So how do I do it?

FAQ says I can upload an avatar....maybe but then leaves me hanging.

What about the gallery? Asks a bunch of questions but doesnt give no damn info.
Can I upload off my HD or do I need to sign up for some pix hosting outfit?

Going plowing, be back tomorrow in even a fouler mood
24-36" predicted.

 

Carl,

... sorry to hear that you are frustrated. I know, it is not as easy as it should be. Here is some help (at least I hope it is).

Avatar. The limiting factor is the size. Max. 50x50 pixel or 8,192Bytes. Many avatars that you can find all over the web are larger than that. I was looking for an animated one and the only nice one I found below the 50x50 limit is the Cat. The file format is .gif for that one. After you found one you can either upload it from your PC or add a link on the place where that avatar is stored on the web. I did the latter. I have a FOC (free of charge) web site and I load all my pics onto that one for both, my homepage and for use in forums. More about that in a moment. OK, to load the avatar you need to click on the "user cp" button next to the FTE Logo in the upper half of the screen (while being in the forum section). Here you need to click on the "Edit Options", scroll down, click on "Avatar" or "Change Avatar" (don't know what it would say if you don't have an avatar yet as I do)and there you find the two fields I was talking about. One for entering the web site where the avatar is stored (enter the location like this (but please note that I have added some spaces as otherwise you would not see the text I want to show, but you would see my avatar): h t t p : / / w w w . f o r d . g m x h o m e . d e / k a i c a t . g i f. ) and one for the upload from your PC. Just use one of these. But again, nothing will happen or work if the size is too big or the format is not a .gif, .png or .jpg.

Gallery. I saw that you have none so far and hope I can help you. First you need to click on the "User Gallery" button just below the "Forums" button on the upper right side of the screen. Since I have a gallery already I just have the option to click on the "Manage you Gallery" button just above the pics you see here. I guess (and hope) that you should see a "Create Gallery" button or something like that. Click on that one. Here I think you first need to enter info on yourself and then you can create the actual gallery (more than one, I myself have three at the moment incl. the one for Daryl). In the gallery you can upload pics, but the limit is 300,000 bytes. That is a lot, but if you use a digital camera in highest resolution your pics are far larger (typically in the Mbyte = 1,000,000 range). Assuming that your pics are within the limits you can click there and then search your computer for the files you want to upload. Uploading takes a while dependig on the speed of your connection. If your pics are too big you will get an error message and your pic won't display. See at the end of this post. I offer to make your pics smaller if you wish.

Use of pics in a thread. There are two ways of doing that. Either use the pics you have in your gallery (not very convenient I think) or pics you have stored at another web location like a personal web site. The latter does not mean that you have to have a homepage or so, you just need web space to store. I have 10Mbyte FOC here in Germany and I know there's plenty of companies which offer FOC web space (AOL does too, but I heard that that created problems for other FTE users). I am not a computer guru and had no idea how to program a web site. I bought me a cheap magacine (titled like Web Sites for Idiots or so) with a CD with FOC tools attached. Within a day I was done and I did not use any pre-formated page, but created mine from total scratch. See it at http://www.ford.gmxhome.de. I use a super simple and also FOC program to upload my pics onto that address. These programs are called FTP (=File Transport Protocol) programs. I searched the web and found many FOC tools. I picked FSFtp 1.3. Search for this one on the web and down load it. It works great. After uploading the pics onto that address I then use the format most web forums use to display a picture stored on the web in a thread. You just (again with extra spaces here) add [ I M G ] infront of the address and [ / I M G ] behind it to read something like this [ I M G ] h t t p : / / w w w . f o r d . g m x h o m e . d e / k a i c a t . g i f [ / I M G ]. Without the spaces it would then look (i.e display) like this here:



Last not least file size (i.e. picture size) is a problem, too. E-Mail me some pics and I will reduce them to 256x192 at approx. 18 - 25 Kbyte and e-mail back to you. They still look good. See my truck below. I could post them in my gallery just as a test. I still have Daryl's 59 there for test purposes. Don't worry about my e-mail traffic, I have a 24h flat rate high speed ADSL connection. However just send two or three to start with.

Hope this helps a little bit and things (i.e. entry fields or buttons to click on) may look a bit different for you as you have no gallery and no avatar yet. I know it is all confusing. Working on a truck is easier.

Good Luck.

 

Carl,
I gave up on attaching a photo to my threads, too. It was easy before the format switch, but since then I can't figure it out, either. Oh well, so my ego doesn't get to show off a picture of my truck each time I submit a reply or post a thread. (FYI, it DID take me a while to get over that same "foul mood" though!!!)
Daryl

 

Hey 'merc, ... have you had a chance to try the gallery again ??? Did you find my words usefull ???

 

Very useful Kai, just no time to read and do it!

Very soon tho!

 

286merc,

hope you don't mind my intruding upon your note, but I just have to make a formal announcement -

Drum roll plse..................

I have an avatar!!!!!! and it's a picture of me!!!!!!!!!

Hey 'fenders, ain't I cool?!!
(and even more handsome than most of you imagined)