So you're all ready to show off that beautiful new '53 Izhevsk you just traded a box of .22 shells and a half can of chaw for, but you're having trouble with the way this site handles photos. Here's how to add photos into your post:
1) Go to an image hosting site and register. There are quite a plethora of sites out there such as Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com), Image Shack (http://imageshack.us), Flikr (http://www.flickr.com), TinyPic (http://tinypic.com), Snap Fish (http://www.snapfish.com), and Shutterfly (http://www.shutterfly.com) to name a few.
2) Once you have registered with the site, set up your album structure the way you want it. Some people like to have everything dumped into one huge album (which can get really messy if you have 2000 photos there in a couple years time), while others like to have different albums for different things (SKSs, Mosin Nagants, Mausers, Blicero's girlfriend, etc.) Set up your structure and upload the photos you want to post from your phone, tablet, or computer. You also should look through the options on the site and check or uncheck options that you may or may not want. Photobucket has an annoying 'feature' that will auto rotate your photos for you. Unfortunately, it often gets the orientation completely wrong and your photo comes out on it's side or upside down.
3) Now comes the hard part, getting a link from the image hosting and applying it to your post. I'm going to use photobucket as my example here, but in reality all the sites work pretty similarly.
4a) Start your post and figure out where you want your photos to be. An inline photo will occupy whatever space you tell it to, so you can put it before a paragraph, in the middle of one, at the very end, whatever.
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post.jpg~original)
4b) Choose the photo you want to place in your post. In photobucket, the photo viewing screen should look similar to this:
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/photobucket_options_IMG.jpg~original)
You can link photos in various different ways. The most basic is to link the photo to you post using the IMG box shown above (some sites may call it a "URL" link. When using a computer, clicking on the text in the IMG box in photobucket automatically copies the text to your clipboard. When using a phone or tablet, or on other sites, you might have to manually copy the text into your clipboard. This is done by selecting the text with your mouse and then performing a right mouse click or by selecting the text with your finger and then selecting the copy popup on your phone or tablet.
4c) Go back to your post and simply hit paste (right mouse click->paste or <ctrl>v on a desktop, using the paste popup on your phone) such that the code is pasted into your post:
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post_photo.jpg~original)
You are basically done. Preview your post to make sure the photo is doing what you want and then hit the post button.
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post_preview.jpg~original)
That's it! Easy squeezy right?
The basic way is ok, if a bit clumsy. Let's try something a bit more advanced. When you link using the IMG box on photobucket, every time a user clicks on the photo (whether by accident, or because they want to see the photos in full detail - remember SKSfiles.com will automatically resize your displayed photos to 1000x700 resolution to help with possible bandwidth issues) that click will open a new window taking the user to the photobucket website. Many members, me included, think this is a supreme pain in the rear! Not only do I have to wait for a new page to start up, I'm bombarded by advertisements and popup windows (because this is how the image hosting sites make their money...you thought they were free?! 8) )
5a) Ok, so we don't want to use the [URL] codes that photobucket gives us. Let's make our own codes using the buttons to the top-left of the smiley faces in the post window:
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post_advanced.jpg~original)
5b) Click on the (http://sks-files.com/Themes/1080/images/bbc/img.gif) icon. This will produce code in your post (wherever your typing cursor is at the moment) that looks like this:
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post_advanced2.jpg~original)
5c) Now go to your photobucket (or other image hosting) site and instead of selecting the IMG box, let's select the "Direct" window this time and copy that web address into your clipboard.
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/photobucket_options_Direct.jpg~original)
5d) Now go back to our post and paste that web address in between the [ img ] and [ /img ] tags:
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post_advanced3.jpg~original)
5e) Previewing the post gives you this:
(http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q647/jelucer/FAQ_Items/create_post_advanced_preview.jpg~original)
Looks ridiculously similar to what we did in 4d) in the previous post, but clicking on the photo now allows the image to resize itself to maximum within the window. No going to photobucket to view it, no senseless commercials, no annoyed users wondering why you can't embed a photo "the right way"! Heck if you practice, you could get good at this!