How to put your picture up on a server:
There are two main ways of putting your picture or photo on to a server in order to link to it. The first and easiest way is to email it to me as an attachment and I will adjust the file size and image size for you then upload it to our server and send you the link back in an email to use.
The advantages in this for you is that I do all the work
, the image will not suffer from broken links which will result in you seeing the little white box
instead of your pic and the image will load just a tad faster because it has a direct link rather than a hyperlink.
The disadvantage is that you would have to wait for a short while whilst the image is loaded because I'm not here all the time (honest) and you will miss out on all the invaluable knowledge and fun that you would otherwise gain and enjoy by doing it yourself.
If this is the option that you want to go down though, my email is Dave@maggotdrowning.com
The second way and the harder of the two is to utilize the 'Free Web Space' that most internet service providers give you with your account or use one of the many 'Free Hosting packages' that are floating around. A good place to start looking is here: http://personalweb.about.com/cs/homepagehosting/
In order to use this method, firstly check your ISP's homepage for details on your free web space or if with AOL the link is in the top navigation bar of your browser.
Follow the instructions to set up your 'homepage' and make a note of your web-address, usually something like www.youraccountname.yourisp.com/
To upload your pictures you will need to create an image folder and will then need to use an FTP Client to send them from your PC to your space. Some ISP's offer you one for free use as part of their Web-space package but there are several out there that are free to use such as
Freewebftp,
Smartftp,
FTP Commander
Once you have got your webspace, created the image folder and uploaded some pictures to it, you will need to find the hyperlink to the image which would be something like: www.yourname.yourisp.com/image/yourpic.jpg Use this link in the image tags within your post as in step one.
A third way of getting your picture onto a server is to use one of the 'Image Storing Hosts' that you may find.
What you do here is register for a free account and use their facilities to upload an image from your PC to your account. Once that is done you then find the image's hyperlink and use that within your post.
A popular site is: http://www.villagephotos.com/
The only downfall is most have limitations as to how many bytes you can transfer.
Which gets us on to the subject of Bandwidth.
Bandwidth is the amount of bytes that are used in viewing the picture. Bandwidth is calculated by multiplying the size of each picture times the number of times it is viewed. If you have a 100KB picture showing on a page, and that picture is seen by 10 people, that equals 1,000KB of bandwidth use. Each 1,024KB of bandwidth is one MegaByte.
This means that in order to minimize the amount of bandwidth that a picture will use and get that image to load quicker, you need to reduce it's file size, in other words optimize it.
The largest file size that you will need for a web picture is 50,000bytes as you are only viewing it and not printing off a high class photo.
You need to optimize the image before you transfer it to your web-space. Again there are tools out there to use, some are evaluation and some are free such as Netmechanic's Gifbot
Click Here and remember you don't want a picture to be greater in dimensional size than the area that you are to show it in.
Okay, how do you get your picture onto the PC in the first place.
There are three ways, scan it in from an existing photo, take a photo with a digital camera and finally bluetack it to your monitor
Most scanners come with the neccessary software which also includes a photo editor. Scan the picture and either drag it into the editor or open it with it. (At this point it's worth checking to see if there is the facility to optimize the picture built in)
Once you have done so, use your Ftp client to upload the image to your webspace.
Digital Cameras: Again most come with the software and a photo editor that you can load onto your PC.
To connect your camera to the PC in order to transfer your photo over check to see what connection you have on your leads.
If they are of the USB type, connect your camera to the lead, plug the USB end into a USB port on your PC and then either open your photo editor and use the File>Import (or similar) options or to save the photo into a folder, create a new folder on your desktop and then with your camera connected (most by the way don't need to be switched on whilst doing this but check your instructions) double click the 'My Computer' icon on your desktop or where-ever. In there you should now see an extra drive such as 'Removable Drive E or F'.
Double click that and find the images. Then drag them into the folder you've just created.
A tip here is never to rename the photo images until after you have dragged them into the folder as otherwise your camera will not recognise them afterwards.
Once you have transfered the images use your photo editting software to correct them before Ftp'ing them to you webspace.
The third way using BlueTack is simpler but has the disadvantage that only you can see them
If anyone can add to this please do as it will be much appreciated,
Have fun, Dave
Edited by - Dave on 19 April 2002 10:35:31 PM
