[Tutorial] Posting Banners and In-Line Pictures (Warning: Pic-Heavy)

[Jane]

I've had a few people recently ask me about posting banners at the top of all my RP posts. Most sites have a quick tutorial about posting images somewhere, but I haven't found one on Canterlot. If you see a need, fill it.

This is less about posting banners and more about how to post pictures on forums in general, but it uses banners as an example. This tutorial assumes that you already have a picture you would like to use on your computer, and that you know how to create an account on a website (you managed to join Canterlot, right?). Other than that, this is pretty simply explained. If there's anything you would like me to change/fix/clarify, let me know.

Also, I use imgur because it is a site that has been designed specifically for the sharing and posting of images on other sites. I also find it more reliable than other hosting sites such as tinypic or photobucket. While I can copy the location of an image from say, someone's DeviantArt or someone's tumblr, doing so is considered to be 'hotlinking' which exhausts the bandwidth not only of those websites, but it can also be hard on this website, too. Remember all those server errors we were getting last week? Yeah, hotlinking is bad and I cry inside every time I notice someone doing it.

Also, Imgur does have drag & drop functionality which usually works well (open the image location in windows explorer then drag it onto the open imgur web page), but I've recently been having issues with it due to chrome being uncooperative on my end so I didn't show that method. It is typically a lot easier.

Also, while there is no set limit to how big your image can be, please keep it reasonable, especially when it comes to the size of your banners. Mine are 150x300 pixels.

I hope that was clear enough/didn't confuse anypony. If you have any questions, ask away and I'll try to answer them.

[Hippo]

Image hosting can be confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy. In fact, I've gotten to a point where I have a whole folder of offline role play material I use so that I can organize things before I post them on Canterlot.com. I rarely spend more than five minutes in the 'create a comment' page for this reason.

See here, you can see that I pretty much keep logs of everything I RP. This is so that I can write posts offline and so that I don't lose a post if I lose connection with the internet mid-post. That can be extra frustrating!! I also keep a few text documents, like to do lists and a RP post template on the desktop for easy access, along with colour codes, hexes, banner image urls, and other details needed for when I post RP threads.

For uploading images, I have never used imgur though. I have used imageshack and photobucket. Until recently, imageshack has been fine and useful. But just earlier this week, some of my banners for RP characters have been removed from the profile for unknown reasons. The best possible reason is that Imageshack saw a violation of their TOS in one of my pictures. Since it's just a pony (about 1/8 of one) and a made up name next to it in a box, I feel that this is probably in error. But there is nothing I can do but re-upload it. Since re-uploading images can be tedious and annoying, I've decided to go with my next best solution. And now I use Photobucket.

Photobucket, for me, is most useful because the links rarely break, and they tend to have a more comprehensive organization for their pictures and albums, for the free account you make with them. Previous to Imageshack's issues with my pony pics, I already used photobucket to upload animated GIFs because Imageshack does not support or upload that kind of image to the best of my knowledge. Here is an example of an animated GIF I have made:

There are several image hosting sites that offer free online storage. Which one you use is up to you!

http://imgur.com/

http://imageshack.us/

http://photobucket.com/