Newsflash -- how to *EASILY* post ANY kind of images here!OK, call me dumb (many do) but until I'd owned and was using board for a month I did not know how to do this.
I have a massive website with over 300 pages on it, and (still) can't alter a word or a price on that, and need to email it all to my webmaster in Perth.
For the first month of this site the only images I could post were things I had a url for from another site, or my own website. And I could only post them in that exact size.
Many of the Admin inquiries I have received (
90% of them I'd guess!) were from folks wanting to know how to take a photo they had a scan or jpg of in their computer, and post it up here.
I am not very techno, and could not really help.
HOWEVER it is so simple to do I can't believe it!If I was too thick to know how to do it for a month, I am sure my discovery will assist others here.
Go and sign up
free on
http://www.photobucket.comThen you can quickly load up ANYTHING you have on your computer.
They even give you the URL coding already in place for it to be used as a photo here, with the "IMG" tags typed up in place for you.
Or you can load up anything you see on
ANY stamp or web site like an auction, save it in photobucket if that''s not breaching any restrictions, and add it into your photobucket and it will not vanish in 2 weeks - as many ebay type images do.
Just right click on the image, save it as something, and save that image as a photobucket url. That takes SECONDS.
And if needed, you can re-size it in seconds to a smaller size, or a thumbnail size .. even right down to "avatar" size - but for HERE I tweaked the software,
so you can use the larger sized "Thumbnail" option for your Avatar here!
Avatars as large as 160 x 160 pixels are OK to use on THIS site. Who pays for running photobucket I have no idea. The banner ads on it I imagine.
It hosts well over 5 BILLION photos so it not going anywhere - anytime soon, that much is obvious.
For OUR purposes it works like a charm, is totally free unless you use it tons (see below), and WILL be a huge piece of news for many of the members here.
If you right click on ANY image on this site, and then left click "PROPERTIES" you will see
99% of our member photos are hosted in photobucket.
We make **NOTHING** whatever from that site (in fact I pay them $25 a year to get the "PRO" version!) .. we only recommend it so strongly as it seems to work PERFECTLY for those here, for what WE need on this board.
This board is a total runaway success BECAUSE
we allow stamp images to be posted here. THOUSANDS of them.
When setting up your account always choose the
MEDIUM photobucket size ("15") when loading up material for eventual display here. 800 x 650. The Blue "OPTIONS" tab is where you find this. DO change it to
15" now - just like in the photo below!
Do NOT use the largest 1024 x 768 ("17") default size, as that is TOO large for our page, and our software now "chokes" them down, and you lose a LOT of clarity then. Tick the 15" OPTION exactly as shown below. 
The photobucket site makes it possible for even the thickest folks out there -
like me - to add even more photos to the threads on here.
I urge EVERY member to add as many images to their posts as they wish. I do not know what it costs me to host these images, and I do not care. Our back end storage here is huge - THOUSANDS of megs, but that's OK. It really makes this board look totally different from
anything else on earth for stamps, and that is what keeps this board WAY ahead of anything else!
Also I urge ALL members to download the FREE Google PICASA program. Superb and simple to use, and lets you crop stamps, or parts of them from covers or rotate them etc - and then load that up in photobucket. Here you go -
a gem of a FREE program for stamps - scores of us use this all the time - and DEAD simple to use:
http://picasa.google.com/downloadThreads like this are GREAT because of the photos:
viewtopic.php?t=229Various other technical tips are in the Tech forum at:viewforum.php?f=18[/b]
Glen
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On your own photobucket settings you can quickly edit out the other links you never use, to just not appear so as you can't possibly get confused. (They for some reason initially give you
4 different types of link by default.)
I've edited mine to ONLY show: Direct Link
IMG CodeThe top one I use where making avatars for members, the
lower link is what we use on these boards.
Most members here would get by just fine with leaving just this ONE option - i.e.:IMG CodeHowever if you do insist for whatever reason to have all showing, THIS below is the link to post to here - it ALREADY has the [img] coding on it, front and end, so you need do nothing except paste it here and hit SUBMIT!
And better still if you hit "PREVIEW" you can see that it is working correctly BEFORE it is posted here.

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IMPORTANT ... remember if you post a link from your photobucket account to this board and then LATER delete that Image from your account, the link to here will then be DEAD, and show as a dreaded white box:
I did not realise that until deleting a few images in my early days of photobucket. So PLEASE do not delete images that you have posted anywhere here on stampboards! Or the board will be populated with ugly white boxes like the one above.
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Updated June 2007 I paid the $25 a year to get the "PRO" version of Photobucket.
Right now at Jan 2008, I see I have 1178 stamp images hosted and that is taking up only 148 MB - or only 2% of what I am allowed.
I am not sure how how many MB are in a GB ... 1000?
If so, I can store it looks like
many THOUSANDS more pix without needing to delete anything. It looks like a google Gmail email account .. the storage they offer is too vast to ever use.
After I got to 1000 images in my account, I started a sub album and used that. And am over 4000 so far - all for the one annual fee. You can do that forever.
I changed default to
FORTY images a page and that works well for my purposes.
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And if you see an image from another website you want to post here, and know it will be OK with them, and not want to bother with photobucket, simply right click on that image, then left click on the "PROPERTIES" link you see and a box pops up. Then mouse highlight the "address url' you see there, press CTRL and C buttons together. (This copies that url)
That url will look something like this off my webpage:
http://www.glenstephens.com/jan08-Roo%2 ... rginal.jpgAnd it will nearly ALWAYS have the word
.jpg at end as this one does.
Then go to the thread you want to paste photo into, click
"POST REPLY" icon at lower left, and press the CTRL and V keys together (= paste") and in the reply box .. and you'll again see:
http://www.glenstephens.com/jan08-Roo%2 ... rginal.jpgSimply highlight that with your mouse, and press the
"Add Photo" box along top.[b]
And it then automatically adds little HTML tags like [ img] and [./img]
to either end - then press "SUBMIT" - and VOILĂ€ .. you get to load great images like this on this site:
