Posting Images on the Forum

First things first. Users with fewer than 250 posts can't upload images to the forum; you have to upload it elsewhere on the web. This can be any one of a number of locations.

• on the Bavarian Board BMW Image and Movie Gallery
• Your Internet Service Provider. The folk you use to get online often give you free webspace. Folk like AOL, Virgin.net, BT Internet, etc... The help files provided by your ISP will tell you how to upload your image.
  
• Freebie webspace providers. Such as www.brinkster.com, www.yahoo.co.uk, etc... Again these online resources will give you the instructions you need to upload the images.
  
• Freebie specialist picture hosting websites such as www.villagephotos.com or www.bmwmovies.net.

Things to watch out for... Some of the freebie services may add 'stuff' to your images - such as logos overlaid on your graphics. Some of the freebie services do not allow 'remote linking' i.e. If you visit http://www.freebiepixsite.com/yournicepic.jpg, the picture will work. If you link to the same image from this forum, it will not work because the link does not come from the www.freebiepixsite.com domain. Some may try to serve adverts at the same time as your image. Finally, some of these sites are not intended for general purpose sharing of images as they password protect the files. Again, this will cause the link to the image(s) from this forum to fail.

Actually linking to the image once you have uploaded it... There are three methods for doing this :

1. Go to add / reply to a post on the forum. Enter the full URL (address) for the image. Surround the image with the forum codes like this - [ I M G ] http://www.freebiepixsite.com/yournicepic.jpg[ /I M G ] . note that in this example, I have put spaces between I M G and the [] brackets as if I do not, the forum 'thinks' I am trying to post an image - when you're doing this for real, don't use the spaces.
   
2. Click on the  button and enter the URL when prompted
   
3. Lastly, you can copy the picture straight from a web page - open it up in Internet Explorer (or your favourite browser) and (for windows users) right click on it and choose copy and then in the forum's message box, right click and choose paste. This will load the pic into your message.

Finally... Consider other users when you post the picture(s) :

• Don't make them too big - physically. I would suggest a max of 600 pixels wide and a max of 500 pixels tall
  
• Dont make them too big - data. I would suggest a max of 50k per pic. Pictures taken with a digital camera are often very large files.

Disclaimer : I haven't actually made use of all the features of all the sites I've mentioned. Mention here does NOT guarantee the site will work. This is intended as a guide to get you started. If any members have particular success with any site then let me know and I will add to this FAQ for the benefit of all.

Edited by kbannon