Adding and Uploading Images to Your Blogs

Just like web pages, to be seen on the Web, images need to be moved from your hard drive to your photo host. This is called uploading. Depending upon your Web server, you will either use an FTP client or a Web page uploading form.

There are a number of third-party services that will let you post pictures to your blog, including  Flickr, BuzzNet, FotoFlix, Photobucket, and Photolightning.

I am going to explain how Photobucket works since this is the photo sharing service I use for uploading all my images into my auction listings, store listings and blog.

Photobucket essentially serves as a central "hub" for storing, sharing, and publishing visual digital media.  Most of the users publish their visual digital content, such as video, images, graphic art to 2 or more sites: saving time by uploading once to Photobucket and then publishing over and over again to many community sites.

How to Use Photobucket   

• Sign Up by registering (Your albums are where you store all your visual digital media.)
• Upload your images or videos.
• Copy your Link directly under the image or video uploaded
• Post your link onto your favorite websites.
• Once you've got your image on your third-party services (Photobucket), you need to link to it to your blog.
• This is in the  attribute.
• When you're first starting out, you should upload your images to the same directory as your blog picture files.
• If you have your heart set on keeping your images in a separate album, you can do that with photobucket.   
  
• For example, if you have an image called cat.gif and you want to put it on your blog picture files:
• upload cat.gif to your Web hosting server (Photobucket) blog picture files (using FTP or a Web form)example in photobucket picture services    
• ("www.photobucket.com/username/password/blogpictures/cat.gif")
  
  

Create a Photobucket account

• Go to "http://photobucket.com".
• Click the "Register Now" button.
• Fill out the application; be sure to use a current email address.  
  
• Please read our terms of service.
• If you agree to their terms of service click the "register button."
• Select offers you wish to receive and then click "Submit and Continue."   
  
• Accepting or declining offers does not affect your Photobucket registration.
• Congratulations! You are ready to start uploading and sharing your digital content.

Create a new sub album.  Log into your Photobucket account.

• Locate the "add a sub album" area on your album page.
• Type the name of your new sub album here.
• It is very important to not have spaces or punctuation in the name of your sub album.
• This can affect your ability to use FTP and other options.
• Click the "Create" button.
• The sub album will appear in the list of albums.
• Click the album to open it.
• To add digital content follow the steps in the Uploading Pictures Tutorial.
• Make sure you have your sub album open when uploading photos.

Upload images.  Log into your Photobucket account.

• Click the "Browse" button to find the digital content you want to upload.
• Find the folder that holds the digital content on your computer, click on it.
• To personalize your digital content add an optional description.
• Click "Submit" to begin the uploading process.
• When the upload is complete
• Images successfully uploaded will appear on the top of your account page.
• If you would like to add multiple pictures at once click the "Submit Multiple Pictures" drop down file, select the number of digital content that you want to upload.Repeat steps 1-7.

Linking content to any site.  Log into your Photobucket account.

• Check the boxes beneath the images you wish to see on another site.
• Click the "Generate HTML and IMG code" button.  
• You may select the first box of code and copy it if you wish to post your images as HTML clickable thumbnails for Ebay, Livejournal, MySpace, etc.
• You may select the second box of code and copy it if you wish to post your images as HTML images for Ebay, Livejournal, MySpace, etc.
• You may select the third box of code and copy it if you wish to post your images as IMG clickable thumbnails for message boards.
• You may select the fourth box of code and copy it if you wish to post your images as IMG images for message boards.
• Once you have selected the code you would like, copy it and paste it in the editing field on the site you want your images to appear.

Link an image to an eBay Blog.  Log into your Photobucket account.

• Locate the image or images that you would like to see in your item description.
• Click on the image screen attribute under your image
• Post to your Blog
• If for any reason it doesn’t look like you wanted it to or you want to have the image display in another location on your blog, you can go back and edit the blog entry.
• I would suggest posting as a draft first until you get use to adding images to your blog entries.

Your src attribute should never have "C:\" in the URL for the image. While this may work when you look at your blog page (even if you're looking at it online), no one else will be able to see your images. The reason is that you are pointing to a location on your personal hard drive. My hard drive is named "C:\" as well, but chances are I don't have your image on my hard drive. So, when I view your site, your image won't display.