Adding pictures to forum

Stephen Rainsbury · November 13, 2019, 00:04

Hi I am having trouble including pictures in my posts. I have coped them to a folder in my Drop box and tried including the link in boxes, but nothing comes up

The last one is at https://www.dropbox.com/s/v3o2amrvr346eb6/Dundas%20tipper.jpg?dl=0 which comes up nicely from my wifes computer so I don;'t think its a share problem.

Is there an FAQ I could refer to please?

Thanks

Hobby · November 13, 2019, 08:32

I don't know if its changed but I don't think you can load direct to the forum.

I know that many of us use more than one forum so we store our photos on a hosting website and link from there. Imgur, Flickr, etc. are examples. They do have limitations, though, as they sometimes go out of business leading to "holes" on threads so an alternative is to have your own website and host them on there which is fine until you don't pay and the same thing happens...

duttonbay · November 13, 2019, 10:18

Stephen has uploaded the photo to his dropbox, and I can certainly see the image he refers to. The question is, having a URL how do you get that image to display? I have tried his URL (after removing the ?dl=0 from the end) and it works perfectly on my browser, but sticking what seems to be a perfectly valid URL between doesn't result in the image being displayed. At least in a preview.

Hobby · November 13, 2019, 12:14

I'm not sure that Dropbox is set up to allow the display of photos on forums. I thought it was for passing such things as files (text and photo) between people rather than a display medium. I may be wrong though? Edit: looking at this you have to do certain things before it will work, such as set up a "Public" folder...

https://www.ski.com.au/xf/threads/how-to-post-images-from-dropbox.71995/

Surely just easier to use Imgur or similar that are geared for this sort of thing?

Webmaster · November 13, 2019, 12:24

The forum now really only supports images hosted on another server. The little icon with a picture in it on the bottom left of the posting menu asks for the URL of the image. Be aware that some sites, especially forums, prevent what is called 'image scraping' where their server has to serve up the image for use on another site, costing them bandwidth and slowing down their server if a lot of people are looking at images stored on their server.

When you get a forum of an age such as ours then what was originally a good idea to store images locally has been superseded by developments where dedicated image storage sites such a Flickr now offer a more cost-effective and practical solution for forum owners. It reduces the overheads of image scraping because any link is to the photo sharing server, not ours.

There are some images stored on our server but I recommend that, if at all possible, third-party image storage sites be used - preferably ones that use https SSL links.

B.Meldon · November 13, 2019, 12:52

It looks like it works by inserting the actual image location into the post.

Malcolm · November 13, 2019, 14:34

That is my experience as well Brian
Malcolm

Stephen Rainsbury · November 13, 2019, 15:34

Quote from: Hobby on November 13, 2019, 12:14
Surely just easier to use Imgur or similar that are geared for this sort of thing?

I have given up trying to keep up with various sites that just stop working, the latest of which was Google Photos. The swore blind that it would continue to work when they changed, but even images on my Blogspot account (another google endorse product) didn't display. At the time I just couldn't be bothered of going through it all again so i swapped to Wordpress which has them embedded.

I will try another one although I can't use Flikr as it says my email addreess is already being used, but I don't get the password reset emails, possibly because I use a redirection facility

Stephen Rainsbury · November 13, 2019, 15:39

Quote from: B.Meldon on November 13, 2019, 12:52
It looks like it works by inserting the actual image location into the post.

Witchcraft! I can see what your did there, it must be to do with too many re-directions, I will try that thanks :)

Hobby · November 13, 2019, 17:05

Even hosting them on your own website isn't foolproof, if you stop paying for it or the overall owner goes away you lose everything, just the same as when a photo hosting company goes bust. There is no foolproof way of ensuring that photos will always be visible. All any of us can do is hope for the best with our chosen way of doing it!

Stephen Rainsbury · November 13, 2019, 17:08

Thanks, I finally went to bat with Flickr for an hour and discovered that it was using my old Yahoo account for validation. I closed that down and now Flickr works for me. It was one heck of a battle just to post a picture of a £8 kit!

Hobby · November 13, 2019, 17:10

Don't worry, we've all been there, I just gave up with Flickr keep messing me around and went to Imgur. I take exception to a website that keeps changing it's login process every time I visit it which is what Flickr seemed to be doing (OK I know it wasn't that bad, but it did feel that way!).