GCA - Posting Photos - 2019/Mobile Edition

[Criss Titschinger]

Thread dedicated to 3x Mashie holder, Vaughn Halyard. Apologies ahead of time, since these instructions are for Android, and will not apply to iCloud users. 

Searching back through old threads, it’s amazing the lengths we had to go through to upload photos to the Internet. First, we had to scan paper photos. Then, we had digital cameras, but had to transfer the files via a cable or (big) SD card. Then, you had to find in a web site or service that could handle the storage and bandwidth for the photo, plus allow the photo to be optimized for the web (i.e. not the original multi-MB source file).

Circle through to today. A lot of us take most of our photos with our iPhone or Android mobile devices. The cameras on new phones now are of incredible quality. We can sync up cloud backups of our photos and never use a cable to transfer photos from a device to a computer.

There are still services you can use to host photos. Most require a monthly charge for unlimited space and bandwidth (when your photo is requested from a site, forum, etc.). For me, I use Verizon Cloud and Google Photos to back up photos I take with my Samsung S10e.

So how did I get photos up in the Midwest Mashie thread? This is all I did.

• Sync my photos on my device to Google Photos
• Create a public album, since not all of my Google Photos are publicly visible.
• Click on a photo from the Google Photos album so it appears at the forefront.
• Right-click the photo and select “Copy Image Address”
• In the post, select the picture icon. It should create image (img) “tags”.
• Paste the Image Address (https://…..) in between the “tags”

Here’s a photo I took and edited with my phone, changing texture to better show the contours of the 8th hole at Prairie Dunes, synced it with my Midwest Mashie 2019 photo album, copied the link, and voila. I’m sure I could have spent more time editing that photo, but I did that all in a minute, on my phone. The photo's width and height match that of the Simple Machines Forum software used by GCA today and the file size of 171KB will likely keep Google off my back for bandwidth. Ideally, the forum software would be able to dynamically re-size that photo to fit in a mobile device, but I think it would take a better forum "theme" or software to do that, as this forum type is still geared toward desktop users.

While today we have Twitter and Instagram stories, sometimes there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned GCA photo thread.

[Jay Mickle]

Anxiously awaiting Volume II: “Apple Users”

[Michael Dugger]

The bottom line when it comes to putting up images on GCA.com is the actual file of the image itself needs to be uploaded and hosted somewhere on the internet.


Every image uploaded and hosted will ultimately have an address associated with it. 



Then all you do within this forum is create a link to that image by putting the img tags around that address.


If you pasted that same series of numbers, letter and characters into the address bar, the image would also pop up.  And that's all that would pop up.  Just your image.


It doesn't really matter if you are using an apple or pc device, what I described above is universal and not impacted by the particular OS.


What Criss essentially shared is "google photos" is one such host a la photobucket or flikr.  Whatever site you may be using to host your images probably has different parameters upon which they allow you to use their service.  I don't know apple well enough to comment specifically, but I can well imagine the need to ensure your images are being made available for the public to view will be critical to getting them viewable for all on gca.com   

[Charlie Goerges]

If you pasted that same series of numbers, letter and characters into the address bar, the image would also pop up.  And that's all that would pop up.  Just your image.

If anyone can explain, when I try to post an image and click preview, nothing shows up. I'm using onedrive. When I paste the address into the address bar (as a test), just the photo shows up, but nothing in my preview of my post. Is onedrive not compatible with the forum software?

[Ben Hollerbach]

If you pasted that same series of numbers, letter and characters into the address bar, the image would also pop up.  And that's all that would pop up.  Just your image.

If anyone can explain, when I try to post an image and click preview, nothing shows up. I'm using onedrive. When I paste the address into the address bar (as a test), just the photo shows up, but nothing in my preview of my post. Is onedrive not compatible with the forum software?

The link to the picture has to be a direct link. not many photo services these days use direct links, odds are the link provided by onedrive is actually a link to onedrive, that has a direction to display a specific picture. that step in the middle will keep the image from showing up here.

I host my images in google photos and use a middle man tool that provides me with a photo link that can be embedded here. Don't know if there is one that exists for onedrive, but it might be worth a look.

[Charlie Goerges]

If you pasted that same series of numbers, letter and characters into the address bar, the image would also pop up.  And that's all that would pop up.  Just your image.

If anyone can explain, when I try to post an image and click preview, nothing shows up. I'm using onedrive. When I paste the address into the address bar (as a test), just the photo shows up, but nothing in my preview of my post. Is onedrive not compatible with the forum software?

The link to the picture has to be a direct link. not many photo services these days use direct links, odds are the link provided by onedrive is actually a link to onedrive, that has a direction to display a specific picture. that step in the middle will keep the image from showing up here.

I host my images in google photos and use a middle man tool that provides me with a photo link that can be embedded here. Don't know if there is one that exists for onedrive, but it might be worth a look.

Argh, that's what I was afraid of. I've used that tool for posting google photos, but so much of my stuff is in onedrive. And it used to work just fine, which is frustrating.

[Joe Bausch]

If you pasted that same series of numbers, letter and characters into the address bar, the image would also pop up.  And that's all that would pop up.  Just your image.

If anyone can explain, when I try to post an image and click preview, nothing shows up. I'm using onedrive. When I paste the address into the address bar (as a test), just the photo shows up, but nothing in my preview of my post. Is onedrive not compatible with the forum software?

The link to the picture has to be a direct link. not many photo services these days use direct links, odds are the link provided by onedrive is actually a link to onedrive, that has a direction to display a specific picture. that step in the middle will keep the image from showing up here.

I host my images in google photos and use a middle man tool that provides me with a photo link that can be embedded here. Don't know if there is one that exists for onedrive, but it might be worth a look.

Argh, that's what I was afraid of. I've used that tool for posting google photos, but so much of my stuff is in onedrive. And it used to work just fine, which is frustrating.

Have I ever mentioned how much I detest Micro$oft?! They are just brutal.