I just noticed in replying to another post that I can no longer readily insert photos from my flickr account. I used to be able to just paste the flickr embed code for the image into the the “link to media” box for the “insert image” tool, but no longer.
It seems the “insert image” tool wants to add an additional “http://” to the front of my embed code, and will not allow me to edit that out. I then get an “Invalid URI: the hostname could not be parsed” error. In every other way, the html editor seems to be doing the same things with the image as before the forum changeover, but that pesky extra “http://” now won’t go away unless I insert only a portion of the code.
Anybody know the work around, or am I missing something on how the new editor works? The forum help topic offers no assistance on this; I already checked it.
Here’s the embed code for the image I was trying to use:
The text above is not a URL pointing directly to an image - it is a piece of html code - which tries to insert an image embedded in a link, so when you click on the image, you go to the flickr page.
Cannot be inserted using the “insert image” button, since you are not trying to insert a link directly to an image - you are trying to insert html code.
To insert html code, click on the icon labeled “HTML” in the editor, place curson and insert your html code, then click on “update” to go back to standard editor mode.
I’m well aware of the difference you pointed out between a url and embed code. I was unaware of using the other “html” tool for images, since that never used to be needed. I just tried that tip and it works, so I guess that helps.
The forum USED to support direct entry of the embed code in place of the url in the “insert image” tool. It no longer does, plus automatically inserts the extra “http://” in front of the embed code, which it never used to do. The change makes use of flickr photos something more of a pain.
I don’t use Flickr, but most of the other sites (Photobucket, RailImages, etc) have a “forum” URL that you can copy/paste right into the editor (where you type your post).
The links are surrounded with [ img ] [ /img ] tags.
Personally, I hate the “insert image” button, and just grab the URL itself, and put it in the post directly (whilst adding the img tags if necessary).
You do not need buttons you could just put the url between IMG markers. Of course then you would not see your image in the posting box.
LION does not know what Flickr does, but you should be able to right click on any photo and select “Copy Image Location” and then paste that between the img tags. Or else use the “Image Insert” button and paste that information there, for it surely seems that flicker was giving you more information than you needed, and will not work here since you cannot post (apparently) HTML code directly in the post box.
While we’re on the subject, I’ve found that inserting photos (via the button and dialog) usually works with FIrefox and usually fails, for me, anyway, with IE8. I use Firefox at home, but unfortunately we use IE8 at work. Or it uses us.
Unfortunately flickr doesn’t make it that easy to pull a url that will result in anything but the dreaded red X (there are ways around it, but require a bunch of extra clicks). The direct url is buried in the embed code, and there isn’t a clean way to get it by the usual right-clicking on the image, or drag-and-drop, unless you start clicking through links to various sizes of the original. It’s that way on purpose to “force” use of the full code to provide the embedded link back to their site to comply with their terms of service. It’s not usually a big deal since most forum software handles embedding through their image insertion tools without separate html editing.
Point being, as above, the MR forum software used to accomodate such embedding more easily than it does now.
learn to use HTML edit to insert the html code snippets from flickr,
learn to dig out the URL from flickr’s code,
find yourself a image hosting service that allows you to get direct links, or
complain to Kalmbach customer service in the hope that they will contact Telligent software to get them to change their forum software - which is not custom made for Kalmbach, but off the shelf community software, I believe. The link to Customer Service can be found on the masthead, next to the image of the front cover of the next MR issue.
I suspect that #4 is going to be the solution that will take the longest time.
Hey, your first reply (about the separate html editor) gave me the information I needed to post the full code. That worked in a test edit I made but didn’t post. That’ll have to do.
I already knew how to separate the image url, as shown in my first post (all users of that site may not). I don’t have any real desire to migrate all 200 photos on my flickr account somewhere else, so I’ll live with its annoyances.
I was hoping that somebody would know about that extra “http://” that the new software thows into the image link that messes with the embedding. If that’s not something that’s easily resolved, I doubt Kalmbach would have any desire to request a change from the vendor. I can live with its annoyances too. I didn’t want to use the customer service link as the resource of first resort, as I wouldn’t expect a quick response.
I did have a vain hope that perhaps somebody in the know had some information about a quick fix, and that if it existed, it could help other forum users who may have run into the same issue with either flickr or another photo hosting site. I still hope this thread will help somebody. Who knows how many of those users may be out there who gave up without asking?
I use Flickr & for the first few weeks on the new forum I could not post.
I sent my links to Customer Service & later that day they began to function.
However, I may be old school, as I go in Flickr & I go to my large image (1024),
Right Click, choose Properties, then copy that link of the actual image, & paste it into the Insert Link area.
I have worked that way since I had Flickr, & other than the Forum migration hiccup, it works great.
This is correct. YOu have to dig down into Flkr and other such providers until you do get a clean URL when you copy image url.
That said, LIONS do not use outside servers, him hosts his own server on his own network (broadwaylion.com) and so it is just a matter of cutting and pasting the photos to the “LION” folder.
