Ways of Posting Pictures on the "Bell Talk" Forum

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Using Photobucket.com

Photos certainly help in identifying a bell. They also make your posting more educational and interesting. Here's a technique to get the photos you have into your Forum posting.

Go to a photo hosting site (Go to "photobucket.com" -register (it's free) and set up an account (this is not an endorsement of Photobucket, as others such sites exist).

Notes: These directions assume your digital photos have already been downloaded onto your computer or have been scanned into your computer and that you know where they are stored in your computer.

Be sure to write down your Photobucket user name and password and put them in a place where you can find them if you forget them.

Step One - Register on Photobucket.com

1. Go to photobucket.com
2. Click on “Sign Up” in the blue strip at the top of the page beside the “Search Photos” box.
3. Type in your username (whatever name you choose).
4. Type in your password (whatever password you choose).
5. Type in your password again.
6. Type in your email address.
7. Type in your gender (male or female)
8. Type in your birth date.
9. Find the weird code in the box. Type it in the box below.
15. Click on “Sign me up!”

Step Two - Prepare the picture you’ll be posting on the “Bell Talk” Forum

1. Sign in (if you haven’t already done so). Click on the “remember me” box so you won’t have to sign in each time you go to Photobucket.com. Then click on “Login”.
2. Click on “My Albums” or “Upload now.”
3. If you chose “Upload now”, click on the green box that say “Select photos and videos.” It should take you to your computer’s filing system where your documents are stored. Select the picture you want to add to the “Bell Talk” Forum and double click on it. The uploading will begin immediately. Note: to stop the music that plays while the upload is happing, click on the icon of a speaker in the upper right hand corner of the blue box or turn off your speakers.
4. The uploaded picture will appear in the next section of that same page. At this point, you can add a title, a description, and/or tags. Tags are key words to help the search engine find a given category of bells (such as “church,” “handbells,” “glass bells”, etc.) It is not necessary to fill in any of these boxes.
5. Click on the blue strip that says, “Save and continue to my album.” The next page will show all the pictures you have uploaded to your album.
6. Find the picture you want to post and put your cursor (pointer) on it once. A box with the picture in it will come up. There will be several options noted in the box. You want to click on the box where the IMG Code appears. You should see the word “copied” appear for a second, and then it will disappear. OK, so you’ve just simply copied the code you will need to plug the photo into the “Bell Talk” Forum document you will post.

Step Three – Putting the picture into your posting

1. Now that you’ve chosen the picture and copied the IMG Code (it is being held on the clipboard of your computer), go back to the “Bell Talk” Forum and to the box where you are putting in the text for your posting. Decide where in the posting you want the picture(s) to go.
2. Paste your IMG code into the text box where you want the picture to appear. When you have done that, you will not see your picture. You will see your picture’s IMG code.
3. Repeat this process for every picture you want to post. Remember: Each picture has it’s own IMG Code so you’ll have to go back to Photobucket to get each individual code.
4. Back on the Forum, before you click on “Submit”, click on “Preview.” The picture should now be in the posting. Is it? If not, you should try the process over again.
5. When you are satisfied with the preview, click “Submit” and wait for your posting to appear on the screen.

If you should get an error message that says, "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image" try this:

1. Go back to your album on Photobucket.com to the page where your picture is posted.
2. Click on the photo and then click on the word “Edit” above the picture.
3. At the top of the new page, you’ll see a strip of icons that begins with “Auto Fix”. You want the button that says, “Resize.” Click on it.
4. Find where it says “New Size”. Put in numbers smaller than 320 x 240. When you put in the first number, the second number will probably automatically fill in. This will retain the picture’s width to height ratio.
5. At the bottom of the page, click on “Replace original.”

Once Photobucket does its magic, you’ll be back to where you can copy the new IMG Code and insert it back in your text on the “Bell Talk” Forum.

If your picture posts sideways, do this:

1. Go back to your album on Photobucket.com to the page where your picture is posted.
2. Click on the photo and then click on the word “Edit” above the picture.
3. At the top of the new page, you’ll see a strip of icons that begins with “Auto Fix”. You want the buttons that say, “Rotate.” Click on the button that will rotate your picture to the right position. Each time you click on the rotate button, it will turn a quarter-turn. Click until it is in the right position.
4. Click on “Replace original” in the blue box at the bottom of the page.
5. Go back to your album, get the new IMG Code, plug it into the posting where the incorrect IMG Code was (delete the old code). Check “Preview” to make sure it is now how you want it. When satisfied, click “Submit.”