“Thumbnails are basic on a forum”
Yes you’ll probably have seen this around for a while. Thats because its true. Thumbnails or “Thumbs” for short, are little pictures representing the real one. A thumb is a clickable picture, a link to the real picture. they are used in W.I.P. (work in progress) threads to compensate the long loading times. the bigger the pictures the longer its has to load.
another basic rule you must never forget is: when you are posting small images (not bigger then the normal post width), Don’t use bitmap. Its huge and uncompressed.
Here’s a quick, illustrated, reference for those who are not so familiar with thumbnaiils and would like to know how to put one in your post.
(perhaps this could become sticky in the future).
I will be using ImageShack because they have standard thumbnails. you could ofcoarse make your own thumbnails in any paint-program you like best, But you will have to upload both the thumb and the image and then link the thumb to the image.
Both the ImageShack and the Do-It-Yourself way will be explained.
So, as first exemple I will be explaining how to use ImageShack to make thumbnails. In order to make everyone quickly able to follow I won’t use thumbnails but small images.
The ImageShack Way:
First to the the reply window and leave it open.
Then, open a new window (Firefox users open a new tab) and go to
www.imageshack.us
you will see this:
I Marked the needed area’s read. It accualy explains what to do. click the browse button, selecten and image and hit “Host it!” Note that only pictures below 1.5 megabytes are accepted. I removed each part whithout any importance.
After is is done uploading you will see the next screen:
Here is when the work comes. I removed all “adds”.
The first red marked area is the URL you need in this kind of vBulletin forums. Go back to opened reply window/tab and pasted that link.
Go to tothe previous ImageShack window/tab and select the url in the bottom marked area.
Now, in the reply window you will see the thumbnail in the reply editor.
select that thumb and press the “insert Link” button. Thats button number eight in the lower row. Then, paste the link you just copied.
you can also change the link in the first url but that needs knowledge of tags.
There you go, your thumb is linked to an image in a seperate white window without adds. if you use the standard link of imageshack you have irritating adds.
The Do-It-Yourself Way:
This is more simple to explain but requires a bit more work.
First open your picture in your favourite paint-program.
Resize it and press “save as”.
Now upload both pictures. insert the small picture as an image, and link that picture to the url of the big one.
Done!
Thank you for reading this. I wrote this quickly perhaps I should add more pictures.
Jacco;