I have received several emails lately asking how to put pictures in your posts or in your signatures.
I will try to do a step by step guide in easy terms. (which will be easy for me as "thingie" is one of the words I use most often)

First, if it's a personal pic, you need some place to upload it to. Most of the photo sites, such as Ofoto or Kodak, don't allow you to link a picture from there to here.

Here is a very good free picture storage site is called Photobucket and it is located here. Just register and you can start uploading your pictures that you would like to link back to here. This site automatically gives you the url and [img] things that you need to do your linking. You upload your picture from your computer to Photobucket and then cut the [img] code that they supply for you.

Posting a picture

Let's say you want to post a picture of cute picture of yourself when you were a child. :)
All you have to do is so upload your photo to Photobucket and cut and paste the [img ] code that they provide to you into your post where you do your typing. This code is located on the bottom of each of your pictures as illustrated in the picture below:


Posting a picture in your signature file
Do all the steps for copying the message from the picture storage site. Open up your profile here, choose "edit preferences" and scroll down to the signature file area. Insert the picture code that you copied from Photobucket or if you are not linking from photobucket, right click on the photo you have found on the internet and choose "properties" Then highlight the address and paste it in your signiture area on your profile. Add [img] at the beginning and [/img] at the end of the address. Choose update your profile and you are done. Remember, the size of the picture in the storage area or on the internet will be the size of the picture in your signature!

Your avitar picture (the little picture under your name)
This one is a little tricky. It is probably easier to email the photo to John or myself as we can make it the right size to fit in the little box and we will be happy to store it for you on the LCT site. If you are comfortable posting your own photos and can judge the right size, you can paste the url of where you stored the picture in the custom avitar area found in your preferences.

Posting a picture of something you found on the internet
If you found something on the internet, say a piece of luggage that you want to show in your post, right click on the picture, click properties, drag your mouse over the address to highlight it, right click on it, choose copy and then in your message, choose the "image" link in the full reply form and remove the http:// thing that they have pretyped for you, right click on the blank and choose paste. click ok and the picture will be in your post.

As always, if you can't do it, don't want to do it or need a picture resized, feel free to email me!

The directions sound complicated but once you have done it, it is very simple!

Please remember to keep the size of your pictures on the average side. If they are wider than the window that this message is posted in, it will make us have to scroll left and right to read view the picture and text.