1. Before attaching your photos (or other attachments)
1) note that there are restrictions on total amount of attachments depending on
your usergroup: registered = 3 MB total; registered plus (3 posts + 2 days as a member) = "unlimited". Another important restriction is a policy one: the photos must be your own, or must be specifically licensed for sharing.
2) orient the image so that it is in the proper perspective (i.e., so up is up). Your camera's software might rotate the photos so they always appear to be oriented correctly, so it's useful to check the orientation in a program that is not your camera's software, so that you'll be able to see if the photo is going to appear on its side.
3) if you use a pop-up stopper, allow the domain
www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca to launch pop-up windows; we don't use pop-ups for advertisements and never will, if you are concerned about such things
If you have a high-speed connection, it might be best to
not resize your photos - let the forum resize them for you. It saves you time, and it knows how to reduce the resolution but keep the dimensions to a good display size. It takes a lot longer to upload the high resolution photos, but you can start the upload and then do your typing while the photos are being transferred. And advice from photography workshops: use the highest resolution setting that your camera offers. You never know when the details will be important, or when you'll take a great photo that you'll want to print as an enlargement.
2. To upload your photos (or other attachments)
While posting a new thread or replying to a thread:
1)
Scroll down to below the message area into the box called "Additional Options". Click on the "
Manage Attachments" button. A window will pop up.
2) Click on a "
Browse" button and locate the file you wish to upload from your computer. On machines running Windows, this means going through the folders on your computer, locating the file, selecting it and pressing the "Open" button. There are three "Browse" buttons, so you can upload three files at one time.
Click on the "Upload" button to physically transfer the files from your computer to the database. If you want more, when the first upload is complete, you can repeat the process.
If the photos are not on your computer but are on a site like Photobucket, which provides the direct link to the photos, upload the photos from there by pasting in the link to a line under
Upload File from a URL and
click Upload. You can upload three files at one time. If you want more, when the first upload is complete, you can repeat the process. Remember that for copyright reasons, these must be your own photos.
3) This upload can take several minutes, depending on the size of your files. When your files are uploaded, the area next to the Browse button is cleared, and you will see the file names under the upload area, with an option to delete ones you don't want. You will not see your photos until you Submit or Preview your posting.
4) Click on
"Close this window" and then either click on "
Submit New Thread" or "
Submit Reply" (or complete writing the content of your post before doing so). Closing the window is important if you are uploading files for more than one posting, as that window only makes files available to the posting that opened it.
4a) If you Preview your posting, it will look just like the real thing. You can scroll down into the text entry area to make corrections before you Submit the posting. But if you forget to Submit your posting, or do a preview and get confused and think you did submit it, everything will be lost. If you discover that situation before you've gone too many pages away, you can hit the "back" button in your browser, and usually, all your entered text and photos will still be there and you will be able to submit the posting.
5) If you see that your photo is not right way up (usually, that would mean it might be on its side), you can use a picture viewing program on your computer to rotate it so it will display correctly, and then in the Manage Attachments window,
remove the incorrectly oriented one and upload it again. If you have already submitted your posting, click the
Edit button then click
Go Advanced, which will bring up the full edit panel where you can scroll down to Manage Attachments.
See a 48 second movie demonstration on how to attach multiple images.
This demo was recorded when you could only upload one image at a time. Now there are places for three images.
A note about the Paper-Clip icon on the toolbar: Usually, a paper-clip means upload photo. Here, if you have not uploaded any photos to the thread, clicking the paper-clip will bring up the Manage Attachments window and you can upload your photos. But
once there are photos in the thread, clicking the paper-clip brings up a different function, called "attach a photo". Read on ...
Insert photos into the text area: also called
Attaching photos. Once you have uploaded your photos, if you want them inserted into the text area instead of displayed at the bottom of your posting, you can position your cursor where you want a photo, then click the paper-clip on the toolbar and select the photo you want to go where your cursor is positioned. You will not see the photos there until you preview or submit your posting. What you will see are attach codes, that look like
[ ATTACH]123456[/ATTACH]
positioned where the photos will go.
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Questions about these instructions? Ask them here in the Forums Announcements and Feedback forum.
