Inserting an image into a post
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:47 am
I have some bad news and some bad news. For the first bad news...THAT WAS IN ENGLISH! For the second bit of bad news I'm not sure if a more verbose explanation will necessarily help clarify things. If I was sitting next to you at a computer it would be real easy to show you what I'm talking about but some things are hard to explain when the person you're writing to doesn't have a background in the topic. You might be able to show a complete newbie how to tie a climber's knot but think about how hard it would be to explain it to them in text and have them do it correctly. It's not a matter of how smart you are, it's simply a matter of computer lingo and concepts being cryptic to the average surfer. For a geek like me this is very simple and intuitive. If I tried to explain it to my wife, her brain would start bleeding.dipsi wrote:One more time....IN ENGLISH!
But I'll give it one more try and see if I can do a better job. I'll start with the simple part and then move to the part that will probably give you the most problem. Assume (without asking how yet) that I have an image loaded on a web server somewhere on the internet. There is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or web address that points to where this image is. If I want to display this URL as a hyperlink I would type the following code in my post:
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[url]http://www.teamracers.net/images/20070610_RedRiverGorge_0188.jpg[/url]http://www.teamracers.net/images/200706 ... e_0188.jpg
You will notice that it has a "url" tag in square brackets at the beginning of the address and a "/url" in square brackets at end. These two tags tell the bulletin board software that everything between the opening tag (without a slash) and the closing tag (with a slash) is to be displayed as a URL hyperlink. If you click on the link, you will see the photograph.
If I change the above code to have a "img" tag, then the bulletin board will pull the image from my web server and display it in my post instead of simply displaying the link to the image. So if I put the following code in my post:
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[img]http://www.teamracers.net/images/20070610_RedRiverGorge_0188.jpg[/img]
You can manually type these tags at either end of the URL or use the clickable buttons on the posting form to have your browser automatically put them in your post for you.
That was the easy part because you simply had to type some text. The tougher part is actually getting the image on a web server so that you can view it with a browser. I get my internet connection by paying Comcast a fee each month. They give all their customers online storage to upload photos or post personal web pages. This service is pretty standard so your provider probably does the same. If you go to http://www.comcast.net/storage/ you will see them tell me how to upload a file. So I upload a file by clicking on the Upload Files button. When the file is uploaded, I copy the URL, then slap some "img" and "/img" tags around it and paste it in this post:
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[img]http://home.comcast.net/~darrylcaillouet/20070610_RedRiverGorge_0187.jpg[/img]
The problem you might run into is if you alway use public computers or hijack wireless access from a neighbor and don't actually have a paid account on the internet. Then you would have to look for a free photo sharing service like www.flickr.com to host your photographs.
Is this more better English?
