Image Upload in Posts, Avatar's

Image Uploads

You can upload images into your topics and replies. There is an attachment field under the topic / reply form. You can upload up to 4 images and file size is limited to 512 k (see below). Once you post, the images are displayed at the bottom of your posting under the heading of attachments, each is labelled with the file name. If you want to name them, rename the file before you upload.

Avatars

You will now find a avatar form in your Profile / Edit page. Here you can include a avatar so we can all see what you look like or what you want to look like, it is up to you.

About that File Size restriction and how to do it.

We restrict the size for three reasons. First we only have a limited amount of hard disk size and the typical phone will take a photo around 4 mb. It does not take too many files that size to fill up a disk. Second both upload and download time are important to users that have less than a very fast internet connection. Which leads to the third reason. At times everyone accesses us through their mobile devices. Reducing file size avoids using members limited and sometimes expensive download limits.

We chose 512 kb because given the limitations of the internet and your browser to display images you can get excellent resolution at this file size. Proper file sizing works best when done in a particular way. Here is the order in which you should downsize a file’s size:

1) Crop unnecessary areas of the image.
2) Reduce the width of the image to 500 px (the appx. width of the column in which the image is displayed) or less while maintaining the aspect ratio.
3) Compress the image information.

Often just step 2 will get you under the file size limits. Most personal computer operating systems have software (Microsoft Paint) to accomplish these steps but there are also free online software (GIMP) and websites (Pixler) that offer these services.

DrO