Posting pics explained....

[ElderGeek]

If you frequent forums or even blog sites you most likely have noticed that you can post pics and graphics in your threads. How this is done is different from site to site.

With forums, it depends on what forum software is being used and what features are enabled. Same goes with blog sites.

Many of you have uploaded pics to what we will call "holding websites", that are either free, and have alot ads displayed when you access your pics or ones that cost a few bucks a month with no ads. This allows you to send "links" to people in e-mail or post the links in a forum thread. Examples of these sites are:

(I don't use any of these sites and just offer them for your review.)

Webshots
Photobucket
Shutterfly
a bunch of others

Some of these sites will resize your pics automatically, some make you do it. The reason they need them resized is most digital cameras take very large pics. Some can be 5MB and up. This takes up disk space on the server, so the smaller the pic the more they can store. At the same time it takes longer to download large pics than smaller. We will discuss resolution and formats later if everyone wants to know more. In the meantime, go to a folder on your PC that holds your pics. Like [My Pictures] for example.

If you are running XP or Vista, place your curser over the pic name. You will see a small window appear telling you the dimensions, size, & format of the pic. For more info about the pic, [right click] on it, then select [Properties]. This window gives much more info about the pic.

As you review this info, in either pop-up window, then open the pic, you will see relationships between dimensions, & size, and how the pics looks when displayed.

Ever notice that when someone posts a pic, you may need to scroll left and right to see the whole pic? This is an example of a pic with large "dimensions". For example: 1024 x 768 pixels, which can cover your entire desktop. This is the dimension of the pic, generally in 'pixels' but can be described in inches, like 1"x 2". A good rule of thumb for pics to be posted to a thread is more like 640 x 480 or smaller.

Many sites like this one also limit 'how big' the pic can be. On this site it's 2MB per pic. This refers to 'data size', not physical dimensions. It's how much data, or bits & bytes the pic contains. You can think of it like pounds, (lbs). Limiting the data 'size' saves Jeremy server space, and you and me download time.

Where is the pic stored?

This depends on how you tell the forum software to display the pic. If it's just a 'hotlink', like this:

http://www.atgarizona.com/pics/hippo2.gif

It's on my site, www.atgarizona.com, in my 'pics' folder. Clicking on this should launch a new browser window and display the pic.

This one is on forum member Shawnz site, in the 'RF' folder.

http://www.shawnz.com/RF/Wickenburg.jpg

This one is on arizonaquads.com server.

http://www.arizonaquads.com/forum/at...1&d=1192808468

You can usually right click on any pic, (or hot link for that matter) to see where the pic is being held or in the case of a hotlink, where you are going when the link is clicked. This is not 100% true but for this discussion let's go with it.

So, when you are posting a pic on this site, you can have Jeremy hold it for, or you can store it on a site like Photobucket, or on you own website like me & Shawnz.

How do I display the pic as opposed to just having a hotlink?

This is where the forum software comes into play. If you click this icon , located at the top of the new post or reply windows. It will ask where is this pic located. This is when you type in the 'file path' such as my hippo pic from above.

I you want Jeremy to hold it, click on the paperclip instead.

It will put 'tags' around your 'file path' telling the forum software to; go get this pic located at this location and then display it right here.

Like this :

The forum or website or blog doesn't really care where ths pic is at. Just as long as the location is accessable via the net. What this means is it can't be pointing to your PC, in your My Pictures folder. Which is not accesable from the net. So when you see something in a post that looks like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Pitures\reallycoolpic.jpg

And not a pic, is because the forum or website, cannot access the location of the pic that is on the poster's PC, and not on a net accessable server.

I hope this help explain what is going on whn posting a pic. There is much more detail to this so feel free to ask any questions you like on this topic. I know this confuses many people.

[azhunter]

That hippo still cracks me up!

[Shawnz]

I'll just add that most ISPs include web space with your fees, but it's up to you to figure out how to access / use it. Your URL to your sit will be kind of crypric, such as:

http://members.cox.net/~shawnz (no, this isn't a real site - lol)

If you call support they can help you set it up. You can also do it from the web interface on Cox's web site.

For me, I change ISPs like hotcakes and pretty much go with whatever deal suits me at the time. Because of this my e-mail and web space was changing a lot and it got annoying. For a while I had a web server here at the house, but again with IP addresses changing and many ISPs blocking port 80 inbound, it just became a pain.

I went with paid hosting. It's really not that expensive and for the $$ you get a web site that never goes down, faster performance, and WAY more space / bandwidth than you get from your ISP.

I use 1and1.com and I have their 'home' package. It's around $5/month and it's totally worth it. Domains are cheap there too.

120 Gigs of space, 1.2TB of traffic/month, 1200 email accounts etc. The package includes licenses for a suite of software and it has a basic web-based site editor so my finace can maintain a web site with little to no instruction.

I FTP all my stuff up manually right now because it's what I'm used to. I'm sure there are more elegant solutions - lol.

Oh yeah, and Gmail rocks. Get it, love it. It is especially nice for tech geeks who are logged into several PCs at once. I don't know if you still need invites for gmail but if anyone needs one, shoot me a PM.