To include Photo's in your Blog Entry, you will first need to Upload them. Then, once they are in your Photo Gallery, you can insert them into a Blog Entry.
Note: I'll be moving all the 'how to' articles to the Travel Guide/About section within the next few weeks (that is, as soon as I have some spare time...)
----------------------------------------
Background: Travellerspoint limits the amount of bandwidth you have for uploading photos - there's no limit for storing them, but there is for uploading. They also display a resolution of only 800 by 600 pixals (dots), so if you upload your photo files at full resolution, you will be SEVERLY limited as to how many photo's you can upload.
New users get only 25mb of upload bandwidth per month (it resets every month). So if you have a 5mb digital camera and try to upload high resolution pictures you've taken with it, you may be limited to only about 5 pictures per month!!!
There are two solutions to this problem:
1. Edit your pictures to a lower resolution before uploading - (I do not recommend taking the pictures at a lower resolution in your camera settings because then they won't be very useful for other things, like printing.) Take your pictures at any resolution you want, it isn't hard to save another copy at a lower resolution. These instructions assume that this is how you want to proceed.
2. Upload your photo's to another web site and insert them in your blog using a web link. Here are some instructions for doing this from Flickr.
Disclaimer - there are many ways to do these things! I'm only describing a couple that are cheap, easy and work for me. Feel free to use whatever software and/or approach works for you of course!
YOU MUST UPLOAD YOUR PICTURES BEFORE YOU CAN INCLUDE THEM IN A BLOG ENTRY!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But first - edit them!
If this is the first time you've tried to do this, you should check these instructions first:
How to Set Up IrfanView to Edit Photos
There are other programs that are more powerful, but IrfanView is so easy and takes care of 90% of my editing needs, that I normally use it first. While you can rotate and crop in IrfanView, these instructions are only to help with converting photos' to 800 by 600 pixals (low resolution) for uploading to Travellerspoint.
1. On your PC, select the pictures you want to Upload.
I do this by renaming them, so if I've got 50 pictures in a folder, I know the 10 or so I want to upload because of some sort of naming scheme.
2. Open IrfanView (or your chosen photo editing software).
You can open an individual photo to edit (Edit/Crop) or resize it (Image/Resize), but you can also resize a batch of them all at once.
To do this, from the Main Menu, select File Batch Conversion/Rename.
On the top right side of the Batch Conversion Window is a section where you can navigate to where your unedited photo's are located. Use the Look In box and other navigation tools to find the right folder.
Then select the ones you want to upload (hint: hold down the Shift key to select several photo's in a sequence, or the Crtl key to select several photo's that aren't together).
Once you've selected your photo's - click the Add button. The photo's you've selected should be shown in the Input Screen on the left. You can add or delete photo's if the list isn't quite right.
Once you've selected your photo's (and got all your settings right) - Click the Start button.
That's It! IrfanView converts all your photo's to 800 x 600 and they're ready to upload! (Hint: you might want to check some of the photo's first and make sure everything worked right - especially the first time you do this. If you forgot to click "Preserve aspect ratio" in the Advanced Settings for example, you'll get some really screwed up photo's! No sense using up all your bandwidth uploading garbage, I know - I've done it.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, Upload your Photo's to Travellerspoint:
In Travellerspoint, from the Control Panel, select My Photos.
On the top, right hand corner select the small tab that says Bulk Upload.
In the Bulk Upload screen, choose Browse Files.
Navigate to the Folder on your PC where the photo's are that you want to upload. You can select a group by holding down the Shift key (or crtl key if they aren't all together). The photo's you've selected will show up in a list under the Upload Queue:
Check this - file sizes should be in kb, not mb!
Also, if you change your mind you can delete individual photo's from the list by clicking the little minus button, you don't have to back out and start over (but you can if needed).
Click the Start Upload Button.
You will be able to watch the progress as the photo's are being uploaded. Once they are all complete, you will see a screen for editing the details about the photos. (If you're short on time, you can come back and complete these later. However, you must save the photo's one page at a time, you can't edit one or two, then come back and do the rest later - you'll have to start over.)
This is what the screen looks like before you start editing, although you'll usually see more than one photo.
Travellerspoint picks up the PC file name. Therefore, if you rename your photo's on the PC while you're getting them ready, you won't have to do it again here!
You must select a Location from a list maintained by Travellerspoint (ugh). Just type in a city, state, and country and it will try to auto fill for you (slow connections make this one difficult). They have a lot of towns in their list - but not always the ones I want. If they don't have what I want, I try to pick a slightly larger town nearby. (For example, Hoodsport may not be on the list, but Seattle, Washington, USA definitely is.
Please use Tags. These are Keywords used for searching. For example, if you are looking for pictures of lighthouses in Travellerspoint, you will only find ones for which people have listed lighthouse or lighthouses as a tag. This is not an exact science and I'm still trying to get better at it. You might want to check out how other folks tag their photo's to get an idea (time permitting). At the least, use obvious tags like flowers, birds, lighthouses, rivers.....
When you're done adding descriptive information, Save the page.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, Add your Photos to to a blog entry.
(Note: if you've already written and saved the blog entry, you can go back and Edit it again. Select Control Panel, My Blogs, Manage, then Manage again. This will give you a list of all the blog entries that you can Edit or View. Or of course, usually you'll want to upload your photo's for an entry first, then write the entry...
In the Blog Entry, put your cursor where you want the photo inserted.
On the menu at the tope of the Entry window, click on Img (for Image)
This opens a separate window that lets you select a photo from My Photos. If you want a smaller Thumbnail inserted, click the Thumbnail box. When you're done selecting, click Insert.
That's it! Takes a lot longer to write up (or read) then it does to do it. The first few times may take a little practice to get comfortable, then you're off to the races. (I uploaded over 3,000 photo's for our RV trip, so you know I didn't spend hours and hours on these individual steps on a regular basis.
