HowTo Embed Pictures to UKBouldering

Reading the forums you'll notice that quite a few posts have images included, or embedded, in the post. At some point you might want to embed pictures of your own and with the help of this guide you should be able to.

Posting other people's Images
Lets start with embedding pictures that you have seen on the internet as that's easiest.


 * You want to add a picture you've found to the Quality Bouldering Piccies thread, perhaps the one below...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2883734853_939f7221c1.jpg


 * The first thing you should do is check the copyright of the picture and check that theres no objection to embedding pictures. Some sites or users of particular sites don't allow pictures to be embedded (e.g. UKC and some flickr users).


 * Next you need to first find the URL of the picture. This is relatively easy, most browsers (certainly in Firefox) you simply right-click on the image and from the menu that appears you select "Copy Image Location".


 * Now start your Reply in the relevant thread and open an image tag ([img])

[img]


 * Paste in the images URL (Ctrl+V)

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2883734853_939f7221c1.jpg


 * Finally close your image tag ([/img])

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2883734853_939f7221c1.jpg[/img]


 * Now hit the 'Preview' button and you should be able to see the picture in the preview at the top of the page. If you're happy with the picture and text go ahead and 'Post'.

Posting your Images
UKBouldering Forums don't provide hosting of your images, so you need to have somewhere on-line where you can store your picture so that when the page with your post in is loaded into a web-browser the person reading the page will be able to see it. This involves copying the picture from camera or computer to somewhere on the internet.

There are various places that offer limited and unlimited image hosting, some you pay for, others are completely free whilst others have limited free hosting. Some are more restrictive about the images you host and will delete (and eventually ban you) if you post images that you do not hold the Copyright for. Some sites (e.g. UKClimbing) don't let you embed the images you have uploaded to their server even though you retain the copyright on the images.

A few suggestions are listed below.

More information on Image hosting service

Once you've hosted your pictures simply follow the instructions above for embedding pictures

Resizing Images
If you are posting a large picture and would like to resize it for the forums so that it displays nicely all you have to do is set the width and/or height attributes. For example if you wanted a picture to be scaled to 1024 x 768 pixels you would open your initial img markup with...

[img width=1024 height=768]

Continuing with the example above you could backlink a picture and resize it using...

[img width=1024 height=768]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2883734853_939f7221c1.jpg[/img]

To avoid distorting the image it is often sensible to only specify one of the dimensions, and the forum will retain the scale of the image for you when resizing it for display. Thus its usually sensible to set the width to around 1024 pixels as most people have displays that will accommodate this.

NB This is a contrived example because for pictures hosted on Flickr you can now copy the BBCode directly from the page (see Backlinking Flickr the easy way below).

Back linking
Some sites, such as flickr stipulate in their guidelines that when pictures are embedded to external sites such as UKBouldering that they should link back to the original page on their site. To help avoid UKB administrators getting into trouble it would be courteous to adhere to such requests. Fortunately it's fairly straightforward.


 * Copy the URL of the page where the picture is hosted by going to the address bar, highlighting the address (Ctrl + A) and copy it (Ctrl + C).


 * In your post prefix the code that embeds the picture with the URL tag ([url=]</tt>) and the URL

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/slackline/2883734853/][img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2883734853_939f7221c1.jpg[/img]


 * Suffix the code that embeds the picture with the closing URL tag ([/url]</tt>)

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/slackline/2883734853/][img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3043/2883734853_939f7221c1.jpg[/img][/url]

Backlinking Flickr the easy way
Flickr now provides easy access to BBcode that is used in the forums for embedding and backlinking pictures. At the bottom right of the black background that surrounds a picture on Flickr there are a series of white icons. The third from left (second from right) is a an arrow pointing rightwards....


 * Click on the arrow.


 * Ensure BBCode is highlighted in the section under 'Code;


 * Select the size of image you wish to embed using the pull-down menu (1024x768 for landscape or 768x1024 for portrait is a good choice for forums).


 * Copy the text out of the box below where you have just selected the size.


 * Paste the text into the body of your post.


 * Submit your post.

This automatically back links the embedded picture to Flickr.

UKClimbing
UKClimbing do not permit the pictures that they host to be embedded in other forums. This leaves you with two options if you wish to embed such a picture to the UKBouldering Forums...


 * Don't and just post a link to the page/news item on which it is hosted.


 * Save a copy of the image and then reupload it to an alternative image hosting service such a Imgur, yFrog ImageShack or similar.