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An area where fans from all over can ask each other questions and voice their own ideas and opinions on anything Columbo.

This Forum is fondly dedicated in memory of  "cassavetes45"  (Carleen Zink),
Columbo's greatest fan and a great friend to us all.
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Re: Picture

From my old post called "Posting images (and using avatars) on Forum" -- the info is still good, as far as I know. Looking forward to seeing your image posted!

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Greetings, Columbo fans. Thanks, as always, for all the interesting posts.

Today I'm posting some tips about how to use images on this Forum, either in your avatar (like my little cartoon head of Columbo) or in the body of your message. I used to recommend Photobucket for this, because it's free and it provides helpful links of the appropriate types, for each uploaded image, that can be used in this Forum. And Photobucket is still good.

But today I will describe using Imgur, the free image uploading site. It also provides good links, it's easy to use and, as far as I can tell, it does not require you to create or sign-in to an account for the purposes we are talking about. Here's what to do.

Go to Imgur.com, click on Upload Images. The pop-up will offer several ways to select your image, like by browsing your computer, drag-and-drop, or pasting from clipboard. Once you've selected your image, you'll get the "Start upload" button.

When you click "Start upload" you will soon see your uploaded image, with a series of links to the right side, each for using the image in different ways (email, web sites, forums). You can copy these links in the usual ways, by right-click/copy, or CTRL + C. (There is, as far as I know, no need to use the "Publish to Imgur" button here -- all you need are these links.)

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To include an image in a Forum Post:

Copy either the "HTML" link (it is long) or the "BBCode" link, and paste it into your Forum message, in the place where you want it to appear in your post. Either will work fine here.

Notes:

1) Larger images may appear cut-off if you Preview your post (at least in my browser, Chrome), but when you actually Post the Message, the image will appear shrunk to an appropriate size in your Forum post. So I don't think you need to worry about size, within reason.

2) When your message is posted, images added with he HTML or the BBCode link will normally look the same, but will behave a bit differently if someone wants to get the full-sized version of your larger images. In the Forum message, if you click on an image posted with an HTML link you will be taken to the Imgur web site, where you will see the image, perhaps in a reduced size, within the Imgur web page. There, you can again click on the image, to see it full-sized. If instead the image was posted using the BBCode link, clicking on it in the Forum will do nothing. But, you can right-click on the image, copy the image's URL, and paste it into your browser's address window, which will take you to the full-sized image within an otherwise blank screen.

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Avatars

If you want to use an image as your Avatar, to be seen next to the header of your Forum posts, this works differently: In Imgur you want to instead copy the "Direct" link (the HTML or BBCode links are no good for this), and paste it into the "Avatar URL" box in your Forum message. The image will automatically appear shrunk-down to a size that works as an Avatar, but once it's posted, you can go to the image's URL and be brought to the full-size image.

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The only downside I know of, with this kind of "anonymous" posting to Imgur, is that the images might be deleted eventually, if not viewed at least once after 6 months. But it's super-easy to use, and should suit your purposes here.

I hope this is helpful. I know a lot of you have some very interesting Columbo-related images and I want you to be confident in using them. I just ask that you not get too carried-away with gigantic images or big floods of images, as this is not really an image-hosting site and at some point Bravenet might have a problem with it -- and we do have a maximum bandwidth for the Forum, although it's pretty generous. But, I hope we can have fun with this feature here on the Fan Forum.

Re: Picture

Well I'm not sure that will work because the "image" is on my phone and can only be saved as a jpeg format and uploaded from that. Thanks Ted. Any way of posting form my phone pictures?
Fred