Uploading Photos for your Forum Posts

[Mark Sedenquist]

There are two principal ways that photos are uploaded and displayed in Posts on the Forum:

1. Forum Attachment Manager -- allows you to upload thumbnail images (currently those are only thumbnails, but we may change that in the near term).

2. The preferred way is to load fuller size images -- roughly 600 x 600 pixels so readers can see them more easily. In order to display an photo on this forum -- it needs to be in the form of an URL -- so it looks like this:
a. http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum...tachmentid=443 or
b. http://living-las-vegas.com/wp-conte...sEye-MS-29.jpg

** If your photo is already in the form of a URL, (it's been uploaded to another site or photo sharing service) -- like example "b" you can load it in your Forum post by:

1). Clicking on the "picture frame" tool (above)
2) Pasting in the URL from the photo
3) Click OK and it will load your photo by placing BB code around it.


*** If your photos are still on your computer -- you can create photo albums in your member profile and upload hundreds of images. ***Due to a programming issue, if you use the albums in your Forum member profile, you can only upload a single image at a time. If you use the RTA PhotoShare option, you can upload several images to your RTA PhotoShare albums and edit them much easier. **** Keep reading, this really does get easier.... We still support the original forum photo albums, but RTA PhotoShare is much more powerful and we hope you try it.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE KIND OF PHOTO ALBUMS, YOU CAN CREATE AS PART OF THE RTA PhotoShare! Scroll down to the next post for some handy-dandy instructions for creating your own RTA PhotoShare photo albums.

Once they are there.... (and if you are on the Forum)

1) Click on "RTA PhotoShare" found in the Green Navigation bar on every page of this site.
2) Click on a photo – it creates both the BB code and URL of that image
3) Back to the Forum Post – [IMG]if you select the BB code [/IMG]– you don’t need the photo insertion tool
a. Just paste the photo code in your post and you’re done.
4) If you are using the RTA PhotoShare -- the medium size image is the one we suggest using on the Forum and again you can just grab the code and stick in your post without any need for using the insertion tool. {Reminder if you're a RTA Contributing Writer and using the RTA PhotoShare to upload images for any of the articles on RTA -- you still need to use the Direct Link URL!}

----------4a) Paste the URL (if your photo is in the URL format)


Mark

[Harry Kline]

Don't let the length of this post scare you.... I've listed 12 steps, for your first time, but I can guarantee that after you've done this once.... it will be easy and you'll have no problems...

Here is how I get my photos on the RTA Website:

Before uploading any photo, you can edit it for photo quality or you can upload images as they are. It can be helpful to put all of the images you want to upload in one folder on your machine. Once you have all photos ready to upload, go to any page on the RTA site.

1. Click on the PhotoShare tab and then log in. (This PhotoShare tab is on every single page on the RTA site).
***If you're already logged in to the site with your username, the site will log you in automatically on the PhotoShare program.

2. Click on the smaller Upload Photos tab below the PhotoShare tab. That brings you to the main upload screen.

3. Choose a category for your photos, or select Members Galleries, which is already in the window.

4. Now choose an album from one you have created–We’ll get to creating albums shortly–or skip to the next window if you want your photos to go straight to the Members Galleries.

5. Be sure to create a default title (caption) for your images -- something like April 19th -- Death Valley -- You'll be able to change the caption for each photo in a later screen.

6. The remainder of the fill-in boxes are optional, but you may enter keywords, general titles, and descriptions. You can change these after upload and before you process the photos. (See #11 below for more information). Generally it is a very good idea to fill in all of these fields -- It makes viewing the photos more interesting for your viewers, family and friends.

7. Click on the Select Files for Upload button and locate the folder containing the photos you want to upload.

8. Navigate to the folder with your images. You can select them individually or you can select several at a time by highlighting a group of them. (The upload system uses Flash to upload multiple images and so you'll probably need to have Flash enabled on your machine to do this). If you don't have Flash enabled on your machine, you can still select and upload individual photos -- but Flash is free we recommend getting it. Here's a link to download Flash if you need it.

9. Click the Upload/Submit button at the bottom of the screen. You can continue to select and upload as many as you like before performing the next step. Try to limit it to 5-6 if you have a lot to upload. It is easier to edit just one screen at a time. (But it's really not a big deal to upload 20+ images at a time)
--------9a. You'll see a bar graph as the images are moved to the RTA server and a message " # files uploaded"

10. Click on the Upload/Submit button, your photos will appear as thumbnails with editing features to the right side. You also have a button next to the thumbnail to un-check if you decide you didn’t want that photo after all.

11. Use the boxes at the right side to title and describe your photo. "Title" is the caption that will apply to each of the photos. "Description" is where you'd list the location of the photo, what camera settings you used, or any other information you'd like your viewers to see. Do the edits for all photos that you uploaded.

12. When finished editing title and text, click on the Process button at the bottom of the screen and your photos will all be uploaded to the RTA Website. If you put them into one of your albums, you may add other photos to that album later, or you can move photos around.

If you're using PhotoShare to upload photos to your Custom Places on the RTA Map Center
a. Click on any of the images you've uploaded to the PhotoShare
b. At the bottom of the page you'll see a "Photo Details" section, where an URL for the photo has been created for a variety of uses.
c. You can (and should) ignore the four top link choices (linked thumbnail, Linked Medium, Medium Image & html code)
d. Copy the link listed under "Direct Link" (put your cursor there and copy)
e. Open the Custom Place Information Box
f. Click on the picture frame icon (looks like a tree)
g. Paste the PhotoShare link into the Image URL box
h. type in a image description (this is the alt-text)
i. Leave Alignment alone
J. Enter one of the following variables into Dimensions
---- 200
---- x 300
k. Click insert ! -- You're done.

Creating an album is quite easy.
1. About midway down the PhotoShare screen is a sub-menu with My Albums in it.
2. Click on it and it will bring up a screen with all of your photo albums.
3. Click on Create a New Album and follow the steps to title and create an album.
4. All of your albums will appear on the upload screen when you select the arrow in the Category box.

To move or delete a photo you previously uploaded:
1. Click on the photo thumbnail to display it full size on your screen.
2. In the upper right (green) area above the photo is a Photo Options tab. Click on it.
3. Click on the Edit Photo tab. That will display the photo as a thumbnail with edit features under it.
4. To move the photo, select the arrow on the Change Category box and select a different album.
5. To delete the photo, check the box at the bottom of the screen.
6. You may also edit the title/keywords/description of the photo on this screen.
7. This particular software package does not include options to enable members to sort the photos in an order of their choosing. At some point, we might add this capability to the the RTA PhotoShare. As is now configured, every time a new viewer looks at the photos in either your albums or in the member galleries, they can choose their own sort order. We're looking at a way for the RTA member to set the display order of their photos, so that the photos are displayed in the sort order that the RA member would like them.
8. Click on Submit Changes button at the bottom.

I hope this helps you to upload your photos in the new program. It is not difficult and enables easier and quicker locating later. What is neat about this is that whenever you select that photo you get the photo with title and description and then several options to link to it in an article or thread.

Harry

[Mark Sedenquist]

Harry,

Thanks for the tutorial. I edited your steps a bit (you might want to check and make sure you still agree with the procedure).

The moving photos procedure is still clunkier than I'd prefer -- but your instructions do work and hope everyone finds the steps helpful.

Mark

[Peter Thody]

One problem I've encountered more than once (and therefore worth sharing) occurs when uploading multiple images at once.

Quite often, on clicking the Upload/Submit button, the system will think about things for a little while and then decide that one of the photos can't be processed for some reason or another (the screen goes gray and there's a message along the lines of "PhotoShare is unable to upload image [title]".

In order to continue with the upload, you need to click the "Upload photos" link in the black toolbar and this will take you back to the master upload page where you can re-start the process (without the problem photo). The remaining images will still be there, waiting for you to reinitiate the upload, but - and this is where I've hit problems before - your settings (destination album, title, keywords etc) will have disappeared.

If you forget to re-select your preferred album or add the necessary info, you can still do so on the next page you see but each photo will need managing individually.

Peter

[Mark Sedenquist]

Peter,

Thanks for this bug notice -- I've not seen this myself yet.

Do you have any idea what causes a photo to be marked as the following?

the photos can't be processed for some reason or another

I don't even know what to start looking at (to resolve this). How often does this happen to you? (Once is too many, but...)

Thanks,

Mark

[Peter Thody]

... not once, but twice, and when attempting to upload a single image. The image was 6.1MB and reducing it to 2.5MB (approx) did the trick but I've had it occur with smaller files too.

Don't know if this helps but the sequence I follow is to click the rectangular "Select Files for Upload" button to the left. I then see a progress bar as the file(s) upload(s). Once this is done, I still see the lozenge-shaped "Upload/Submit" button.

Press this and I get the gray progress screen, all as follows ...



And when it failed, the precise fail message was: (due to security issues -- removed the file path)

It's at this point that you have to start again. Hope this helps Mark (as I mentioned, I'm now away until Saturday).

Peter

[Mark Sedenquist]

Peter,

Been battling all sorts of web gremlins the last 24 hours -- thanks for the screen shots and sorry you're having the problems.

Mark

[glc]

Peter:

A 6.1 mb image is pretty darn big - I'd recommend you reduce it down to a decent final size (maybe 1024x768?) and save it in some kind of compressed format such as .jpg before uploading it - rather than try to rely on the forum software to do that for you.

[squidly-tripper]

A frequent question has to do with the ability to sort photos already in an album.

To do that, click on one of your albums -- you can only edit your own albums (you need to click on "My Albums")

And then you'll see a bunch of options in the links to the right of the thumbnail -- one of them is "Sort Photos"

[Upload Photos]
[Delete] [Edit] [Sort Photos]

Click that and you'll be afforded a way to reorder the photos in your album.

Squidly....

[kenblueswell76]

thanks for the tutorial!