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Free Image Hosting (supports hot linking)

A question that comes up on the Hermit Crab Association a lot is “what free hosts can be used to store images for display on the forum and how do I do it?”. In order to display your images on the forum, you must upload your photos to an image host. The image host must support something called hot linking in order to actually display your photos within the message post. I will outline the steps with a couple of image hosts here:

Directions for linking with ImageShack

Visit ImageShack

On the Image Shack front page you should see the following:

Click the Browse button and locate the image that you want to display in the HCA post. Select the file and click Open.

Click Host It!

Select Thumbnail for forums (1)

Press CTRL+C to copy the code.

Create a new post in the HCA message forum and in the box that you would normally type your message press CTRL+V to paste the image code.

Type the remainder of your message and Submit the post.

How to Hot Link an Image on the Hermit Crab Association Forum with Free Image Hosting

I personally found Free Image Hosting very easy to use for hot linking images and sign-up is free. This service also offers the tools needed to resize your images which is important because you don’t want to post images that are too huge.

Once you sign up, login and you will be presented with an upload screen. If the upload screen does not automatically appear, click the Upload Images link in the main menu. You should see a screen with 12 boxes like the one below. Note: Before you try to upload images be sure that the file names do not contain spaces, my cute little crabbie.jpg will not work on the HCA forum, but mycutelittlecrabbie.jpg will.

Free Image Host Upload Screen

Click the Browse button on the first box and locate the image on your computer’s hard drive that you want to upload. Select the image and click Open (do not include spaces in your file names). Repeat this process for all of the images that you want to display on the forum. When you have selected all of your images, scroll down the page and click the Upload button

Once you upload your image you will be presented with the screen below:

Free image host box

Click the Copy button next to the [IMG] code. Press CTRL+C on your keyboard to ensure that the code copies.

Create a new post in the HCA message forum and in the box that you would normally type your message press CTRL+V to paste the image code.

Your code should look similar to this in the forum post:

[IMG]http://www.afreeimagehost.com/upload/8211/55gallon.jpg[/IMG]

Separate each img tag with a hard return (press the enter key). Again, it’s important that the image does not have any spaces in the file name before you upload the file.

Type the remainder of your message and Submit the post.

The Free Image Host web site also has tools for resizing and managing your images (creating folders). These tools can be found in the main menu.

Free Image Host Main Menu

Resizing Image with Free Image Host

If you have an image that’s straight from your digital camera you may want to reduce the site of it before you upload for others to view. For the sake of dial-up users, I don’t think images any larger than 640 pixels should be posted; even that may be a little large. You can use the tools in Free Image Host to resize your images before you post them.

Click the Resize Image Link

Resize by Percent

Notice that the Width/Height percentage box displays the current size of your image (in the example image above it displays 640/480). If your image’s widest side is over 1024 pixels you will probably want to resize by at least 50%. If it’s over 2000, use 25%. Type the appropriate percentage number (without the percent % sign) into the Width/Height Percentage box

Resize Images