How do I... ?

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vynsane
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How do I... ?

Post by vynsane » Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:27 am

There have been some questions about how to do certain things on these boards, so I thought a general 'How do I do _____?" topic might be helpful. First up:

How do I... embed images from Flickr into a Toys N Bricks forum post?

The TOC of Flickr states that you must link back to the photo page in question when embedding a picture directly into any medium (be it a blog post, forum post, email, what-have-you), so to best facilitate that you can use the 'Share this' button, and click on 'Grab the HTML' as shown in this screenshot:

Image

Unfortunately, this only gets us half the way there, as forums like Toys N Bricks use a modified form of HTML called BBCode. The HTML looks like this:

Code: Select all

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43266097@N03/4802959877/" title="Phoenix Fireball by vynsane, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4119/4802959877_7ae9e61cb0.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Phoenix Fireball" /></a>
It looks complicated, but it's really rather not. It's merely a link tag wrapped around an image tag. If you look at it from the inside out, the image tag is <img src="..." /> with a bunch of information inside it (the height, width and alternative text). The link is then the <a href="..."> part (including the link in the 'href' portion and the title) at the beginning and the </a> part after it (that's what we mean by 'wrapped around' - the </a> 'closes' the link tag, which surrounds the image tag).

The forum won't understand this, though, so you need to 'translate' it into BBCode. The result should look like this:

Code: Select all

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/43266097@N03/4802959877/]
[img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4119/4802959877_7ae9e61cb0.jpg[/img]
[/url]
NOTE: The line-breaks are there to make it more legible in this post. There should be no line-breaks for it to display properly.

As you can see, the HTML tag <a href= has been turned into and we've taken out any extraneous information (like the title="...") that BBCode doesn't understand. <img src=" has been changed into Image, and we've taken out the width="500", height="375" and alt="Phoenix Fireball" information, and turned the ending of the img tag /> into [ /img]. We've finished by turning </a> into [ /url]. This results in proper display of the image from Flickr, which also links to the page on Flickr where the image is displayed, like so:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/43266097@N03/4802959877/]Image
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Re: How do I... ?

Post by legitimatealex » Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:22 am

Good thread. I remember the first time somebody told me to 'deep link' a picture and I spent the next hour scouring the Internet trying to find out what the heck they were talking about. I also then learned that many companies sue other companies for deep linking images off of their site onto theirs. What a fun world.
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Re: How do I... ?

Post by vynsane » Fri Jul 30, 2010 9:33 am

legitimatealex wrote:I also then learned that many companies sue other companies for deep linking images off of their site onto theirs. What a fun world.
Yeah, either that or they have a script set up to deliver a different... not so nice... image.
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Re: How do I... ?

Post by legitimatealex » Fri Jul 30, 2010 10:46 am

vynsane wrote:
legitimatealex wrote:I also then learned that many companies sue other companies for deep linking images off of their site onto theirs. What a fun world.
Yeah, either that or they have a script set up to deliver a different... not so nice... image.


Fun times we live in. Although to be fair if you deep link an image from someone's website it does effectively steal hits from that website. That's why you always use your own image in reviewing a set (let that be a lesson to all of you reviewers out there)!
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Re: How do I... ?

Post by vynsane » Fri Jul 30, 2010 11:26 am

It's not just 'stealing hits' from the site, it's effectively leaching bandwidth without actually visiting the site. As some hosts charge per bandwidth usage, it's actually stealing money away from the site's administrator. Even if the hosting plan has a set amount of bandwidth allotted per month (as most do) if you go over that amount, you get charged overage fees or just have your site shut down until the beginning of the next month!
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Re: How do I... ?

Post by vynsane » Sun Sep 19, 2010 6:50 am

As an addendum to the tutorial on inserting Flickr pics into a forum post, they've now enhanced the 'Share This' functionality to output BBCode directly, if you choose it (there are radio buttons below the box where the code is output. By default it chooses HTML but if you change it to BBCode it changes the code in the box.
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Is there a way to....

Post by possum » Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:08 pm

How Do I...

...block a user so I don't see their posts?
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Re: Is there a way to....

Post by vynsane » Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:55 pm

If you go to your User Control Panel (linked in the header of the forum) and click on the 'Friends & Foes' tab, then the 'Manage Foes' link in the left-hand side, you can add the username (either by copying and pasting, or using the 'Find a Member' link) of the forum member you'd like to ignore.

Alternatively, you can click on that user's profile and click the 'Add Foe' link below their profile info. Bear in mind, you cannot put Admins or Mods on your 'Foe List', so you'll have to continue to deal with my inane prattle :P
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Re: Is there a way to....

Post by legitimatealex » Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:17 am

Aww I'd hope that there aren't any people you don't want to see posts from. I'd like to think that we're all super helpful.
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Re: Is there a way to....

Post by sadowsk1 » Mon Dec 20, 2010 6:13 am

I would say that 99% of people on this site are helpful, but at every party there is always one know-it-all that people get tired of listening to.

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Re: Is there a way to....

Post by possum » Tue Dec 21, 2010 1:14 pm

I don't plan on hiding the helpful people. LOL Thanks guys.
Disclosure of location should be required when listing your finds!

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How do I upload pics for a review?

Post by brickster90 » Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:10 pm

Newbie here! I am planning on doing a few reviews of sets and I haven't the slightest on how to upload pics from my computer. Do they need to go on another website before being posted on this forum? Any help is appreciated.

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Re: How do I upload pics for a review?

Post by toystest » Tue Feb 22, 2011 6:59 pm

I think Vynsane wrote a guide for that a while back, let me see if I can find it

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Re: How do I upload pics for a review?

Post by toystest » Tue Feb 22, 2011 7:01 pm

Here you go:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: How do I upload pics for a review?

Post by hatcher » Tue Feb 22, 2011 7:02 pm

Hey

First, welcome!

In answer to your question, you can link pictures from flickr or other photo sharing sites or you can upload them and attach them to your post if they are less than 25o kb.

This topic will walk you through including pictures from flickr:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1024" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

To attach your pictures directly, just look down at the bottom of your window when posting. Right below the Save, Preview, Submit buttons, you'll see two tabs, Options and Upload Attachment. Select the upload attachment tab, hit the browse button, find and select the photo you want, then click add the file. Once your picture is uploaded, (with or without file comment) you can insert it into your post. Just remember it has to be less than 250 kb.

Hope that helps, and can't wait to read your reviews.
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Re: How do I upload pics for a review?

Post by legitimatealex » Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:24 pm

I'd recommend Flickr or MOCpages for this sort of stuff if you want to keep track of your reviews, but honestly you could just put them on something like imageshack if you don't care about keeping track of those photos.
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Re: Is there a way to....

Post by Mantisking » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:17 am

vynsane wrote:If you go to your User Control Panel (linked in the header of the forum) and click on the 'Friends & Foes' tab, then the 'Manage Foes' link in the left-hand side, you can add the username (either by copying and pasting, or using the 'Find a Member' link) of the forum member you'd like to ignore.

Alternatively, you can click on that user's profile and click the 'Add Foe' link below their profile info. Bear in mind, you cannot put Admins or Mods on your 'Foe List', so you'll have to continue to deal with my inane prattle :P
I've tried this multiple times and it doesn't seem to work. Has anyone else had success with adding Foes?

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Re: How do I... ?

Post by hatcher » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:24 am

I too have tried to add a person to foes recently. The software tells me I can not add moderators or administrators to my foes list. The person in question is not identified as either, and only joined the site like 2 weeks ago, so I don't know what going on there.
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Re: How do I... ?

Post by Mantisking » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:34 am

hatcher wrote:I too have tried to add a person to foes recently. The software tells me I can not add moderators or administrators to my foes list. The person in question is not identified as either, and only joined the site like 2 weeks ago, so I don't know what going on there.
I'm guessing that somehow it's the same person we're talking about. :)

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Re: How do I... ?

Post by lukeskywalker » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:53 am

Mantisking wrote:
hatcher wrote:I too have tried to add a person to foes recently. The software tells me I can not add moderators or administrators to my foes list. The person in question is not identified as either, and only joined the site like 2 weeks ago, so I don't know what going on there.
I'm guessing that somehow it's the same person we're talking about. :)
I hope it's not me.

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