.

Basically, what you need to do first is to open an account with a web server in order to post your pictures. Here are a few FREE web sites that forum members here use to post their pictures on:

RailImages.com (http://www.railimages.com)
Photobucket (http://photobucket.com)
Shutterfly (http://www.shutterfly.com)

Once you open an account and upload your photos onto their web site, you can then copy the picture's web address here into the body of your post.

To locate the photo's web address, right click the photo you want to post, and click on "Properties". Under "Image Properties", highlight and copy (Ctrl+C) the "Location" address. (You may have to increase the size of the window in order to see/get the whole address.)

malexenko, a little bit of background here might be helpful to understand things better. In order for your pic to be displayed properly on a web site, you must talk in a language your browser understands, called "html". Commands are "coded" by placing them inside brackets and tell your browser how you want the characters or sets of characters, now up on your screen, to be displayed.

With that said, now with your photo's web address copied, go to the body of your post here on the forum and place the photo's web address between these two sets of brackets: ["img"] and ["/img"] (minus the quotation marks). Here's a working example:

["img"]http://www.trains.com/images/navigation/mr_logo1.gif["/img"]

This is the address for the Model Railroad magazine logo at the top of the page. If I remove the quotation marks, the logo will be displayed on the page. Check it yourself by right clicking the logo, then "Properites", "Image Properties", then "Location". The address should be the same as what is listed above. (Again, you must remove the quotations marks for the picture to display correctly. The quotation marks are only added for illustration purposes.)

Another way to look at it is like this:

photo's web address

Your photo's web address (e.g. http://www.railimages...) must be placed between the two sets of brackets. Replace the asterik inside the first bracket with /img and the asterik inside the second bracket with /img. The img tells the browser, "Hey, my picture starts here!". The /img tells the browser, "Hey, my pictures stops here." Does that make more sense? EACH photo you post MUST to be arranged in this way in order to display properly.

One other thing. (More?!?

[%-)]) By clicking the "Preview" button at the bottom (before you post your topic or response), you will be able to check to see if everything is correct and edit it, if need be.

malexenko, I hope that's a bit clearer now for you. Holler if you need any additional help with it.

Tom

[selector]

Tom, how do you get the pic to come up under our signature every time?

[tstage]

Crandell,

Go into your own profile (Click on "Update Profile" at top of page), log in, and place the pic address (as described above) in the box entitled "Signature: Text & Graphics Version". That should do it for you. [:)]

Tom

[spankybird]

Here is a link that might help you

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=20382

[BRVRR]

Check with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Most of them give their customers some amount of free 'web space' as part of the bargain. Mine gives me 100MB of space. My whole website is located there with about 90MB of space still available.

[TBat55]

I tried all 3 free hosting sites and only Shutterfly worked for me. The site is free because they hope you order prints from them. I did, cheap fast and good.
Here's what the Shutterly site looks like when you right-click the picture to copy the address in between the {img}'s . It helps to launch your browser twice and tile the windows. That way you see the forum and the hstong site at the same time.

[selector]

Thanks, Tom. Now, if I only had a decent image to place there.....let's see.....nope, not those, (sigh)

[chateauricher]

Shutterfly's TOS (section 3a, paragraph 2) states :
"Linking directly to images on Shutterfly's servers from external sites is expressly prohibited."
Doesn't this mean that those of you using Shutterfly to post images here are in breach of contract ? [%-)] [#oops]

[Anonymous]

I switched over to photobucket.com becuase I had some issues with shutterfly. Photobucket does not prohibit linking, unless you exceed some bandwidth problems.