Posting picture (including via Tapatalk)

[robin]

Hi,

The hosting of SE is generously provided by one of our members for free.

We do not have the available storage space or bandwidth to handle attachments, so we will be turning off the ability to post attachments soon. Note this will impact you if you currently use tapatalk to post pictures and also if you currently choose to attach your pictures to your post rather than linking to one of the image hosting sites.

If you need to share a picture with the rest of the world, use one of the many free image hosting sites out there.

If you need to share a file then Dropbox provides one solution for this - I am sure there are many more.

Kenny kindly wrote this guide on how to do pictures a while back - note that these days there is no need to press the Img button twice - pressing it once gives you both opening and closing img tags (in this context a tag is a word in square brackets, nothing to do with facebook/twitter ...).



Adding an image to a post

Dead simple.

Pick one of the free photo hosting sites listed below. Upload pics, instructions usually supplied by site and are idiot proof.

Then see these simple instructions from the phpBB help pages (this is the technology on which the Scottish Elises forum is based)...

phpBB BBCode incorporates a tag for including images in your posts. Two very important things to remember when using this tag are: many users do not appreciate lots of images being shown in posts and secondly the image you display must already be available on the internet (it cannot exist only on your computer for example, unless you run a webserver!). To display an image you must surround the URL pointing to the image with [ img] and [ /img] tags. For example:

[ img]http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif[ /img]

...would generate:



If you want to be really clever, you can even wrap an image in a tag if you wish, to make it "clickable", e.g.

[ url=http://www.google.com/][ img]http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif[ /img][ /url]

...would generate:





The IMG and URL tags can still be inserted if you are using Tapatalk. Just expand your editing window (+ sign near bottom of screen) so that's its a "full" editing window. Then tap the ... symbol to bottom right. Brings up a menu with BBcode > as one of the items. Tap and you can access these two key tags.


Still unsure?

Quote this post to see how we did it!


More detail here - https://www.phpbb.com/community/faq.php ... bcode#f5r0


Image hosting websites


http://www.imageshack.us
(Simple to use and no registration required)

http://www.photobucket.com
(Registration required)

http://picserver.student.utwente.nl
(Registration required)

http://www.showoffyourcar.com
(Free to register and remote link allowed)

http://picasa.google.com/
(Runs via google account, lots of integration to Circles etc)

http://www.midwar.net
http://www.photoisland.com
http://www.altervista.org
http://www.uploadit.org
http://planetsideimages.com/index.php
http://www.sh*t.org
http://www.megagaleria.com
http://www.pifiu.com/upload

[Shug]

To expand on Robin's post and to pre-empt what I think may be a valid question - "why can't you just add a larger HDD - they're cheap!" It's really about the backup regime. There have been a couple of instances of hardware failures (as there always will be with an 'always-on' system) and the fact that very few people have ever noticed this proves that we have an extremely robust and regular backup regime.

The increasing size (due to these attachments - one picture is equivalent to dozens, hundreds of text threads) means regular backups are taking longer and longer, getting to the stage where remote backups will get to be too cumbersome, exposing the forum to the danger of lost data. All things considered, it's a far more sustainable method to simply use free image servers and keep the forum database tight and small.

[graeme]

Also, large HDDs for your home PC might be cheap. £50 for 500GB maybe?

Server spec 15k SAS drives from Dell, in hot-swappable chassis, with RAID mirroring ( you need twice as many disks for the same space), plus the replication to the hot-standby server, which also has mirrored disks (i.e. that's 4x 500GB disks to give you 500GB of usable space). At probably £150 per drive... x 4 = £600.

It's not fcuk cheap at all. *Doffs cap to SE server admin* We're lucky to have you, Sir.

[Corranga]

Just to add that I use photobucket, which conveniently gives links to photos in pre-formatted for a bb way.

This means that you just click the text, photobucket automatically copies it to your clipboard, then you paste into your SE post - job done

I suspect other image hosting will do the same.

[campbell]

Google Picasa is another, with good integration between web and a desktop picture management application.

[pete]

Google Picasa is another, with good integration between web and a desktop picture management application.

Yeah, picasa didn't used to work for some reason (could have been user error) but works really well now...

[rossybee]

I used webshots which worked well,but no longer

[ruadh08]

I have tried using Flickr again today for uploads, but it seems to be in a new format, which does not allow you to get the link to use on the forum. I have used Flickr in the past for this so it seems to be a recent change?

Has anyone else tried Flickr very recently, and if so where do you now find the new links?

I will now do it using photobucket!

[mckeann]

its a pain in the arse now on flickR, i changed to photobucket.

1. click photo
2. click 3 white dots (right hand side)
3. select view all sizes
4. select size you want
5. right click on photo, then click properties
6. copy and paste the address URL

[campbell]

Unfortunately Google are also making it tougher on Picasa too, by forcing users across to Google+ Photos. They do offer a reversion to Picasaweb but I suspect this is temporary.

Worth experimenting with simply right-clicking on the image in the browser, copying the link from there, then sharing? Or tapping "share" button on mobile devices and choosing "copy URL" if available.

Flippin social networking tools, eh?!