How to add your photos

So you're thinking, "man what a kick butt site I just found here, but how the heck do I add photos of my ride", right? It's actually quite simple just take a look below.

Start by clicking either the main 'Photos" menu, or "Photos" in the users menu. They both work and take you to the same place. The users menu however provides direct links to your photos, a menu link to upload them and a link to create a new album. Use whichever you find the easiest or most useful. There's no right or wrong way here.

Here you are presented with 2 options.

1 - Create Album - means exactly that, create a new photo album to store your photos

2 - Upload Photos - Upload photos to an already created photo album

Let's create an album first, it's only logical right?

3 - Give your album a name

4 - Put in a few details about the photos in the album, as much or as little as you want

5 - Uhm yeah, do I have to say it?

Here's where the action takes place.

6 - If you have created multiple albums (which you are welcome and free to do by the way), select the album you want to upload to

7 & 8 - Click Browse and find the images on your computer

Now before you click OK to upload that photo, think to yourself, would a site this cool make me upload every image one at a time?

If you only have one image to upload go ahead and click OK in the browse box.

Whatdaya think? Here's the coolest thing, you can upload multiple images all in one swoop if you want. The secret, wait for it, wait, well OK, it's the "CTRL" key on your keyboard. Hold down your CTRL key on the keyboard and click on each image you want to upload. That's it. You can upload an entire directory all at once if you want, providing and here's the catch, the individual image filesize has to be less than 3MB in size. You should probably be resizing your images for the web anyways. Uploading a 10 Megapixel image straight from your camera is not a very nice thing to do. Not only does it take forever to upload, but it also takes forever for anyone to view or download it. There are many free utilities out there on the World Wide Web thingy. Here's a nice hint, the images are likely only going to be viewed on a monitor and not printed at your local Sam's Club or Walgreen's, so the photo dimensions really only need to around 1024X768 or so. Slightly larger dimensions are fine but for every step up in dimension, the filesize also jumps up dramatically.

OK now that I've rambled, let's get back to business. When you click OK, your photos will be added to the upload queue and uploaded before your eyes. I tried to capture this next image during the upload process, but it uploads so dang quick I had to try several times. Anyways, you can see each image and it's status as it's uploaded. The system moves right down the list from one to the next. As soon as one image is done uploading, you'll see "Complete" and it moves to the next. If there are any problems with the upload you'll see "Failed". You can also click the red 'X" to cancel that image from being uploaded.

That's pretty much it! Your photos have been uploaded. Pretty slick eh?

The next screen you'll see looks something like the one below. I'll explain what you're seeing there.

11 - Create another album

Edit Album - Let's you edit the album name and description

Upload Photos - Same as above

12 - The photos you just uploaded are presented here. If you decide "OH crap my wife is going to kill me for uploading this picture, I told her I deleted it" you can click on the red "X" and delete it here. You can also delete the image by vieiwng the photo and clicking on "Delete Image" in upper right corner (exhibit # 14). Clicking on one of your images will open it in the main image window where you can peruse your handiwork.

13 - Let's share - here you can share your photo album on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and about a bizillion other services.

14 - In this last screnshot you can set the album "Cover" image by clicking on "Set as cover". You can also select that image as your profile picture (avatar), or delete the photo.

15 - By default the photo will be named what ever it was on your computer. It's usually something cryptic like HPI1220201_001 which doesn't tell the person viewing it very much. Click on the "edit" pencil and rename it to something a human can read.

16 - Lastly, if someone has uploaded that photo that he told his wife he deleted and you think it's inappropriate, click on "Report photo" and it will be removed if it doesn't belong here. You can also use this option if you find an image that has been uploaded by a member and you happen to be the copyright owner of (and before you even ask, YES it has happened before, it's not nice recieving a lawsuit letter in the mail, trust me!!)

That's it your done, now go get uploading