How to Insert Photos in Your Posts

How to Insert Photos in Your Tauck Travel Forum Posts

A number of people have asked me how I do it, so I decided to write a "How to" guide. It is quicker and easier to do than explain!

1. First, and most important- unlike many bulletin boards and forums, the current Tauck website forum software DOES NOT allow you to upload and store photos on the Tauck website or attach photos to your posts, directly from your computer, phone, or camera. Photos must already be on a webpage or photo-sharing website somewhere. Note: The photos must also be viewable without a password or permission. Some sites charge for this service. Here is a list of free ones

Imgur
Imgbox
Use
Uploads.im
ImageBam
Postimage
Photobucket
TinyPic
GifyU
IMGHST
ImageUpper.com

2. Also, unfortunately, the current Tauck forum software will not automatically resize photos, so if you insert a photo that is wider than 640 pixels (typical size = 640 px x 480 px). it will cause the text in every post in that thread to overrun the screen. That makes it a real pain for anyone to read.

Before you attempt to insert a photo, first check its dimensions. On a Windows computer you can look at the photo info in Windows Explorer or right click on the photo and select "Properties." You can check the dimensions of photo on a website by right clicking on it and selecting "View image info" in the dialogue box. You may not be able to do this with animated images or ones with special properties (zoomed, like many product images on Amazon.) Again, you should never attempt to insert photos wider than 640 px. You can resize photos on your computer but that is beyond the scope of these instructions.

3. To insert a photo from the web or a photo you have uploaded to a hosting site:

a. Start your forum post
b. Open another window and navigate to the web page containing the photo
c. Verify the width is 640 px or less
d. Copy the location of the photo

(1) Right click on the photo
(2). From the dialogue box select "Copy Image Location"

e. Go back to the Tauck forum window.
f. Place your cursor where you want to insert the photo and left click.
g. Click on the "insert image" button (mountain w/sun symbol) at the top of the message screen
h. a pair of brackets with img inside will be inserted at the desired point.
i. Place the cursor between the sets of brackets, right click, and select "paste"
j. You should now see the image location (URL) between the img brackets

Note: the URL below is real and clicking on it will take you to the photo, but I can't use the real code for the "image brackets" (see second link at the bottom of this post.)

image brackets https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/African_Bush_Elephant.jpg image brackets

k. click "preview" to see if it worked
l. Finish your post.

If your photos are already hosted on the web and they are the correct size it is faster and easier to do than explain. You can practice with (non-copywrited) images from Google. Remember, you can always "edit" your post later to add photos, and if worse comes to worse, you can always "delete" the photo from your post or delete the post completely.

Screen grab of Botswana tour map on the Tauck website. Before doing the screen grab I right clicked on the map to get the "image info" to verify it wasn't too wide. It is fine, only 300 X 300 pixels:

Photo_info.jpg

Screen grab of forum message window, that shows img brackets and "Insert Image" button that causes the brackets to be generated:

post_screen.jpg

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