Old Forum "HOW TO" (kept for interest)

[Sarah]

Hi guys,

Here's a helpful rundown of how to attach images, make avatars and signature pics.

ATTACH IMAGES

To attach an image to your post all you have to do is to upload an attachment when you're posting a reply. It will appear under the textbox (message body).

• • In the Post Reply screen, below the textbox where you put your reply will be a 'Add Attachment' section (see attachment01)
  • Click browse and it will open up your documents.
  • Find your picture and click Add The File.
  • A pop up will appear telling you uploading is in progress. Wait for that to finish otherwise it won’t upload!

Attachments01 copy.JPG

Now you've uploaded your image, you can leave it as a link at the bottom of your post or place it inline within your text (Like the images are appearing here).

inline.jpg

Just below the text box there should now be an extra section. This is for your attachments. It will have a drop down box if you have more than one attachment in your post.

inline2.jpg

In the textbox, click where you want the image to go. Press the place inline box on the attachments.

inline3.jpg

It should appear to look similar to this in your text: [attachment= 0]inline3.jpg[/attachment]

The limit before it turns into a link is 900 x 900 pixels. If you want the picture to appear in the post wholly, change the dimensions of the photo to be less than this (I used 750).

A good idea is to preview your post before you submit it to make sure it uploaded properly.

If you can’t get your image to post, its size may be too large. Resize it (look below for various resizing links) and try again.

If you can’t see attached images, it may be because of two reasons. You may not be logged in, or you may not have the image display on.

To turn on your image display, you need to go to your Board Preferences to fix.

• • Click on your User Control Panel button (it’s next to the New Message notifications underneath the Home and Magazine tabs)
  • Click on Board Preferences in the left hand tool bar.
  • Click on Edit Display Options and ensure ‘Display Images Within Posts’ is on.

Attachments02.jpg

You can also use your User Control Panel (UPC) to manage your attachments.

LINKS

http://www.picresize.com/ - Online picture resizer
http://www.irfanview.com/ - Link to a free downloadable image program that will edit photos so you can resize them.

[Sarah]

AVATARS

You can resize a picture online easily. We've used http://www.picresize.com/ for this. The site only stores your photos for 20 minutes, and then they’re deleted.

Choose your picture (click browse) then click continue.

avatar01.jpg

In Step 2 in the resize section, choose ‘custom size’ in the drop down box.

avatar02.JPG

In the boxes that appear underneath, make sure you change the percent to pixels. Choose your size between 100 x 100 or 75 x 75. You can play around with the width to get a picture in proportion by putting in the width size to whatever you want and leaving the height blank. The website will automatically resize it in proportion (but you might have to go in and change it if the height or width ends up being over 100). 100 x 75 is the average avatar size for most forums.

Just before you click ‘I’m done!’, in the box above choose the quality you want your JPG to be. Since it must be under 6KiB, it's best to choose good. Now you’re done!

avatar03.jpg

It will take you to a page where you can preview your image to make sure it’s right, see its old and new file size (make sure it’s 6KiB or under!). Save it to your computer, go to your forum UCP, click profile then edit avatar and upload it.

rsz__5619991776.jpg

You can also turn on help tips during each step too, just click the question mark in the top right corner. It’s pretty handy.

You can also use Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) to resize your images.

Other free online ones that do not require registration are http://imageshack.us/ or http://tinypic.com/ which will let you upload an image and resize it to a set size, but you will have to right-click save as you can’t save to computer and the only option is web links.

[Sarah]

Last one!

SIGNATURE PICS

Signature pictures need to be under 100 x 100 pixels and they also need to be hotlinked (image on a website) from another website. You can do this via an online photo album or image hosting site such as Photobucket.

• You can get your signature the same way you got the avatar at http://www.picresize.com/.

Follow the same directions until you get to the preview page. Instead of saving it to your computer you need to save it to web. Click that and follow the instructions to get your image.

• If you can resize the image on your computer, but need a link to put in the signature, you can use an image hosting site.

Websites like http://tinypic.com/ (owned by Photobucket, but no need for an account) or http://imageshack.us/ will also let you resize the image to a pre-determined size (use the avatar size as that's about 100 x 75) and upload it to the web. These are also free as well.

With these, once you’ve uploaded it, make sure you copy the link that is the Direct Link for Layouts (on Tinypic) or Direct Link (on Imageshack). This is the link you will insert into your signature.

You can also use Photobucket or Flikr. These require accounts if you haven’t got one already and will have preset options where you can change the size and get a direct link to put in your signature. Refer to their help guides if you need help posting a picture from them.

To put this link into your picture, go to your User Control Panel.

sig01.jpg

Click on Profile then Edit Signature on the side toolbar.

sig02.jpg

You will need to make sure the box that says Disable BBCode is unclicked (otherwise the code will show and no picture will appear).

sig03.jpg

The easiest way to do this is to paste your link in, highlight it then click the Img button to make the tags appear beside the link. These tags should make it look something like this on your signature page: [img]image.jpg[img].

sig04.jpg

Click preview and it should show you a preview of your signature. Make sure you submit it!