Want to share some pictures of your collection, project, trophies, or shop? It's easy on the Information Highway! The first thing you need is a place to collect and store them -- you can't post pictures directly from your computer to the forums. If you've got one picture or a whole pile of albums, there are a number of places that provide free hosting for storage of your pictures. Depending on your Internet Service Provider (ISP) plan, you may be entitled to a set amount of free space on their server for a "Home Page" so all you need would be a simple FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to upload the images. Check with your ISP folks. If you have some space but can't figure out how to use it, ask in the Short Bus Forum and we'll help. Otherwise, look at any of the dozens of free-hosts like Webshots, or Image Shack, or Photo Bucket, or Village Photos, and register at one you think you'll like - each of those is used by some folks here. Please note that the image format should be .jpg, .gif, or .png only. Do not use Windows .bmp format on the web, as they're always larger file sizes than necessary.
Once you have your pictures hosted, all you have to do is:
Due to functional considerations we much prefer that you link all pictures, which means viewers can click on your 'hot link' to see the picture if they wish. If you put them 'inline', meaning they're displayed directly in the post, then every viewer has to see them every time they go to that thread. Our server is made busier than necessary, and dial-up users may be discouraged from returning to the thread to view others' responses. If you feel it's necessary to include the picture directly, please use small images only, such as the thumbnails some hosts provide, which link back to the full size picture, and consider those dial-up users when you're inclined to put a large number of images directly in a post! And a great advantage to linking to an image ... you can make the image as big as you like since it opens in a separate window!
If you want to link a picture for your profile, go to the profile editor (click on My Profile towards the top of a forum page) and fill in the link - you'll also find the place there to add a link to your album into your "signature line" where it'll show with every post you make. The code for making a link in your signature line looks like this:
[url=http://www.the address of your link]what you want the text to say[/url]Remember too, that you're encouraged to submit pictures along with some information about your truck (and it's owner) to the Stovebolt Editor for inclusion in our ever growing Gallery of Stovebolters. If you have a great story we might even want to make it the subject of a Feature Saga!
