Adding a photo to your forum posts

It is possible to display photos or other types of images as part of your post but the picture cannot be added directly into it.

The image file needs to be hosted on another Website, somewhere other than the FNZAS site. A link in your post is used to display the image. It works by displaying the image or photo from another Website inside your post.

Places like www.digitalpose.com do free image hosting and sharing. There are many places that do this, here are some:

www.snapfish.com - provides film developing and online viewing and sharing services.
www.picturetrail.com - offers various customizing and picture sharing options.
photos.msn.com - store photos online, share them with others, make prints and photo gifts, and finds tips and tricks for creating better images.
www.photoisland.com - provides hosting and tools for sharing your photo albums online.
www.dotphoto.com - features photo sharing and processing. (no hotlinking)

The site must support picture sharing otherwise the link will not work. There are many other sites too. If you use a search engine with ‘Free Picture Hosting and Sharing’ as the search title you will get lots to choose from.

You will need to become a member of the site. Each site is a little different so use their guidelines for uploading your pictures to the site.

You are now ready to add pictures to your posts, - here is how to do it.

Here is the method to add pictures to a post:
This assumes you are using Windows on a PC. It does not cater for Mac’s or Linux based systems. If you are using Linux then you will know enough already not to need this information.
1. Create a ‘New Topic’ or click ‘Post Reply’ in an existing topic to get into the new post screen (see Fig 1).
2. Type in the text of you post.
3. Put the cursor where you want to display the picture.
4. Click on the [img] button.
5. Open a new copy of internet explorer or your browser of choice (you can have more than one open at once).
6. Go to your picture hosting site, eg www.digitalpose.com
7. Go to your albums and find the picture you want to show in your post.
8. Right mouse-click on the picture and select ‘Properties’ from the menu.
9. A ‘Properties’ window will open. Next to Address (URL) is the full internet address for your picture. Put your mouse-pointer at the end of the address just after the last letter. Hold down the left mouse button and highlight the whole address right back to the ‘http://’ part. Press the ‘Ctrl’ button and ‘C’ button together (this copies the address to your clipboard).
10. Go back the browser page containing your new post. Press ‘Ctrl’ button and ‘V’ button together or select ‘Edit / Paste’ from the pulldown menu (this pastes the full internet address of your picture into your post).
11. Click on the [img] button again.
12. You will not see your picture but some text. This is good. The FNZAS Website takes care of displaying the picture for you. When you submit it, it automatically links the picture in.

Happy posting.