Thursday, September 20, 2007

Methods to Get Images Links - Display Image Part 2 - bbCode Basics

After the Intro on [img] tag & Hyper-links, now let's see in detail the two methods for getting the Hyper-links / URLs / Addresses for images:

1. How to get the link for an image published on the web?


Let's use Google Logo as an example:

Go to Google.com & right-click on the Logo ..

Now, if you use Internet Explorer browser, click on Proprties in the menu, in the box that will popup, you'll see the link for the Logo that you'll have to copy, in our example, the link should be similar to this:

http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif

If your browser is Opera or Firefox (click to see why Firefox is recommended), once you right-click on the Logo, you'll see in the menu an option to "copy image address", click on it & the image will automatically be copied to the clipboard, then you just paste it using "Ctrl + v" into your message.

However, this method of linking directly to images hosted on other sites (Google.com in our examples), is not recommended, as it consumes resources from those site, & in some cases you simply won't get your image displayed. Fortunately we have another option :) Here it is:

2. Hosting your images (uploading to the Internet):


There are many sites that offer images hosting, the most popular are ImageShack & PhotoBucket.

Once you register for free with them, those photos hosts allow you to upload images from your computer to them then give you the links to post safely in your forums entries.

They even give you links wrapped with bbCode tags so that you have only to copy & paste into your posts.

How to host images you find on the Internet?

For that you have to download the pictures to your PC first, then to upload to your image host.

Next: Part 3 - Final Steps to Insert Images + How to Link to an Image without Displaying it in Post.

No comments: