First thing is first, if you do not know you member name and password for your Web Host, you will need this information everytime you want to FTP into your site so make SURE you have that handy at all times. I am assuming also that you have the image that you are wanting to post to the forum. Open the FTP program and you should be presented with a screen similar to mine if you are using WS FTP. Click the NEW SITE ICON to add your new site to the list. Make sure you have the MY SITES folder/directory selected in the Configured Sites Folder Tree. (Fig.fi01) You will then presented with another dialog box and this is where we add the FTP information for your host. (Fig.fi02). For Tripod, it is ftp.tripod.com, if you are using someone else it should be something similar and you can usually find this information fairly quickly by looking through the help files in your file manager after you have logged in on the website.

Give your site a name, I just named this one- IMAGE TUTORIAL, call yours whatever you like so that it is easy to recognize incase at some point you have more than one FTP site listed in your sites as I do. (Fig.fi02) Click the finish button at the bottom of the box and then the small box will close and leave you at your main FTP window. (Fig.fi03)-below

Now here is where I mentioned you have to have your user name and password. <g> Enter your user name in the user ID box, Enter your password in the password box, Check the box beside the password box if you want the FTP Program to remember your password cause if you are like me you will forget it in the next five minutes. LOL

Once you have entered that information click the SAVE button to save your settings, that way you don't have to re-enter then everytime you want to connect. Then click the CONNECT BUTTON at the bottom of the screen. (Fig.fi04)

If all went as planned you should now be connecting to your site. You will see in the lower corner a bunch of scrolling text as it connects telling you that it is connecting, once connected then you will see text confirming that you have connected to your site and you will see your file structure on the right hand pane. (Fig.fi05)

Now just a note, you may see diffferent files/folders on your site. This particular site of mine is set up for Front Page so I have some odd looking folders in there that you may not have. The ones that you see in Fig. fi05 with the vti- prefix are the Front Page folders. You most likely won't have them unless you are using Front Page.

Ok now a brief explanation of the interface so that you know what you are looking at. You will see that you have two sides to your interface. One side- the LEFT SIDE is your harddrive. Most of them usually default to the Windows folder, you see in the window it shows C:\Windows- This is my hard drive, in my windows folder. On the right side, this is your "Remote Site " or your web site on Tripod (or whatever host you have) that shows all the files you have within your site. You can move around your harddrive by clicking the arrow at the top of the directory structure to browse your harddrive for the image you are wanting to upload to the site. (Fig.fi06)

Click the arrow to browse your harddrive for the image you are wanting to post to the forum. To make it simple I made a folder on my hard drive just for the forum and called it "Forum". After I created the image I saved it to this folder which I hope that you have already done. <g> Once you locate the folder on your hard drive (Fig.fi07) then double click the folder to open it. Once you have the folder open you will see your image (Fig.fi08) click the image file ONCE to select it then click the arrow pointing towards your remote site to transfer the file to your website.

You should then see your image on your remote site as well as on your harddrive. (Fig.fi09) If you are using the site only for uploading images for the forum you don't really need to make any other folders or anything. If you are doing a website of your own then I would suggest making a directory on the remote site JUST FOR IMAGES. Please visit the Web design forum at Design Works for all your help and needs in organizing you folder structures for an acutal website. This tutorial is only going to cover the basics for posting an image to the forum.

Now we have our image on our host and just need to get it in to the forum. Piece of CAKE ! These screen shots were taken at the Design Works PSP Forum but can probably be applied to most of the forums you will find on the net. Most of their interfaces and techniques are similar.

I think most of you know how to start a thread or reply to one so what you would need to do is choose either one of them that apply to the thread of where you want to post your image. You will then have your usual screen, just as if you were going to post a regular message. You can go ahead and type something in the box if you like and then click enter to have a space between your text and where you want to insert your graphic. (Fig.fi10)

In the toolbar just above where you typed your text, click the INSERT IMAGE icon. (Fig.fi10 When you do you will see HTML tags pop up in your text area. (Fig.fi11)

See where it says URL? This is where you place the URL to your image that we just uploaded to your site. The URL will be the name of your site and the URL that they have given you for your homepage. It is usually part of your member name. For instance at Tripod my main page URL for my Web World Designs Site would be:

http://members.tripod.com/webworld_designs/

Now since I uploaded an image, I want the actual URL of that specific image so you need to know the name of your image. Mine was simply penguin.gif. You WILL need to know the file extension on the end also! So the URL for my penguin image would be:

http://members.tripod.com/webworld_designs/penguin.gif

Click the link and it will take you directly to that image on my site. That is the URL we want to enter in between the image tags [img][/img] that we see in our text box. DO NOT remove or alter the [img] tags or your image will not display! Enter the URL in between the tags like you see mine. (Fig.fi12)

If all looks ok and you think you have the URL typed in correctly. Scroll down to the bottom and choose either Preview or Post from the options list. You might want to choose Preview if this is your first time posting an image to see if it works first.

You should then be able to see your image in your post. If all is well just click the Post button at the bottom of the preview of your message and the message will then be posted to the forum along with your image !