I figured I'd just write this up rather than searching for it. More than a couple of people have mentioned they don't know how.

If you want to embed a picture directly into a message here on the forums, you have to have that picture up on the Internet somewhere else already. Flickr is what I use, but others seem to like Photobucket...choice is yours, both offer free hosting (with some limitations.)

Once you've uploaded your pictures to a web server somewhere, you'll need to get the link (URL) to it to put in here. Go to the site where your picture is, and then (in Windows) right-click on the picture. Choose "Properties." You'll get a little window pop-up and in there will be a line called "Address". Beside that is what you want. For example, the picture below is hosted on this page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27208216@N06/2622363713/

{{gwi:645046}}

If you right click on this picture here, you should see http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3048/2622363713_ab9a71b265.jpg?v=0 in the "Address" of the "Properties".

To get it into this message, I added this inline where I wanted the picture:

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3048/2622363713_ab9a71b265.jpg?v=0">;

Everything between the quotes is the "Address", which you'd replace with your own.

Notice that there is no link under the picture, meaning if you click on the picture above nothing happens. You can, however, make your picture a link to some more pictures. For example, you might make the link go to your whole Dahlia picture set.

Also, posting bigger pictures might make it hard for some people who are on slower connections. Usually the hosting sites will take your big picture and give you a small version of it too. Here you would put in the "Address" for the smaller picture, but make the link go to its bigger version. Here's an example:

{{gwi:643314}}

Notice now its a small picture of my Sandia Joy (same one as the bigger picture above) and, if you click on this picture, you'll go to the home page of my garden pictures. To do this, I added the following:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/27208216@N06/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3048/2622363713_ab9a71b265_s.jpg"></a>;

The first part (between the first pair of < and > signs) is the link "Address", or where you want people to go. The second part is the image reference, or what you want them to see here. The last part (</a>) says to put the link around the image.

Of course you can embed a link under some text (as I did up at the start of this email) by simply putting the first part before the text, and the last part after the text. All the text in-between will them be a clickable link.

Hope this all works...;-]

Cheers,

Russ

Finally, you can simply add a link when you compose the message. Remember, however, you have to add the link before you preview your message, as you won't have the ability to do that after.