There are some occasions where it would be nice, or even necessary, to post a photo along with your post to the GardenWeb forum. Examples would be: Is this what a mealy bug looks like? What are these brown circles on the leaves of my phalaenopsis?

There are a few ways of inserting images in to your posts.

The first one would be to post a message on the Gallery section of the website and then post to the regular forum and refer readers to the Gallery. To post in the Gallery, scroll to the bottom and start with a descriptive Subject and some text in the Message. Then click on "Preview Message". There you will have the ability to edit your original text and be able to upload a photo to the GardenWeb server. You will see "Image file to upload" along with a "browse" button. Click the button and find the image you would like to insert in to your post (from your harddrive) and when ready, click on the "Submit Message" button.

The second option is to insert an image that is hosted on another server. Some internet providers will allow you a small amount of space just for having an account with them. Contact their customer support to find out if they offer it. There are also many free image hosting services to choose from and can be found by going to your favorite search engine and searching for 'free image hosting'. A couple of the more popular ones are: PhotoBucket, WebShots, and Epson PhotoCenter.

The next step is to use a little web programming trick to include a 'link' to that photo you have on another server. It's very simple so don't get thrown by the 'programming' word. First find out the exact web address to your image. This can usually be found by right-clicking on the image and selecting Properties. You should see something that looks like " Once you have found the location, copy-and-paste it into your post by modifying this little piece of code and pasting it into your post:

(when you are doing this you have to remove all the spaces so that it is one line....)

In between the quotation marks is where you'll put the location you got from viewing the image properties, and you will need to remove the space that is between the If you use PhotoBucket as your image host, they've made it real simple to get the link to your image. When you view your photos there is a field below it called 'tag.' This is the link you will put in as above.

If you use WebShots as your image host, make sure your album is marked as Public or it will not be viewable from their servers. Then follow the right-click method above.

A few things to consider before inserting an image:

Do not link to large images. Limit the image's filesize to 60 kilobytes. Anything larger than that makes it very slow for the members who dial up to connect to the internet.

Always check that the image loads. Copy and paste the location and put it into your browser. If it loads, then it will show in your post. If you want to be extra sure, try a test by posting to the test forum (link located at the bottom of the main page)

Determine if this is the correct forum for your photo. If you want to show off that new flower that just bloomed, it would be more appropriate to post that in the Gallery instead.

Submitted by Ken Schweigert