Can't there be a better way?

I wish the folks at Kalmbach could come up with a simple, BETTER way for us to post pictures on these forums. Many forums I’ve been on simply have an “attach photo” box you click on while posting. Kinda like Facebook, etc. I’ve posted pictures on here once, a while ago, and now I’ve forgotten how to do it. I just think it needs to be easier, so I don’t have to “re-educate” myself just to post a picture!!

Check out this thread and learn again. It’s really very easy. I don’t know what you were doing that made it so hard.

None of the forums I participate in allows you to upload a picture directly from your computer, so that seems to be common practice.

I have not understood why it is so difficult to post a picture. All you have to know is that you have to upload it to Photobucket or others, click on the picture icon and paste the pictures address into the box that opens.

No problem here either. Been posting photos for some time. Very easy to post frrom Photo Bucket.

Rich

Didn’t say it was “hard”. Just too many unnecessary steps. Having a Photobucket account at all seems unnecessary. Why save photos somewhere else, when they’re already in my computer???

Would you accept liability if one of your pictures transmits a virus into our host´s IT system?

Two reasons. #1 Your computer isn’t a server that’s running 24 hours a day. #2 There’s no good reason for Kalmbach to devote massive amounts of server space for uploaded photos when there are any number of FREE hosting sites. There’s no big difference from uploading your photos to Photobucket or another hosting site than there is to uploading to a forums albums. I’m on a couple of forums that allow you to upload directly from your computer but I don’t use their service because it’s slow and undependable and if I wanted to put the same photo on both of them I’d have to upload it twice. By using a hosting service I can upload once and simply paste the photos address complete with IMG tags anywhere I want.

In your post’s text box, there’s an “Insert image” icon in the bottom row of your tool bar. Click the icon and paste your picture’s URL (web address) in the Link to media text box. Click the Insert button and your picture will show up in the body of your post - i.e. if you’ve done it correctly.

Tom

Interesting … I just double-checked five other model railroad forums I participate on, and every one of them allows uploading of pictures from my computer to their server. Those servers do scan files during the upload process and will block them if they detect a virus or malware within them.

Mark.

my two cents…

We can upload photos to the photo gallery. In the Forums it would really clog up the search feature and would take a much longer time to index the database. It is really smart how they set that up with the Direct Link feature. Somebody was paying attention during computer class! [:#]

Posting images is simple. I can’t imagine what you are doing that is so difficult or complicated.

In Photobucket, click on the URL that is labeled “IMG code”, then place your cursor in the reply area of this forum and select “paste”. The image will be inserted where the cursor is.

What could they do to make it easier?

I am aligned to the original post.

Photobucket is slow, clumsy and advertising laden. You have to WANT to be there.

IMHO this arangement is akin to making an insurance claim. The process is complicated and unfriendly by design. The intent of the design is to discourage use.

D

It must depend on some variables from software platform to platform, but I know of only one other forum that will upload directly from my computer. Afterward one must highlight and replace part of the code with the img tags. It isn’t very slick if you ask me.

Crandell

I agree 100% with the op. I do not have a computer, I use my smartphone to access the forum. I can’t copy, paste or whatever. I am a regular visitor to RCGroups which has many forums and tens of thousands of members, 20million + posts and then somehow manage to have a simple way of uploading your pictures. I recently found some pictures on the site I thought I lost forever, so glad they were still on the site, years after I had posted them. There must be millions of photos on that site, why can they do it and the Model Railroader website can’t?

I use the Firefox browser with Adblock so I wouldn’t know about ads. Photobucket works plenty fast for me, usually 5 to 10 seconds per photo unless I’m doing a bulk upload then it’s 3 to 6 seconds per photo.

Again, I don’t know what you are doing that is slow and clumsy on Photobucket. I use Internet Explorer 9 and do not experience any pop-ups. Advertising on the web pages is what pays for the FREE to you service. The speed is just fine. The speed issue might be related to your internet provider rather than Photobucket.

Santa Fe,

Are your purse strings willing to loosen in order to make that a reality? Servers and hard drives (i.e. storage) cost money to purchase and maintain. Someone has to be willing to pay or underwrite it for the convenience.

Tom

They are your photos, you retain the rights to them, and you put them on your server. When you want some one to see your photo, you link to it. The file is never on the Kalmbach server. They are not in the business of an ISP and do not want to be hassled with the responsibility.

So hen you click on a post here, your browser downloads stuff from Kalmbach’s forum, and when it comes to the link, it pauses and fetches the photo from that parties server.

See. Here is a forum post. And see, here is a picture, and if you can see the picture then YOUR COMPUTER went and looked on MY COMPUTER (server) to find the picture that I told it would be here.

If you click on “Community” above, you will find a photo album, and those photos ARE located on the Kalmbach server, but those are submitted photos approved by Kalmbach, and that page is intended for you to show off your good work.

ROAR

I guess that’s why I just use my own web site for most of my stuff, and not Photobucket or Instagram.

It cost me a whopping $3/mo to host my multiple web sites and domains, my provider has basic single domain service that is only $1/mo. No ads, nothing there but what I actually put there myself.

–Randy

The new version of photobucket seems slower to me, but part of that is due to the number of photos in my sub-albums. I simply switched back to the old format, and don’t find it slow at all, and I have over 4,000 images stored there… When posting photos here or on other train-related forums, I’ll often have three or four photobucket sub-albums opened in separate tabs. Usually, with 200 or 300 photos in each, they’ll take a few seconds to load, but once there, access is easy. I can’t see how making two “clicks” to post a photo here could possibly be considered onerous.

Wayne