How To Post Pictures
Since many new users seem to be struggling with attaching pictures to their posts, here is some information that may help you succeding with this task. The steps described below are for Microsoft Internet Explorer. Posting pictures on Apple Macintosh and other platforms may be slightly different.
1. Where to begin.
There are two ways of posting a message: (a) by creating a "New Thread" in a forum, or (b) by replying to an existing message in an existing thread. A special case exists for replying to an existing message in the sense that there is a "Post Quick Reply" button at the end of the thread. The purpose of "Post Quick Reply" is that users can reply with a simple text message (the only options for "Post Quick Reply" messages are to include quotes, and format text as Bold, Italic, or Underlined). Next to the "Post Quick Reply" button is a "Go Advanced" button, which leads you to the same dialog you see when creating a new thread.
2. The Advanced Message Window
The advanced message window has allows text to be formatted in many more ways than in the "Post Quick reply" window. For the purpose of this message, we'll skip the text features and focus on posting pictures only.
Just below the "Submit Reply" and "Preview Post" buttons of the advanced message window is a segment called "Additional Options". Depending on the size and resolution of your display, you may have use the slider bar on the right side of the screen to scroll down to this section.
3. Managing Attachments
Somewhere near the middle of the "Additional Options" segment, you should see a "Manage Attachment" button. Clicking on that button opens a new window with "Browse", "Upload" and "Close this window" buttons.
In order to attach images to a post, you first use the "Browse" button to navigate to the file you want to upload from your computer (or a computer on your network) through your folders or directories of your computer's file system. Highlight the file you want and click "Open".
Clicking "Open" brings you back to the "Manage Attachment" screen, but this time there is a text string with the full path to the file in the "File to Upload" box. Next, click on the "Upload" button. The machine locates the file and changes the "Manage Attachments" window in the sense that it now shows the name of your file under "Current Attachments" and a "Remove" button. You can attach up to 5 files.
4. A Note on File Size and File Types
If, after clicking "Upload", no files show up in "Current Attachments" the problem is either the file size or the file type or extension. The file size is limited. Valid files types and their size are as follows:
Images are typically of JPG type. If you have JPG images that are larger than 249 KB, you need to adjust their size in an application that allows you to resize images (such as PaintShop Pro or Photoshop, for example).
TIP: If you're using a PC with a Microsoft operating system and the files are too big, try the "resize/resample" feature of
IrfanView. This free program (like AlfaBB, supported by donations) is a jewel that creates very nice and small pictures without losing a lot of visual information (as increasing the image compression ratio would do). I find resizing images to 600 or 800 pixels width works best. If file size is really critical,
IrfanView also allows you to reduce color depth (e.g. from 24 Bits/pixel to 8 or 4 Bits/pixel -- which reduces file size a lot and subjectively often looks better on web pages). Futhermore,
IrfanView allows you to make all of these changes in batch mode, that is, you can set it so that it converts multiple pictures, renames them and stores them in a different folder. That feature is very handy after an extensive photoshoot. Last but not least,
IrfanView allows you to crop images, that is, take just some part of the whole image and save it into a new file. And for the record, I have no affiliation with
IrfanView. I just happen to use and like this program.
5. Posting the Message
When you finished selecting and uploading files, click on the "Close this window" button, which brings you back to the screen of your post. The last step is to click on the "Submit Reply" button which transfers your message and all attachments onto the AlfaBB server.
Edit in June, 2009:
This thread has some very useful hints how uploaded pictures can be inserted into the text body (instead of pictures appearing at the bottom of the posts) -- something I wasn't aware of until I learned about it there.
Hope this helps,
Ruedi
