Adding Photos To A Forum Post

[Doug D.]

There are several ways you can share your photos of your Pyrex with forum readers:

1. Establish a free account with an online photo hosting site that allows linking from external sites. Then add a link to your photo in a post. Photos of a reasonable size may also be placed "inline" in a post, which means the photo is displayed in the body of the post. See your photo hosting service's instructions for how to link to your photos there.

1a. For hosting services which allow direct linking to photos, you can simply use the img or rimg BBCODE tags, pasting the photo URL between them.

1b. Link to your Pinterest or Instagram album.

1c. Use the Instagram bbcode to place a single posted image inline. From the "embed" code, find the image identifier. Scroll about two thirds of the way to the right to find it, just after

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https://www.instagram.com/p/

Copy just the part between the slashes after the p, and paste it between the [instagram] tags in your post. Note: The image will be a link to your Instagram page. Example:

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https://www.instagram.com/p/BA47diLEaG8/

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[instagram]BA47diLEaG8[/instagram]

2. Your ISP may also provide you with an amount of webspace you can use to host your own photos, and then link to them.

3. Embedded slideshows. Many photo hosting sites provide links so you may place a slideshow of an entire album inline on a webpage or email. HTML is not allowed in forum posts, but a couple of special BBCODEs will allow Google Picasa or photobucket slideshows to be embedded.

Example using Picasa:

When viewing your Picasa album, click on the RSS button at lower right. From the link that subsequently appears in your browser URL line, copy just the part between user/ and the ? before alt=rss. RSS link example:

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https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/pyrexcollectorcom/albumid/6141693475901462065?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US

In the forum post creation/editing window, click on the Picasa button above the window, and paste the copied text between the Picasa tags that are automatically inserted into the post. In the case of this example, the copied and pasted text was pyrexcollectorcom/albumid/6141693475901462065. (In some cases, the "pyrexcollectorcom" part is instead a long string of numbers.) The album must be set to "Public" for this to work. Before submitting your post, you must make sure the Option "Disable BBCode" is unchecked.



3a. For Google + users, use the googleplus tags, placing the full sharing URL inside them. If the album access level is set to limited, remove the last part of the URL starting with ?authkey. (Note: This means the album will be publicly visible when viewed through the forum.)

3b. For photobucket slideshows, place the URL from the embed code between the photobucketslide tags. The use of photobucket or other image hosting services which include pop-up ads or misleading notices is strongly discouraged.

4. Individual images hosted on flickr may be displayed inline using the bbcode flickr provides. While viewing the image in your flickr album, click on the share menu button above it, and select the bbcode option. Copy and paste the code to your forum post.

5. Individual images hosted on Google Picasa may be displayed inline quite easily. While viewing the image in your Picasa album, right-click on the image, and select the "Copy image location" or the like from the drop down menu displayed. Paste the copied URL into your forum post using the [img] or [rimg] tags or the photo button above the post composition box.

6. Using imgur.com (recommended): Photos may be uploaded from your computer to imgur.com without creating an account. After uploading, copy the URL for the individual image (right-click on image and choose View Image) and paste it into your post between [img] tags. Create an account to be able to access and manage previously uploaded photos at a later time. (Account-related images provide forum-ready bbcode links.)

7. Uploading photos from your computer. Below the post composition window, there is an option "Upload Attachment". Due to server space limitations, each user account has a limited attachment quota. It is requested you use this method only as a last resort. Note that the forum software imposes restrictions on both filesize and dimensions of attached photos, so they may need to first be resized.

Note: Linking images inline from websites other than pyrexcollector.com or one that you yourself own is considered improper, as it constitutes "bandwidth theft", in that the other site owner is technically paying to display the image.

[Bonnie Scott]

I really enjoy watching this slide show.