Adding Images to Your Recipes

[spiceplace]

You may add pictures of your recipes to any forum post by clicking on the insert image icon in the editor. Sometimes you have to choose advanced to see that icon.

There is a catch to doing this though. You need a place on the web to host your images. A free place to do that is Image Hosting. It's fast and free. You simply upload your picture to imagehosting.com and they'll provide a link that you put in your post. Simple, easy and free. Sweet!

Oh a general nice guideline for images is keep the size small. JPG quality 60 is fine in most cases. Lots of folks say 30k and under is best for filesize. I think you'll be ok at 60k. Image width and height need to be considered; these play a major role in filesizes. Sizes of images in pixels of 400 width and 400 height won't overly push the text in your post around. 300 x 300 might be a better size.

Sample image sizes:









Recipe pictured is Savory Oriental Seasoned Chicken Wings.

Matt

[Jafo232]

If you allowed us to upload attachments, we could host the pics right here.

[spiceplace]

We had that attachments option open a couple weeks ago. Do you think they look as good as linked to inline images?

Here's a recipe with an attachment:
Maryland Crab Cakes

and here's the Chedder Cheese post for the ingredient of the week with an inline image.

Everyone with a preferences, speak up please

Matt

[oldbay]

I just tried that image hosting and it's fairly painless. No account needed, just upload your picture and they give you a link like this:

BBC:

If you use that link though, you'll see it's only a thumbnail. So to get the full size picture:

1. Click on the image thumbnail they show at the top.
2. When the full size picture comes up, right click.
   1. In Internet Explorer choose properties then highlight the address (URL) attribute with your mouse and right click again and choose copy.
   2. It's much easier if you're using Firefox instead of IE. Simply choose copy image location from the list of options.
3. Now, click the insert image icon in the vbulletin editor and paste the address in.

It's probably a good idea to preview your post to make sure the picture displays as you want. So depending on which editor you are in, either choose Preview Post Button or Go Advanced Button

And whala:



A full size image.

[Jafo232]

One of the benefits to attachments is that pictures never get "lost". I.E. the hosting company goes out of business, the users account gets canceled due to inactivity or whatever reason. Once that happens, the pics become broken images.

I suppose both options couldn't hurt could it?

[spiceplace]

Hi Jeff!
That is a very good point. It takes more moderation to make sure evil pictures aren't hosted here. I'm thinking I can turn it back on but let me ponder a little more.

Matt

[Jafo232]

You might want to consider not allowing users to upload until they have X amount of posts. This can be done in VB via promotions at least, but there may be other ways too..

[spiceplace]

Ok, I have changed to rules to allow attachments and will watch carefully on how it's used.

Matt