A number of people using this forum aren’t amazingly computer literate, so when I found this website and the tools it has to offer, I thought I would write a simple guide to using it, so everyone on here is able to upload images for use on the forum. Those of you who already know how to upload photos may want to read on aswell, as this site uses a thumbnail method to show the pictures in threads, bear with me and I’ll explain…
The problem
When you upload an image and place it on the forum, the forum page will stretch to accomodate the width of the picture you post in the thread. This can make viewing the forums hard work for people using small screens. Also, every page featuring photos requires a lot of loading up to view them all, this can be quite time consuming for people on dial-up or the slowest broadband/cable connections. It also draws attention to your computer surfing habits at work, as the IT monkeys will see their monitoring software flagging your large internet download ammounts!
The solution
What people need is a method of placing thumbnails into their posts, that when you click them, the full size image appears in a new window. This will allow fast loading of threads on here, reduced bandwidth usage for peoples home and work internet accounts and correctly proportioned forum pages to view.
This can be done by using a photo hosting website called www.imageshack.us. It’s not very hard to use it, but there are a few extra tools that I’ll explain through in simple steps for those who haven’t used uploaders before. If you stick with it all the way through the steps, you’ll be able to right click an image on your computer and upload it in seconds, then simply cut and paste the pre-written forum coding into your posts to give you perfect thumbnailled photo links every time.
Step 1 - Register an account
First you need to create an account at imageshack. To do this, click the link below;
http://reg.imageshack.us/content.php?page=register
Fill in your email address in both of the 2 text boxes at the bottom of the page, then hit the “REGISTER” button.
Go to your email inbox and wait for a conformation email to arrive. At the bottom of the email is your registration link. Click this to complete the registration process.
Step 2 - Download the Quickload tool
The new window which will have appeared will display your Imageshck homepage, currently without any images listed. You could start uploading photos from your computer onto this straight away, but that would be far too boring, so we’ll now download the imageshack tool and install it.
Click the link below to download the ImageShack Quickload tool,
http://reg.imageshack.us/isql.1.0.32.msi
This will download the tool to your computer. A box will pop up and you should select “run”, then follow the onscreen instructions. It doesn’t cause your machine to reboot, so you can run it any time you like (now is ideal!).
Step 3 - Login
Go to your “My Documents” folder, or wherever you store your photos. Right click on one of them and in the menu which pops up, you’ll see an extra option “ImageShack Quickload”. This opens another menu. Select the option which says “Login” and click it.
http://img319.imageshack.us/img319/9103/uploader7nm.jpg
A box will appear which asks for your registration code;
http://img319.imageshack.us/img319/7343/uploader29wy.jpg
Click the link in the box to take you to the registration page. Right click the code that appears on the page, then select copy from the menu. Open up the login box again and right click the text box. Select paste from the menu to paste your registration code into the box. Now click the Login button to login to your account.
Step 4 - Upload an image to your account
Now you’re ready to upload an image into your account. Go to a folder on your computer where you keep your images and right click the image you want to upload. Select the ImageShack Quickload option again. This time you’ll see that the option for Login has gone, as you are logged into your account.
Select the option which says “Upload to ImageShack”. This will then start to upload the image. See - it’s that easy from now on to upload an image to the internet!
When the picture has uploaded, another internet explorer window will open up, which brings us onto the final step.
Step 5 - Insert a thumbnailled picture into a forum post
The window which has opened up will now display a number of options and a picture of the image you uploaded.
If the picture is under a certain size, there will be no thumbnail for it. To insert this into a forum thread. To do this, left click on the text box titled “Hotlink for forums (1)”. The code in the box will become highlighted blue. Right click the highlighted text and select copy from the menu. Now open up your forum reply page, right click the reply text box and select paste from the menu. Hey presto, the image is inserted into your reply. Click the preview button to check how it looks and then hit submit.
If the picture is over a certain size, you will have a number of extra options. To insert the thumbnail (which is the most useful for the reasons outlined above), left click the text box which is titled “Thumbnail for forums (1)”. The text will highlight blue. Right click the highlighted code and select copy from the menu. Go to your forum reply page and right click inside the reply text box. Select paste from the menu to insert the forum code for the picture. Click the preview button have a look at your handywork. If you like what you see, hit submit to show everyone else!
Notes
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If you don’t log in to your account, you can still upload images to ImageShack, however you won’t be able to find them at a later date, as they won’t be stored under your account.
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To view an image in a post, you simply click the thumbnail to make it open full size in a new window.
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If you are viewing uploaded pictures in a your account on ImageShack, then to copy and paste the code for a thumbnail image, you need to click the option under the heading “Thumbnail Code:”, which says “Forums” next to it.
There you go, all done.
What you should be left with, is posts like this;
[quote]Some pictures of the cambelt set-up copied from Mitsu CAPS program for you;
Steve[/quote]
If anyone has any issues doing this, post up your questions and I’ll try to help you out with some more step by step guideance.
Steve