Popular Post meepmeepmayer Posted September 14, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 14, 2019 (edited) Summary: You can host pictures as an attachment directly on this forum, or you can host pictures using an image host or a general cloud storage provider. For videos, it is best to use YouTube or another video site (unless the video is short/small, then it will work fine as an attachment). Copy and paste any external picture's full address/URL (= hotlinking) or any YouTube video's youtube.com full URL/address to directly display (= embed) the picture or Youtube video in your post. Avoid shortened or "Share" links, they do not embed. - Full post: Attachments on this forum This forum has an attachment functionality that allows you to upload pictures (and other files). Below the text entry box of any new post or topic, there is the option to add a picture or other file as an attachment. Any new attachment will be uploaded and shown in a list. Click/tap into your post where you want to show the picture or a link to the file, then click/tap on the picture or file in the list to insert it into your post at that spot. (Otherwise it will be uploaded but not shown anywhere for now. As you can see, you can of course insert an already existing attachment and insert your new attachments later or in other places.) This is your last chance to delete any new attachment, with the little "x" in the list. You currently cannot delete attachments after they have been posted. Of course you can edit anything out of your posts so nothing will be shown, but the attachments themselves will stay (a list of them is in your profile). If you need an attachment deleted, please contact the site staff. For better management of uploaded pictures and other files, please use an external image host or cloud storage provider of your choice. For a few quick pictures the attachment functionality is very easy. You can even directly paste a picture from your clipboard! (Right click/long tap + select "Paste", or CTRL+V, or SHIFT+INSERT, or by clicking/tapping "choose files" and selecting the clipboard.) Your space for attachments is up to ~1GB for most people. If you need more space, you can use an image host or contact the site staff so we can give you more space. Videos tend to take a lot of space, so we recommend using YouTube or another video hosting site for your videos (at least if they are longer than "very short"). The attachment functionality is not available for very new users ("Newest Members") to prevent abuse. Sorry! If you post a bit you should quickly move from "Newest Members" to "Members" which will allow you to use the attachment functionality. Uploading Pictures to an Image Host If you want to post a lot of pictures (and maybe organize them neatly), we recommend using an image host. An image host is a website specialized to store your images so the general public can see them online. There are tons of free ones, so choose the one you like best. They are usually frictionless and quick to use. Examples are https://postimages.org/, https://imgbb.com/, https://imgur.com/, or https://flickr.com/. Many image hosts allow quick and anonymous uploading without an account. Beware, that means you cannot delete images after the fact (but you can edit them out of your posts on this forum). Simply paste a picture's address (URL) in the text entry box and it will display - see below. Uploading Videos Videos are best hosted on YouTube or another video site. YouTube videos can be embedded in your post instead of just showing the link. Simply paste the full youtube.com address (URL) and the video should embed automatically - see below. Pictures and videos from your cloud storage You can also post pictures (and other things) from your personal cloud storage like Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. Cloud storage is usually meant for your private data. If you post a picture or other thing from your cloud storage, make sure the permissions are set to public so everyone can see it. Careful! It may display correctly for you because you are logged in to your cloud storage, but other people cannot see what you posted. Best to check in another browser or from another device (where you are not logged in to your cloud storage) that the general public can see what you posted. Cloud storage is often finicky and problematic when you just want to directly embed (display) a picture, e.g. iCloud is a bitch, Google works 50% of the time, etc. If you have problems there, use a dedicated image host instead. How to display pictures in a post - "Help, my pictures won't show!" To display a picture which has been uploaded as an attachment to this forum, place your cursor into the text entry box where you want to display the picture, and then below the text entry box click on the picture in your list of newly uploaded files, or choose "Other Media" and then "Insert existing attachment" if it is an already existing attachment, to insert the picture. To display a external picture in your post, simply copy and paste its full address (URL) into your text entry box. It will automatically display instead of showing the link. You see right away that it embeds (or when it doesn't embed and you just get a text link). Do not use the "link" button in the tool bar, because it will produce a clickable text link instead of directly displaying the picture. But if you want to produce a clickable text link and not display the picture, this is how you do it. Many websites and image hosts will not give you an easy way to get the full image URL and will provide only a shortened embed link of some kind (they want to lure you and your image viewers to their site for engagement). This often happens if you use a provided "Share" button. Usually these short embed links don't work when pasted into the forum, and the picture will not display, instead you only get a text link. Choose the place to host your images also by how frictionless it is to get the full URL of an image. HTML code and similar also won't work. If the picture doesn't embed into your post on this forum, you have to manually copy and paste it's full URL (hotlinking). You can get the full URL by right-clicking the image (or long-tapping on mobile) and choosing "copy image address" or "copy link" (or similar) in your browser. Here's an example: This picture has been uploaded to https://imgbb.com/, and they provide this shortened embed link to copy and paste for you. This one: Quote https://ibb.co/kB4V0Yd But it displays only as text link, not as a photo! (If you click it, it goes to their site.) Right-clicking the image and choosing "copy image address" gives the full URL: Quote https://i.ibb.co/fFkVtmc/x.jpg If you paste the full URL into a post, it will display as image, like this: Are you pasting a direct link but the image still does not embed? Sometimes it is the text formatting of the link! You can copy the link into a text editor or your browser's address bar (or any other place that won't care about text formatting), and copy it again from there. This should lose the text formatting, and the image will be properly embedded when you paste its newly copied address into the forum's text entry box. How to display videos in a post - "Help, my YouTube video won't embed!" To embed a YouTube video, copy and paste its youtube.com URL into your post. Here's an example of a full YouTube URL: Quote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7EyvZBnlTE Note how it is "youtube.com". Pasting the link will automatically embed the video, like this: Do not use the "link" button in the tool bar, because it will produce a clickable text link instead of embedding the video. But if you want to produce a clickable text link and not embed the video, this is how you do it. Pasting a shortened YouTube link will not embed the video. You get such a shortened link by using YouTube's "Share" functionality. Here's the shortened link for the same video: Quote https://youtu.be/J7EyvZBnlTE Note how it is "youtu.be". Pasting this link will not embed the video, you only get a text link. Some other sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit will allow you to embed a post on this forum, which might contain a video. This tends to work semi-reliably. You can always try and see if it works for you. - Tip: We have a Testing forum, where you can make test posts to try everything and see if everything works as you want it to. Edited November 13, 2023 by meepmeepmayer 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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