Perfect Image Posting

[Joan Marie]

Posting images in forums has always been tricky business.

One solution many forums have chosen is to go through an image-hosting service like postimage.

It was a little wonky to use, but people got used to it and it worked really well, until postimage experienced some issues and left many forums littered with 100's of broken image links (in some cases 1000s) that were impossible to identify and were just too much trouble to go through and fix them all one by one. And they were not the only image-host this has happened with. And they won't be the last.

Plan B is to allow posting images as attachments which is pretty easy to do, just drag and drop them into the post. A drawback to that method is how the images look and position themselves in the post. The result is kind of disappointing.

To solve that I found a kind of "app" that works with this forum's software and allows the images to display quite nicely. Like this:

The images line up side-by-side and with no messy filenames. (from the Cult of Weimar Tarot)

A couple things to know:

1. When you use the "preview" option the pictures will be in a column, not side-by-side, however, when you click "submit, they will line up perfectly.

2. To look their best, resize images to have a minimum of 500 pixels width (height does not matter). Images larger than that will resize to 500px. Images smaller than 500 px across will look like this:

3 Manipura.jpg (52.3 KiB) Viewed 4847 times

2 Swadhisthana.jpg (49.88 KiB) Viewed 4847 times

It's okay for 1 image, but you see the problem when you try to place more than 1 in a line. The filenames show and it gets messy. Just resize them to 500px and no problem.

All the images posted on this forum will be stored on the same server as the forum itself and not with a 3rd-party. Doing it this way we can maintain control of our work. I just hate the possibility of everyone's work being lost every time an image-host has an issue.

Posting pics this way is easier, safer and more reliable that using a 3rd party host. It also has the advantage that when a user clicks on one, they stay in the forum rather than click away to another website (like imgur or postimage etc)

Image posting is an extremely important part of a Tarot forum. We love the art and want to see it well displayed.

I created this video to show how images are posted here.

(Please also see the next post in this topic.)

More image posting tips

[Joan Marie]

Be sure to click "Place inline" after you drag and drop your attachments into your post.

Doing that allows you to place your attachments exactly where you want them AND they look nicer not having the "attachment frame". (see examples below)

Also, pics less than 500px wide will have file names appear below them. Resize smaller pics to 500px wide to remove the file info.

(see the short video here: Adding Images to a Post )



These attachments are 500 px wide AND were added clicking "place inline"
(cards from the Tarot of Many Doors)

These pics are less than 500px wide:

Mandala 03.jpg (80.53 KiB) Viewed 4802 times

Mandala 02.jpg (79.8 KiB) Viewed 4802 times

you see the file names.


This was dropped in and submitted without clicking "place inline" note the "attachment" frame. Also, if you don't place them inline, you can't control where they end up in the post, they will just automatically appear at the end like this one:

[Pen]

Hi, I'm having trouble uploading an avatar - there's nothing clickable to enable browsing and if I drag the image in there's no way to save it - it pops up on a black background. The size was OK but clearly I must be doing something wrong.

[Nemia]

I uploaded mine the traditional way. Had to re-size the image but no problems. There is "upload your own avatar" and then "choose file", and it worked for me.

[Pen]

Thanks Nemia, I found it - first change the 'Gallery' option to the 'Upload' option - missed that little step!

[Nemia]

Oh, nice avatar.... which deck is it from????

[Pen]

It's a single card I made as an experiment to see what was involved in recreating with modern paints and materials (and without gold...!) one of the missing cards from the D'Este Tarot. I was fairly active on the Tarot History Forum at the time and posted it as a Christmas card. Maybe one day I'll recreate the whole deck (well, the majors anyway), but there always seem to be be other ideas jostling for attention.

[qndynes]

What if we're posting image using a cellphone. I'm having trouble doing that. Keep getting the error code of cannot verify size of image. But the size of image is there.

[Joan Marie]

What if we're posting image using a cellphone. I'm having trouble doing that. Keep getting the error code of cannot verify size of image. But the size of image is there.

It sounds like you are trying to attach using the image icon. That is for attaching images from an image host, not directly from your phone. Some people prefer doing it that way and it works fine too.

To attach an image from your phone,

• Scroll down below the posting window.

• Click the tab called "Attachments"

• Click the button that says "add files"

• Select the image from your gallery or "my files" (or wherever the image is on your phone)

The image is now attached. If you want to place it in a specific spot in your post, place the curser there and then click "Place inline"

Phone images are usually large files and that can cause the images to post sideways. I use an image resizer app called "Photo & Picture Resizer" to make them smaller files.

[AstralPasta]

Is there a way to use BBCode to resize images? I tried it a couple times and it didn't work.

I'm on a PC and just saw that I've been posting very large photos. When I'm on my phone it scales it down. Whoopsies.

[katrinka]

This should do it. https://www.bbcode.org/examples/?id=10

And thanks for all of this, Joan Marie. You never know what's going to happen with an image hosting service. I get emails from photobucket on the regular trying to extort money because I'm "over the limit".

(That wasn't the "limit" we signed up for years ago. And when I was thinking I might migrate my blog, I used images hosted at photobucket rather then wordpress, so I could just copypaste everything to a new location. Now there's a bunch of broken image links in those old posts. They've dropped the price considerably from $399, https://www.technewsworld.com/story/85458.html but it doesn't matter. Photobucket can go pound sand AFAIAC.)

[Joan Marie]

Is there a way to use BBCode to resize images? I tried it a couple times and it didn't work.

I'm on a PC and just saw that I've been posting very large photos. When I'm on my phone it scales it down. Whoopsies.

EDIT: The bb codes katrinka linked toshould work, but they don't.
It seems the size cannot be adjusted once you have uploaded them to those sites (despite the fact you should be able to using bb codes)

You will need to resize them before you upload them to the Image host. The best size for that seems to be 300 to 350 px wide.


Alternatively, if you post images by dragging and dropping them into your post, the images will be stored on the Cult of Tarot server and are set to display at a uniform size, i.e. the size of most of the images you see on this forum.

For a COMPLETE explanation of image size wether you are using the drag and drop method or an image host PLEASE SEE THIS POST