Forum Help

General Information and Registration

MIJC welcomes all participants to our discussion forum regardless of whether you are a member.  To be able to post, you must first register an account on the forum.  The system will ask you for a “spam code” when you’re registering, which is 7883.  Completing the registration sends me an email, which allows me to activate your account.

Posting Photos

Another frequently asked question about our forum is how to post a picture.  There are several ways to post a picture.  It all depends on whether the photo is on your computer or already online somewhere.

If your photo is online already (i.e. on the MIJC website, or a PhotoBucket account, for example), all you need is the URL, or web address of the file.  The easiest way to get this is to right-click on the photo in your browser and select “Properties”.  A window will appear.  Firefox calls the address “location” and Internet Explorer calls it “address (URL)”.  Highlight all of this address with your cursor and hit control-C (or command-C on a Mac) to copy it to the clipboard.  Some addresses are quite long, so make sure you get it all.

Back on the MIJC forum, create a new post or a reply.  When you’re ready to insert your photo, click the IMG button above the text window.  “[img][/img]” will appear in the body of the message, with the cursor between the brackets.  Now hit ctrl-V (command-V) to paste in the URL of your photo.  To test and see if it worked, click the Preview button when you’re ready to post.  This will show you what your post will look like (including the photo) without actually posting it.  If the photo doesn’t show up, try again, and preview again.  Make sure you copied the entire address of the photo.

If your photo resides as a file on your computer, you’ll need to upload it first.  One way would be to upload it to PhotoBucket or Flickr, then use the method above.  But you can also upload it directly to the forum.

First click to create a new post or reply.  When you’re ready to insert your picture, scroll down to below the text window.  You’ll see a blue area tabbed with Options and Upload Attachment.  Click Upload Attachment.  Next, click the Browse button.  You’ll get a window asking you to find the file on your computer.  Once you’ve located and selected it, click Open.  Back on the browser window, click the “add the file” button.  Depending on the speed of your connection, this might take a moment.

You’ll now be back at the text window again.  Scroll down below it and you’ll see a new section called “posted attachments”.  You should see your file listed there.  Click “place inline” to automatically put the image code code into the text of your post.  Preview your post first to make sure it worked!

Posting Videos

Right now we only support posting clips from YouTube.  To embed a clip from YouTube in your post, click the “YouTube” button.  “[youtube][/youtube]” will appear in your post, with the cursor in the middle.  Paste in the URL (web address) of the YouTube video you’d like to post.  Preview it first to make sure it works before submitting!  You should see an embedded YouTube player.

Got more questions?  Drop me a line and let me know how I can help.

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