Uploading and linking to a gallery of images from your computerIf you have a collection of photos that you wish to link on the forum, the best way to manage them is to create a gallery on
PhotoBucket. This is a free (registration required) image-hosting service, that gives you full control over folders of images that you upload and categorise to suit yourself. The following instructions presume you are using PhotoBucket. There is a
PhotoBucket Tutuorial that you may also find useful.
Like TinyPic, this is a combination of other methods already described. You upload your pictures to their site, arranging them in albums (folders) as you go, and then link to them on ours. Before you start uploading pictures, it is a good idea to collate the images into a single folder on your computer, and give them short names.
Avoid spaces and special characters, and you can ensure they appear in the correct order in your album if you name them P0001.jpg, P0002.jpg and so on. Unlike Members-Only uploading described above, the shorter you can keep the name, the less hassle you'll have linking it on our forum.
Instructions.
1) Open two new browser windows, one for your forum post and one at PhotoBucket. (See links in the top-most message). Start a new topic or reply to an existing one as appropriate in the "forum" window, and write your message that will have the pictures attached.
2) You will need to log in and/or register with PhotoBucket if you have not done this already. The registration process is straightforward - very like the process here. Enter your username, a password, an email address and a few other details. You'll receive an email with a link that will activate your new PhotoBucket account. Once the account is activated, log in and follow the links until you arrive at the "Add Pictures" page.
3) Create a new Album. Albums allow you to organise your images into groups, rather than just one huge mess of pictures.
For best results, keep album names short and avoid spaces and special characters. Click the Album name to select it.
4) Click the "Choose File" button. Find your local file, using the standard dialog box and select it. If you are uploading a batch of files, you can choose how many from the pull-down menu and select them all in the same manner.
5) Click the "Submit" button. Once the image(s) complete(s) uploading, the page will refresh to let you know, and the message "* pictures added!" will appear.
6) Repeat steps 4 & 5 as necessary. Once you've finished uploading, scroll down the page to see your image(s).
7) Below each image, you'll see a box labelled "Img". Select all the text in that box (which should look like [ IMG ]http://photobucket.com/XxXx/yourname/youralbum/yourpic.jpg[ /IMG ] ) and copy it.
8) Switch back to your FE-FC Forum browser window. Position the cursor in your message where you want the image to appear, and paste it in.
Repeat steps 7 & 8 for each image. You can click the Preview button to make sure the images appear correctly before finally posting the message permanently.
NoteYou should try to keep your images to less than 400 pixels wide. Images bigger than this are often too big for most users' screens to view all at once, and tend to mess up the layout of the forum.