POSTING PICTURES ON SICC MESSAGE BOARDS – FAQ

There are several different ways to post a picture or a GIF on the message boards for all to enjoy. It takes a little practice, so don’t be discouraged if at first it doesn’t work. Keep trying and ask for help! Often the only problem is a typo.

For regular photographs, you must use a scanner to scan the photos onto your hard drive. If your scanner is impossible to use, you can take the pics to any photo developer and get them put on a floppy disk or CD. Then you can just use the disk to transfer them to your computer.

For digital photographs, you must upload the photos in the camera onto your computer's hard drive. Most cameras come with a program that enables you to upload the digital pics from the camera to your hard drive.

When uploading the pictures to your hard drive, try to save them as JPEG or JPG files. This will enable you to upload them more easily to the Web.

Place the uploaded photos in a file that you will be able to find again. For example, Windows has a file call My Pictures that is very convenient.

If you have a photo program of some type, you can modify the pictures once they are on your hard drive. For example, CompuPic (www.photodex.com) enables you to resize a picture, crop it, write on it, put a frame around it, remove redeye, etc. etc.

You cannot post the photo directly from your hard drive to the message board. The photo must first be uploaded to a Web page. This can be your personal web page or a photo hosting service page. To upload to your personal web page, such as at Geocities or Yahoo, follow their instructions.

There are several photo hosting pages. Two popular pages are Photopoint at www.photopoint.com and Photoloft at www.photoloft.com. First, how to use Photopoint.

To use Photopoint, go to the website, sign up for an album, and follow the EZ directions. You can either upload thru the web using the Easy Upload button or send the photos by email. When the photo is in your Photopoint album, you can crop it, resize it, etc. etc.

To use Photoloft, you also go to the website, sign up for an album, and follow their directions for uploading photos to your album.

Once you have the photo on a web page somewhere, you need to tell the computer how to find the pic so it will post on the SICC message board. To do this you use html language. There is an excellent explanation of simple html language and how to use it at www.lisaviolet.com/cathouse/html.html. Make sure you have all the punctuation and spaces in the right places!

For example, to post a picture on the message board from your web page or from Photopoint, press the button on the message board for New Msg. In the body of the message, type in the following: <img src=" Then after the quotation mark " put in the URL of the pic. On your personal web page, this will be the URL you see when you right click the pic on your web page and look at "properties." On Photopoint, you go to your album, and left click on the picture TWICE, so it is the only thing on the page. Then look in the address line and copy the address using Edit, Copy on the toolbar in Internet Explorer. For instance, in Photopoint the URL should look like this:

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=873286&a=635171&p=21415868&Sequence=1

This is the URL that you want to paste after the first quotation mark ".

Then after the URL, put "> So now you have <img src="URL here"> or

<img src="http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=8728&a=63571&p=215868&Sequence=1">

Then press enter a few times, put in whatever text you want, and post the message.

(b) To use Photoloft, follow these instructions:

1. Sign in to Photoloft/Go to your Loft.

2. Click on "Get WEBSITE HTML for this album/Images" (not the "auction" one).

3. Your uploaded pics will display. Click on one you want to share.

4. Your selected pic will open.

5. Scroll down to where it says Step #1 Select HTML Type. Here, check off LINKED PHOTO or UNLINKED PHOTO (linked photo allows others to click on the posted photo and open it in a new window by itself and (sometimes) bigger).

6. Step #2, select LINK TO PHOTO DISPLAY PAGE.

7. RESIZE photo if you need to by changing pixel sizes at left (only do it if your pic is too huge for the screen).

8. Click on GET HTML button.

9. Your pic will come up in a new window. Scroll down and Copy the entire bunch of gibberish in the box underneath your picture.

10. Paste it into your message body at SICC BBS! The img src language is already there so you don't need to type it in separately.

You can post more than one picture in a single message. For each picture, repeat the <img src="URL here"> line. You can put any amount of text between each picture. Just don’t use up all the bandwidth on the message board! Try to make your pictures fairly small for posting so they fit on the small screen. You can do this easily by resizing your photos before copying the URL.

A GIF is a little animated cartoon. There are many free GIFs available for use. For example, there are hundreds of animated cat GIFs at http://people.delphi.com/nlopez/anim.htm. If you find one that you like, you can post it on the SICC message board right from the web page where you found it. You don’t need to save it on your own web page first (although you can if you want to).

Use the same html language you use to post a photo. In the message body, type in <img src="URL here">, where the URL is the URL of the GIF. You can get the URL by right clicking on the GIF and looking at "Properties". For example:

<img src="http://people.delphi.com/nlopez/a-thrud2.gif">

Your GIF will automatically show in your message after you post it.

HAVE FUN AND SHOW US YOUR MEEZERS!