[OT] Inserting images from other sites in your posts

[Dan]

1) Go to http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/misc.php?s=&action=bbcode

2) Scroll down to "Adding Images." Read.

3a) If you're using IE, right click on the image, and go to "properties". Copy the URL of the image, not the .html file, and paste that between the IMG tags.

3b) If you're using Netscape 6.0 or higher, or Mozilla, right click on the image, and select "Copy Image Location" from the context sensitive menu." The image URL i now in your clipboard. Paste it between the IMG tags.

To see how I attached this image, "quote" it (clock the Quote button beelow, and see the vB code source. Do something similar to reference the URL of an image (the .jpg file, not the .html file) in your gallery or on another Web site.

The following image is loated at http://www.manifestation.org/~ill/images/funny/canada.jpg

Note that some sites, such as Geocities and Angelfire, won't let you display an stored on their server using a reference from a page outside of that server. A small error image will be displayed instead.

 

[nerudite]

Not to seem impertinent, but when should we use the "attach file" button right above the "hit reply" button? Does this mean that this method of attaching files is discouraged? I just want to make sure that I'm using the boards properly.

And, by the way, if we link to various websites for images, this will give us a little edge in Guess the City. I guess I'll have to find my old photos of trips to throw people off for now on.

 

[Dan]

Not to seem impertinent, but when should we use the "attach file" button right above the "hit reply" button? Does this mean that this method of attaching files is discouraged? I just want to make sure that I'm using the boards properly.

No problem with attaching ... but folks should use common sense. If I didn't want to let users "attach" or physically upload images to be incorporated into their posts, I'd turn that feature in vBulletin off.

An image or document that's "attached" is uploaded to Cyburbia's server, where it is added to the MySQL database that includes all the user information and preferences, posted messages, private messages (which I can't read, BTW), and board preferences of the Forums. (Images in the Cyburbia Gallery are stored as individual files outside the database, but the gallery structure, comments and so on is included with the MySQL database that contains the Cyburbia Cafe information.) An image that's "referenced" using the IMG tags is stored on another server; the bulletin board program converts the vB code to the equivalent HTML to reference and display that image like any other Web page.

For the "Guess the City" games, you might want to "attach" ... you can conceal the file name, which often incudes the city name. For some other kind of post, if you're showing an image stored on another site, don't download the image and then reupload it by "attaching" it; reference it instead, so there's just a few hundred characters of text added to the database, not 50K of .jpg.

BTW, I'm not having a problem with bandwidth or server capacity; note the new photo gallery.

 

[nerudite]

Okay... thanks for the explanation. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding how it all worked (I'm a little bit of a techno-geek I guess). I know I've downloaded some stuff, just to then "attach" it... so I'll start referring to the other sites like you said. Thanks again!