Pictures & Albums Tutorial

[commodor47]

The Trailmanor Owners Forum now supports Albums! As the name suggests, an Album is a place, right on the TMO site, where you can store pictures and slideshows. No more searching for an external host site! Albums are available to all Sponsors, as part of the Sponsor fee.

Albums are different from Attachments. In the past, the only way to make a picture appear as part of a post has been to "Attach" the picture to your post. Both the size of the picture file, and the total number of attached pictures, were quite limited, but Chris has recently increased the limits on Attachments, so that situation is remedied. Although Album pictures can be inserted into your posts, Attachments will continue to be the primary mechanism for putting pictures into your post.

The procedure to create an Album, put pictures into it, and use the pictures, is outlined in the the screen shots for this tutorial. It is quite straightforward, and we hope you will use it freely. (The screen shots for this tutorial are found at http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...php?albumid=26). Thanks to Bill and Chris for working with me to make this tutorial a reality.

Before starting, here are a few introductory comments to get you started.

Only Sponsors may create Albums, and only Sponsors may view them. It is one of the benefits of Sponsorship. You can create multiple Albums, and multiple pictures in each Album. You can create a new Album, or update an existing Album, at any time. Adding pictures to an album, or editing the content of an Album, is easy. An Album may contain a sequence of pictures that stand alone, similar to a slide show, though there is no automatic advance mechanism. It can also contain individual pictures, of course, and they can be made to appear in (linked to) a post on the forum.

When you create an Album, you will see that there are two links underneath each picture. One is labeled "Picture URL" and the other is labeled "BB Code". If you copy the Picture URL into a post, it will produce a clickable link (the viewer must click the link to see it). If you use the BB code, the picture automatically shows up in your post. By the way, no one else can see the codes on your pictures, so you can't link anyone else's photos into your own post. Be aware, though that other people can copy the pictures in your album, so be careful about what you upload.

Once you have created an album (or two, or three), your Profile, which is viewable by anyone, will show a clickable link to each one. Viewers can page through your Albums at will, so be sure you restrict your pictures to things that are of general interest. Viewers can leave comments in the Album, but if the Album was originally linked to a post, those comments might best be posted in the discussion that talks about the Album. That way, the responses to the Album don't get fragmented.

Only picture files are accepted - jpg, gif, etc. A Microsoft Word doc file, or an Adobe pdf file, won't be accepted for upload into an album. Several of the tutorials here in the Technical Reference Library contain a doc file or a pdf file, but those files must be saved as an Attachment. They will not go into an Album.

There are two types of Albums - Public and Private. A Public Album can be viewed by anyone who is a Sponsor. A Private Album can be viewed only by the Album owner, the Moderators, and specifically-named members. There doesn't seem to be much point in creating a Private Album, so until a reason is found otherwise, it is suggested that you create only Public Albums.

Since the TMO Forum is basically a Bulletin Board you will notice the absence of sophisticated editing features. Albums and pictures can be added or deleted; titles and descriptions can be edited; and the cover page can be changed at any time. There is no option for changing the order in which pictures appear in an album. The only remedy is to delete the album or picture(s) and start over. The “Upload” window has room for 3 pictures. Generally, the pictures will appear in the album in last-in-first-out order, but not always. A simple remedy to control the order in which pictures appear is to upload one picture at a time (instead of 3).

The rules of the TMO Forum apply to Albums as well. Good taste is expected, politics and religion are forbidden, and a member may be censured or banned for posting material outside of these guidelines. The expectation is that the Albums will contain material that is in some way relevant to Trail Manors. This is not a general photo-stashing site, so if you have a photo tutorial about "Disassembling a Two-barrel Ford Carburetor", it probably doesn't belong here. If in doubt about content, please contact the site Administrator (Chris) or a Moderator.

Finally, there is a FAQ about Albums at
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...l&titlesonly=0
or click FAQ and type in "album"

Again, the screen shots for this tutorial are found at http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...php?albumid=26

Dick