This article gives a step by step guide to adding photos to your website articles.  There are a lot of little steps to this process so you should print this article and have it at the ready while inserting pictures.

**** I've recently found a really cool online photo editor at www.picnik.com that makes the photo editing process much simpler.  I've revised this fax to reflect using the online picnik.com editor.  (9 feb 2010, : D)

Preparing your Picture for Uploading

Before you upload your picture to the website, there are several tasks that should be performed on your computer.  These insure your picture has an appropriate size, name and format.

Resize Your Photo

Today's cameras create very large picture files.   Files can typically be 1 -10MB.   These are way to large for the web.   They slow page downloads and eat up disk space.  For the website, we like photo file sizes in the 100-500KB range.

- Open your browser and go to www.picnik.com .

- Click the "Get Started Now" button

- Click the "Upload a Photo" button.  Locate your photo on your computer and "Upload" it.

- Click the "Resize" button.

- You'll see two boxes with the dimensions of your photo....something like 2615 x 1576.   Change the larger of these two numbers to 400.  The other number should change automatically.  Click "OK".

- Click the "Save & Share" tab

-   This is a good time to change the "filename" of your photo to something descriptive like, 30jan10fatherdaughterdance.jpg .   Click "Save Photo".  Choose a location to save your edited photo.  I like to use my Desktop.  Be careful not to overwrite your original on your computer.   If you changed the filename or the location, this won't happen.  Click "Save".

Adding Your Picture to Your Article

Inserting Your Picture

- Login to your website.

- Open Your Article

- Place Your Cursor at the Location in Your Article Where You Want Your Picture

- Click on the "Image" button (below the text edit box on the left side)

- Open the Stories folder

- Open an appropriate sub-folder in which to store your photo.  If there is no obvious folder use Articlepics.

- Click Browse and locate your picture on your computer

- Click Upload which will copy your picture from your computer to the subfolder on the website

- Click on your picture.  The file name will now appear in the URL box.

- Select an alignment, Left or Right, which will set which side of your article your picture will appear.

- Fill in a very brief description of your picture.  Do not use kids names in the description.

-  Click Insert.  Your picture should now be in your article.

A Little Formatting Cleanup

- Click on your picture.  The edges shoould be highlighted.

- Click on the "photo of a tree icon" in your editor

- Enter "5" in the Vertical and Horizontal Space boxes.  This gives you a little margin between your picture and the article text.

- Click Insert.

- You'll likely want to Resize your picture to fit the article. 

- Click on your picture to highlight the edges.

- Place your mouse on a corner and hold your mouse button down.

- You and now drag the corner to change the picture size.  Typically article photos are sized between 100 and 400 pixels in width. - Save your article.


Congratulations, you've posted an article with a picture.