One of the most common questions we receive is "how to I post photos in your forum?" This brief tutorial is going to show you how to use a photo-hosting site (Flickr.com, Photobucket.com, etc.) to share photos within our forum.

Step 1 - Set up an account at a photo-hosting site
Since we don't host photos, you'll need to set up an account at a photo-hosting site. There are many to choose from, and some of the most popular ones are free to use. I'm going to use Flickr.com for this example, since I have an account with them. If you have an account with Yahoo for any of their services, including e-mail, Flickr is a great choice because Yahoo owns Flickr and you can use your Yahoo account information as your login.

Step 2 - Upload your photos to photo-hosting site
Add your photos to the photo-hosing site that you choose then get familiar with the way the site works, most notably, how you go about getting the URL for each photo you add to that photo-hosting site.

Step 3 - Get URL for your image
After you've added your photos to a photo hosting site, and once you know how to get the URL for each photo, you can start the process of posting at Trains.com.

NOTE: When getting your image URL from your hosting site, be certain to get the URL of the full-size version (or large, at least), not the thumbnail or icon size.

Step 4 - Adding the photo to your Trains.com post
When posting at Trains.com, you'll see this familiar "Post a New Message" screen. Above the Message area are two rows of menu items to format your post. Just to the left of the Smiley face icon is an icon that looks like the picture of a tree. (See image below.)

If you hover your mouse over that icon, you'll see that it reads "Images." Click that Images icon to add a photo to your post.

Step 5 - Add the URL of your photo
Once you click the Images icon, a small window will appear (see image below). Within that window is a field called "Image URL" which is where you paste the URL of the image you want to share. When pasting the URL of your image, remove the http:// that appears in that field and assure proper URL structure.

 

 

Once the URL is in place in the Image URL field, hit the tab button and your photo should appear in the Preview box below the Image URL field. Click the "Insert" button and your photo will be saved.

NOTE: If you don't see the "Insert" button in this window, do the following: place your courser in the Image URL field and hit the Tab button on your keyboard until the Insert button is shown. (This also goes for some other pop-up windows within the Post a New Message page. If the pop-up window appears but you can't see a way to save changes, hit the tab button until it appears.)

Step 6 - Preview your message
Once you've completed your message, click the "Preview" button (before hitting the "Post" button) to assure that everything has worked as planned. If everything looks good, proceed with the Post button.

If you encounter any problems beyond this, we encourage you to ask other members if they're using the same photo-hosting service for help/advice/suggestions. Unfortunately, it's impossible for us to provide a detailed set of instructions for each photo-hosting site. This brief tutorial is simply intended to help explain how to use the Image tool of our forum, not how to use an external photo-hosting site.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
Bergie