How to post a trip report like BEERMAN!

It was asked in the trip report post how to do the pictures and while I commented there, I thought it was worth its own post.

I'm not sure anyone can do a trip report like BEERMAN, but if you want to try, here's how you can start.

1. Take a minimum of 300 pictures a day
2. Keep a journal of your trip - update it each day
3. Spend lots of time picking out just the right pictures from the 300+ you have for each day
4. Post the report day by day..

In order to include photos in your post, you need to have them stored in a location where you can link directly to the image itself. You can tell that the image is being linked directly if the URL for the image ends in .jpg. That is a pretty sure indication that you'll be able to use that image in the post. However, some sites will link to the full size picture (onedrive for example). This can be a problem since large pictures will often take up too much of the screen.. So, the site that BEERMAN uses (and what I'd recommend as well) is photobucket. You get a certain amount of storage for free too!

So create an account at photobucket.com if you don't have one and create a new album and get some pictures uploaded. Then when you want to insert a picture, click on the picture in photobucket and then click on the direct link (example below). When you click on direct, you'll see "copied" appear. This copies the link to your clipboard so you can paste it later.




Next, you'll want go back to TTOL and create your post (if you didn't already). Then when you are ready to add the image, click image under Insant TTOL Code.



That will bring up the following box



You can simply press CTRL-V to paste after the box appears and then click ok, or highlight the text field in the box and paste.

This will insert text into your post - just be sure to not change it at all. When you complete the post, you'll see your image in place of it.

Any questions or issues, post them here, I'll be happy to help.

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing that!

Thanks for the note. But one VERY important thing to remember---If the post is going to be very long at all, ALWAYS compose the post offline in some kind of a word processing program and then copy and paste the note into the board. The reason to do this is that, because if you take a long time to create your note, the board could time out on you and everything that you just typed online is LOST--gone forever!! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" /> So, compose offline, then preview the note to make sure it looks like you want it to look, and then you can always go back and edit the note, before it's actually posted. And you do have a limited amount of time to edit your post, even AFTER it's posted. Usually it's a couple of hours. I don't know how Beerman does his trip reports in particular, but I create most offline, and post it WITHOUT any pictures to begin with. When I post it, I know where I'm going to put the pictures, and often I put some extra lines, or a description where I am going to insert the picture(s). Then I go in and edit and add the pictures in. I have unlimited time to edit my posts, so Beerman may not do it that way. But you do have, as I said, about two hours to edit your post, after you make it. And remember, preview is your friend! You can always preview your post (or picture, etc) and see how it will look, and if it isn't right, you can fix it before you even post it. Or, if you're really apprehensive, just use the testing forum. That's what it's for.

Thanks for the details -that's terrific!!

Great point Carol! BEERMAN tried a couple of times during the trip to post from his phone and lost the post at least twice I think!

One thing you forgot to mention is to stay sober long enough to take notes and snap pictures !!!

<img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/drinking.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/toast.gif" alt="" />

People post that all the time--that they composed a great trip report online and it timed out on them and then by that time, the people are so disgusted, they give up! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />

Another simple solution is to just copy and paste before submitting.. But composing in another program is a better way to do it.

I just wrote this in a word document and copied the photo link from photobucket directly into the word document, removed all of the url code before and after the [IMG] brackets. Cheers!

Even easier