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• Linking to Photos in Forum Messages
• Embedding Photos in Forum Messages
• Posting a Clickable Thumbnail Preview
• Using Forum Code in your Signature

If the photo you wish to display is stored on a third party website such as pbase, which doesn't allow embedding of photos on other sites, you will have to post a link to the relevant page. If you are a paid member of pbase you will be able to embed your photos and should go to the section on embedding.

The quick and dirty way to link to an external page is to simply paste the URL into your message, and make sure the Automatically parse URLs option is ticked. This will create a link in your message that looks like this:

http://www.website.com/path/to/page.html

For a better looking link click the Insert Hyperlink icon and type/paste the URL into the first dialog box. In the second dialog you can enter the text you wish to appear as a link in your post. This will insert the following code into your message:

[url=http://www.website.com/path/to/page.html]My Photo[/url]

and create a link like this in your posted message:

My Photo

If you prefer to post without taking your hands off the keyboard you can simply type in the [url] tags so that they look the same as above.

If your photo is in your DPC Portfolio, on your own website, or on a site which allows you to embed images into other sites, then you can post it directly into the forums for people to see.

Clicking on the Insert Image icon will bring up a dialog that allows you to enter the URL to your actual photo (typically a jpeg file). This will insert the following code into your message:

[img]http://www.website.com/path/to/image.jpg[/img]

Again, to save having to take your hands off the keyboard you can simply type in the [img] tags so that they look the same as above.

Posting a thumbnail preview to a thread keeps the forums looking tidy and more importantly, easy to read. By simply combining the [url] and [img] tags you can make your thumbnail clickable so that people can then view the full sized version.

Click the Insert Hyperlink icon and enter the URL to your full sized image, or the page containing the full sized image, in the first dialog. In the second dialog, instead of entering text for your link you will need to enter an image tag for your thumbnail. Type [img] followed by the URL of your thumbnail preview, then close the tag by typing [/img]. This will give you something looking like the following in the second dialog:

[img]http://www.website.com/path/to/thumbnail.jpg[/img]

When you click okay you should see something like the following inserted into your message:

[url=http://www.website.com/path/to/fullsize.jpg][img]http://www.website.com/path/to/thumbnail.jpg[/img][/url]
or
[url=http://www.website.com/path/to/fullsizepage.html][img]http://www.website.com/path/to/thumbnail.jpg[/img][/url]

This will insert a clickable thumbnail into your message which will look like this:

The forum code works in exactly the same way as described in the previous three sections when used in your signature, only you don't get any helpful icons to do the hard work. You have to type the code out yourself.

You enter your forum signature on your 'My Preferences' page, and by typing in the code based on the example snippets above you can have links to your portfolio, your prints page, and your personal website displayed at the end of every forum post you make.

Should you have any trouble with any of the above, simply post your attempt at what you want to do to the forums, along with a plea for help. Somebody will usually come along, see where you're going wrong, and help you out in next to no time.

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