I love this forum but.....

mark123 · July 2021

Why is it so hard to post pics !!!
used imgur a few months ago went to try and upload tried 8 times succesful once but can't remember what i did ! .
why can't the forum have a easy uploading system like ebay ? of does that cost money ?

Fuengi · July 2021

Imgur has stopped working on my phone which is irritating.

Bridgehouse · July 2021

It costs money and time to develop. It would be a substantial upgrade, and we want the forum to be free to use and ad free as well.

To get eBay style features (including the enormous storage required) would mean subs and ads everywhere

mark123 · July 2021

Bridgehouse said:

It costs money and time to develop. It would be a substantial upgrade, and we want the forum to be free to use and ad free as well.

To get eBay style features (including the enormous storage required) would mean subs and ads everywhere

No problem i thought it must be something like this ,the amount of people who struggle posting pics must be 50% of the forum , i can't believe there is not some computer wizard on here who could devise a better style template to post pics ..

lovestrat74 · July 2021

Fuengi said:

Imgur has stopped working on my phone which is irritating.

Same here. I have to send the pic from my phone to my email and then on the laptop upload the image to imgur. PITA

TTony · July 2021

@Roland ;

Per our previous discussion!

@fuengi

Android or Apple?

mark123 · July 2021

ironic thing is ive been trying on the test page about 8 times once it worked but can i hell remember what i done

GoldenEraGuitars · July 2021

Uploading a pic via an iPhone isn’t an issue for me, unless you’re talking about using a laptop?

TTony · July 2021

mark123 said:

ironic thing is ive been trying on the test page about 8 times once it worked but can i hell remember what i done

I did put together a series of “how to” instructions a while back. They need updating. When hosts change their services, when OSes get updated, and when there’s a change of month (it seems), what worked previously can stop working.

Hence need to keep the instructions up to date.

The main variables are ...

image host
device type (PC/laptop, tablet, phone)
OS used, and potentially OS version too
user competence ( )

prowla · July 2021

For me, I typically want to present an image which is in a file (eg. JPG or PNG) and I'll upload it to imgur.

1. Get an image and upload it to imgur.

2. View the image in imgur and Copy Image Link.

3. At the top of the "Leave a comment" panel pull down the Image URL menu.

4. Paste the Image Link from imgur and press Down Arrow.

5. The image is embedded.

tone1 · July 2021

mark123 said:

Why is it so hard to post pics !!!
used imgur a few months ago went to try and upload tried 8 times succesful once but can't remember what i did ! .
why can't the forum have a easy uploading system like ebay ? of does that cost money ?

My work colleagues call me techie tone…if I can upload from Imgur then anyone can…

Tannin · July 2021

To be fair, the procedure to post an image here is really, really weird. I've been an Internet forum junkie since the days when Netscape Navigator was new and fashionable and posted pictures using pretty much every forum software package around, and this one is nothing like any of the others.

(And all of this is assuming that we have already taken care of the part that befuddles most people - hosting and uploading the image - and simply want to link to it.)

So what is to be done about it? Probably nothing. Think of it as being like the secret Masonic handshake: if you can't remember how to do it, then you are probably not cut out to be a Mason anyway.

digitalscream · July 2021

mark123 said:

Why is it so hard to post pics !!!
used imgur a few months ago went to try and upload tried 8 times succesful once but can't remember what i did ! .
why can't the forum have a easy uploading system like ebay ? of does that cost money ?

The reasons are a) simple, and b) two-fold:

1 - Hosting costs. The sheer cost of storage is immense, and would easily double (and more) our existing hosting costs.

2 - Copyright and defamation liability. Hosting user-uploaded images would require us to take responsibility for breaches of copyright and defamation from people copying images, or uploading parody images (or both!). That's a level of human resource and management that we're just not set up for.

merlin · July 2021

I simply don't get it. Posting a pic here is as simple as taking a piss.

Maybe phone to imgur is tricky, maybe some of the hosting sites aren't compatible with Vanilla, but OK, it then it takes one extra step. Loading via handshaker or sending a pic from phone to computer isn't crochet science (mumsnet reference there).

Tannin · July 2021

By the way, for those who don't have their own hosting, it is simple, and very cheap. Simply open an account with any reputable web hosting company. You get:

* Unlimited image hosting (within reason)
* No-one can stop hosting your images or mangle them or put bloody watermarks on them. They are yours.
* No-one tracks the people viewing your images for commercial gain.
* If you don't like your hosting company, moving to a new one is easy-peasy - and you don't need to change bookmarks, email addresses, anything. No-one except you will even know you have changed providers.
* Unlimited no-snoop, no-Google email accounts - any address you like, such as yourname@yourname.co.uk
* Change email addresses any time you like. For example, sign up for stuff you don't quite trust with the address spam@yourname.co.uk. If you start getting too much crap, start using spam2@yourname.co.uk. Or (even better) set up a catch-all, then whenever you give out your address, use their name - e.g., harrods@yourname.co.uk or sainsburys@yourname.co.uk. Then, if you start getting crapmail from all over, you can tell exactly which barstards handed your address over to the spammers.
* Your own website (if desired)
* Various other benefits I can't think of at the moment.

Cost is something like twenty quid a year. Peanuts. (I pay more than that but I have some extras not relevant here.)

tekbow · July 2021

From android, presuming you have the imgur app installed

- Open phone gallery

- Select the pics you want to upload (usually a long tap to 'tick' the first one, then a series of short taps to select the rest)

- the share icon should be visible by this point. If not tap the 3 dot icon and select share.

- a list of apps will appear, select imgur.

- wait a second and imgur will open.

- give the album a name (or select private and don't)

- hit ok or upload.

- after uploading, select the image you want to post.

- tap share then copy link.

- copy the link making sure it's the one that ends with .jpg

- come back to the forum or post and tap the little icon at the top of the reply box that looks like sheet of paper with the corner folded over.

- paste the link in the box that appears and hit space.

- your image will appear wherever the cursor was.

Wazmeister · July 2021

I use Apple iPhone, ipad and Mac and it really is so simple to post images.

It takes about 3 seconds literally with Imgur.

Fuengi · July 2021

TTony said:

@Roland ;

Per our previous discussion!

@fuengi

Android or Apple?

Android.

TheBigDipper · July 2021

Because I've had a free DropBox account for years, I upload a pic to that and put the link (slightly amended as per the guidance in the forum) into the post. Slightly more effort than Facebook, but not much.

TTony · July 2021

@Fuengi ;
From imgur via my (Android) phone.

Danny1969 · July 2021

I have a bit of ftp space, not much, only about 500Mb that I've had for years but it's enough to host all the pics I want to and it means I don't have to go near those rancid image hosting sites.

You can get FTP hosting for about £3 a month, maybe a bit less. Although imgur works I can't stand all the adverts and would rather pay for hosting

TTony · July 2021

And because I like typing on a keyboard, not a phone screen, the how to ...

1. In the imgur app on your phone, click the image you want to share so that it displays on the screen.
2. Click it again (it now displays in the middle of the screen, row of 4 icons along the bottom of the screen).
3. The right-most icon is the "share" icon. Click it.
4. That opens another screen, with the image link shown at the top.
5. NB, the image link will end .jpg (or other image file extension).
6. Guess what ... tap the "copy" button!
7. Back to the forum, use the content-embed button here (piece of paper with corner turned over) and "paste".
8. Job done.

It took a lot longer to type that out - and read it - than it does to actually do the job!

TTony · July 2021

@Roland ;

Repeat - this knowledge should really be gathered together, and maintained, in the main "how to" thread. You've now got a couple of the options for imgur covered in this thread, but the solutions are lost amongst the discussion posts, and the title of the thread doesn't really indicate that it contains the useful info.

(And lets not pretend that the search function is useful!).

Add in the steps for iOS and OSX (if that's different to Windows) and you've got the set for imgur. I presume that the steps are browser-agnostic, but might be worth checking the main ones.

I suggest that maintenance of this knowledge base be a modmin role. Users come and go (allegedly) whereas there's always a modmin team around to keep order, and keep the place running smoothly, and ensure that people can use the forum properly. And also clean up any irrelevant comment (or lock the thread) to keep it all easy to find.

viz · July 2021

On iphone and imgur app, this is how to do it:

https://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/2472686/#Comment_2472686

In the Imgur app, go to your album so you can see your pics.

https://i.imgur.com/liHLs23.png

Then click on your pic. But DON’T SELECT SHARE!

https://i.imgur.com/3JX62gZ.png

Then you have to click on your pic ONE EXTRA TIME, so that it is in the centre of your screen, surrounded by black. THEN you click on the out-tray icon at the bottom:

https://i.imgur.com/9z9mglK.png

Then you can select “copy link” and paste the URL here:

https://i.imgur.com/fV0tW8Y.jpg

And keep rockin’!!

Grangousier · July 2021

Just a thought that space and bandwidth for hosting is one thing, but the eccentricities surrounding embedding images in Vanilla strike me as being to do with security as much as anything else - if you allow people to upload images directly to your site it offers up a huge attack vector, with the possibility of malicious code embedded in the image (don't ask me how, I'm just repeating scare stories I've heard).

Similarly, it seems Vanilla only wants direct links to images hosted on the web (so that it doesn't have to do the tedious and complicated job of stripping out stuff that shouldn't be there, which hosting services will do as part of their upload process). Hosting services will offer you something with an embed code (so that they can control and monitor where the image is used), so you have to get tricky to get at the pure web address of the image. That's why it's not as simple as clicking a button on Imgur and pasting here - the requirements of the two sites are at odds with each other and need a workaround.

That's my theory, anyway.

TTony · July 2021

Grangousier said:

That's why it's not as simple as clicking a button on Imgur and pasting here

But - really - it is that simple!

Complications arise because;

1. Different OSes or UIs display pages differently or have different ways of allowing users to access the functionality, but all of the instructions listed above are pretty much "click this button, select copy, switch windows, click that button, paste".

and

2. Everything "improves" regularly - UIs change and functionality is "enhanced", often with the objective of monetising a site or function.

and

3. User aversion to reading/understanding the how-to guide.

One of the downsides of Vanilla is, ironically, one of its strengths. Bugger all changes here. The UI and functionality are pretty much exactly as they were when we launched the forum back in 2013.

Jalapeno · July 2021

TTony said:

@Roland ;

Repeat - this knowledge should really be gathered together, and maintained, in the main "how to" thread.

He might be on holibobs ....

TTony · July 2021

Jalapeno said:
He might be on holibobs ....

I'm not familiar with that concept @Jalapeno ; - please explain

Roland · July 2021

Holibobs = life outside of the forum. In this case I’ve been to visit a potential supplier south of Birmingham, and I’m now about to do something else.

TTony · July 2021

Don't think there's any great urgency @Roland ... the content (and frustrated users) will all still be here when you get back. Just needs some moddyminny tidying up and organising.

Enjoy holibobbling in just south of Birmingham and the something else-ing too.

Boromedic · July 2021

Posting pics is easy on laptop and android phone, its been detailed above and numerous times before, I don't get why it's considered hard......

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