Linking to Images in Forums

Forums are discussion pages on websites where people can share information and experiences or ask for assistance with various issues. Wouldn’t it be nice for a housewife to put a picture of her cake or recipe to share with other forum members?

Generally most web site Forums, Blogs and Bulletin Boards do not have the facility to upload an image when making an entry on their site, yet they do have the facility to link to a photo somewhere on the web. You will know this when you see this icon   in the toolbar in the forum.

servimg.com is a FREE web imaging service, where you can upload images from your computer or copy from other websites, providing an online storage facility and link service. url link codes are automatically generated for you to copy and then paste into a forum image entry dialogue allowing you to display your images in any forum.

Open a new account servimg.com by clicking the Join for free link, otherwise log in if you are already a member.

Click the My images link and create a category for the image or images you are about to upload. After the new category has been created click the link to go to that category. To change category, click on another category name in the list. Such that the correct category is displayed next to Category:

In the Upload your image in this category area select either the File radio button if the image is stored on your computer and browse to the file, or the url radio button if the image is somewhere else on the internet and enter the web page address of the image. If you are happy with the original size of the image select No from the drop down list for Resize image ?, otherwise get the website to resize it for you by selecting a suitable size from the drop down list. You need to take note of the dimensions of the image as it is important to enter these in the forum image entry dialogue box.

Now click the Host it button.

In order to link to this image from a forum website you need to find out the image url. Click My images on the servimg.com website. Select a category and then click the word Links under the image. Scroll down to the Direct Links section and click your mouse in the box labelled Image url: and either 1) Click the Copy button under the code or 2) using the keyboard press Ctrl + C or 3) right click and select copy or 4) click Edit on the menu and select Copy. If you are prompted by your browser “Do you want to allow this webpage to access your clipboard”, click the Allow Access button.

Remember that this link is now on your clipboard. If you don’t intend to use this image right now you may want to save it on your computer for later use. Use Notepad and paste the link info here for use at a later stage. Otherwise carry on straight to your forum page, preferably by opening a new browser tab. This way you can keep the servimg.com website available in another tab for referencing more images.

On the forum page you would usually click a button to Start a new topic or Reply in an existing topic. You should now be able to type in an online word editing program. This will have a row of toolbar icons, one of which looks like this, ,  which enables you to add an image.

Click this icon, click in the url location field and then, on your keyboard, press Ctrl +V to paste the code, or click Edit on the Menu and then select Paste.

Enter a description of the image, the width and height of the image (which you hopefully noted earlier), a border value (0 if you don’t want an image border, 1 or 2 depeding on the border thickness you want) and H and V space is for spacing around the side or top of the image from the rest of the text.

Choose the way the image is to be aligned from the Align drop down list. Right will align your picture to the right of the text. Click OK.

Add more pictures and text and then finish your post to have it appear on the internet for the rest of the world to see.

Still need some help with this? Please contact us at your convenience.