How to Post a Picture - A simple Graphical Manual

How to Post a Picture on a Watch Forum - A simple Graphical Manual

Table of Contents
Shortcut: Skip all the Instructions and Use the Optional Graphics Upload
Basics about Pictures stored on the Web
Different ways Pictures are stored on the Web
Step-by-Step: How to post a single Image
How to post multiple Images
Troubleshooting the Red X

Dear All

"How to Post a Picture on a Watch Forum?" is probably the most frequently asked question for newbies or people not familiar with bulletin boards and forums. That is why I tried to make it as simple as possible, but not simpler, to cite Mr. Albert Einstein :-)

Best regards

Reto, Castellazzi, Bangkok, Sep. 13th, 2002, adapted to include Firefox instructions in January 2007

Shortcut: Skip all the Instructions below and Use the Optional Graphics Upload

If you'd like to include a picture, but don't have a Web site, you can upload a graphic image directly from your own computer. Just put the path to the file in the "Optional Graphic Upload" input box, below. (Use the "Browse" button if you're not quite sure where to find it.) The file must be in GIF (.gif) or JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) format, and can be no larger than 100 KB in size.

Please NEVER PREVIEW your posts using Optional Graphic Upload. Due to the forum software (uploaded picture numbering), an error would result. If you use Optional Graphic Upload, hit the Post Message button only!

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Basics about Pictures on the Web

There are some basics about pictures you will have to understand in order to post an image, or better, to link to an image within a watch forum post.

Pictures are represented by a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), e.g. http://www.pmwf.com/Watches/Chinese Watches/DoubleRhombExportOnWrist.jpg
Pictures or images on the web usually have the extension .JPG or .JPEG or GIF. PNG and WBMP are two other formats to be found for images published on the web. The URL minus the web domain name represents the image file name: from the example above DoubleRhombExportOnWrist.jpg. But of course, you will need the complete URL in order to be able to link to an image.
Pictures need to reside on a public web server in order to be visible to the public (all web users).
You do not post the image, but rather link to the URL of a picture. More about this will be explained shortly.
Pictures are normally embedded in web pages .HTM or HTML, so if you link to a .HTM page, you will not link to the picture but rather to the web page containing that specific picture and normally a lot more text and other information. Linking to an .HTM page instead of a .JPG URL is one of the most popular errors and will normall result in a frame around a little red X displayed (the placeholder for images that fail to display for any reason in your web browser).

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Different Ways Pictures are "stored" on the Web

Now that we know about the basics of pictures, let us look at some examples of how pictures are "stored" or published on the web:

On your personal web space provided by your ISP. Many people do not know about this, but if you have a web account, your ISP will normally give you a web space from 1 MB to 20 MB depending on your ISP. The URL to that web space is normally something like this (this is an example only and different ISPs use different formats):
http://www.myISP.com/personal/~username/
Personal space by other communities: Please note that Yahoo and Geocities does not allow you to have external links to your pictures. MSN allows external links.
You will need an FTP program, e.g. WS FTP (freeware, download from www.tucows.com) to upload your images to that personal web space. Once your images are uploaded to your personal web space and once the access rights of that folder are set to chmod 755 (this is the UNIX Change Mode command, normally this is done already by your ISP) at least. I just mention this, in case you get access right errors when linking to your pictures on your personal web space.
Free Image Hosts are always a popular choice. If you use those services, you will not need a FTP upload tool, those sites offer a complete tool kit for upload after you registered. There was once a whole armada of free picture hosts. I have removed the references to free image hosts, since they often disappear quickly. Ask on www.PMWF.com about what current free image hosts are.
General Images on web servers: of course you can also use other people's images in your posts, but please be fair and credit the originator and please also respect copyrights and do say where you took your image from. E.g. images from watch manufacturer's web sites, from online watch dealers, from auction sites, from other watch enthusiasts' web sites, images posted on other forums. General images are basically all images on the web your browser can display

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Now let us do it! Step by Step ... How to post a Single Image

0.) Navigate to a web page displaying an image: Click here if you want to follow the example below and try it out right away: http://www.pmwf.com/Watches/Bucherer/BuchererChronographFront.htm (the page will open in a new window)

MS Internet Explorer users, click here to proceed to Step 1

Firefox will allow you directly to choose Copy Image Location after right-clicking a web image. You can directly proceed to Step 5 and paste the URL into your post window.

Follow the instructions below if you use the MS Internet Explorer:

1.) RIGHT CLICK somewhere in the picture and you will see the following context sensitive menu popping up (this of course depends on operating system and browser, but conceptually there are no big differences).

2.) LEFT CLICK Properties and the following properties box (picture below) will pop-up.

3.) SELECT the whole URL, this is important. URLs can be very long, make sure you have the whole string selected and not just the visible portion in that 2 line display field. Alternatively you could right click somewhere in the URL and then click Select All to highlight the complete URL of the image.

4.) COPY the URL, use Ctrl+C or right click that highlighted URL and choose Copy. Now the URL of your image is in your Windows clipboard and can be pasted into any other open window.

5.) PASTE the URL into the ImageURL field of your watch post window. You can use ALT+TAB to quickly toggle between open windows. Of course I was assuming, that you had already clicked "Post New Topic" or "Reply" in your watch forum window. All watch forums will then typically display a similar CGI-Form, the example below is from the PMWF.

6.) Hit the "Post Message" button and you are DONE! Congratulations! You have just posted your first image :-)

Note: Different forums use different forum software. This documentation has been written for www.PMWF.com which uses WebBBS forum software. However if you understand the instructions given here, you should be easily able to transfer the knowledge to any other forum platform. Many PHP based forums offer a button that allows you to enter a picture's URL or a link. You click the button and the paste the URL of the picture or link into that window. And for multiple pictures or links, you just click on those buttons again.

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How to Post Multiple Images - The Advanced "Stuff" but not complicated at all!

The main difference is, that you will not use the Image URL field of your open watch post, but use the so called HTML image tag that is represented by <img src="">. Do not worry, that is about as far as we will go with HTML.

The best trick is to create a little text file with those tags and then just copy and paste as many image tags as you need. This is a Notepad file I am using since years to post multiple images:

If you like bold text below the pictures use this, the text will go between the opening (bold tag) and closing tag and appear in bold just below the picture. I like to use bold picture legends because they stand out towards the other post text.

And of course, you could just copy my tags here and paste them in your Notepad file. My Images.txt Notepad is conveniently stored on the Desktop, so I can quickly access it.

Another easy way to "avoid" remembering the image tag syntax is to copy the light blue text inside any post of the PMWF.com header:

After you copied <center><img src="PICURL"></center> into the Message body of your post, then simply replace PICURL with your pictures URLs.

1.) Locate your first image you want to post and SELECT and COPY the URL. If you are not sure, see the section above again how to do that.

2.) PASTE the URL into the watch post CGI form. Make sure you paste your URL between the "" quotation marks.

3.) REPEAT Step 1 and 2 for all your images. My multiple pictures post will show the front and the back of my SEIKO 5 with Railroad looks.

4.) Hit the "Post Message" button! You are done again! Congratulations, you just manage to post multiple images in a watch forum. That was not difficult right?

Some words about HTML in CGI Forms

We only used 3 HTML tags so far (<img src="">, <center> and ), but of course you could use a lot more HTML in your watch post message fields. Not all HTML tags will work though, remember, this is a watch forum software and not a HTML playground. The administrator of the watch forum and the forum software used will set the limits. And most forums using WebBBS provide a Preview button. Please use it, because on those forums, you can not edit your post afterwards.

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The most common Errors when Posting Images

Empty your PC's cache when testing and Previewing Messages to make sure other users will see that image too. You can clear your PC's cache by deleting all temporary files stored on your PC. Firefox users use Tools\Clear Private Data and Internet Explorer users use Tools\Delete Browsing History... Delete All to erase all temporary information.
Another easy way is to make sure that the web page is entirely reloaded (refreshing a page will only reload the text but not the images):
Firefox: HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY and CLICK REFRESH and the page you are previewing will be reloaded and all images will be loaded again too. The best way to make sure an image in a post displays properly.
MS Internet Explorer: HOLD DOWN THE CONTROL KEY and CLICK REFRESH: then the page (text and images) will be reloaded entirely.

When using Images Hosts:

Make sure your album is public and not private, otherwise only you can see the image. Others will get an access rights error.
Use good album names and think of an album notation before you start hosting images. The better your structure, the easier for you to find the pictures
Do not move your images to other albums after you posted them, they will not display at the new location unless you can edit your post (WebBBS forum software used by most watch forums does not allow that)
Picture displays too small: you selectedt the URL of a thumbnail and not of the original image size
An animated GIF picture will not play while hosted on most image hosts and rather display the first frame of the animation only. Interestingly they work when stored in MSN communities.

When I or others get that famous red little x what is the cause and what can I do?

In most cases, the URL of the pictures is wrong, sometimes people put a URL ending with .HTM in the <img scr=""> tag, then a red x is of course displayed because the img tag expects a file name ending in .JPG or .GIF
The image is in an album with a password (image hosts allow you to share or not share albums)
time out problem, the web server takes to long to "serve" the image, this is especially true for multiple images reports (like my traveling reports from HK:-)) on slow web servers
photo service bandwidth limitation: some free image hosts display a message picture that the user has exceeded the monthly allowed bandwidth
The image has been removed or renamed since you linked to it
Also frequent: the web server that image is residing on has disabled external links to images (Yahoo and Geocities fall into this category).
Sometimes it helps if you right click that little red x, copy the URL of the picture and paste it into a new browser window. Sometimes with only the picture URL in the address window, the browser can display the image.
You link to a picture that is not on the web, but on your hard disk only. These pictures normally have a path (not a URL) that starts with a drive letter (C:\\folder\subfolder)

And now go on and post those images, because an image says more then thousands words, well in most cases that is :-) Good Luck!

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