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Oh, I feel your pain... It took me no less than two years and multiple, multiple attempts to figure this out. It goes quickly and almost without thinking about it now, but until some kind person here took pity on me and gave me step-by-step instructions, it was about as arcane to me as particle physics.
So here are the instructions I've written up for myself and have passed on to others. I apologize for the length - but much like baking bread, if you are a novice to the process, it's important to spell out every step and not assume that the reader knows them. So you get the whole shebang.
There are two main ways you can go about it. One is to set up an account with a photo-hosting website, like Photobucket or Flickr, and post from there. The other is to create an album for yourself here on City Data, and post photos from there. I use the second option, so I'll give you directions for that, although the final steps (the ones that let you actually post the photo in a thread) work the same no matter where your photo is stored.
Start by clicking on "My Settings," as if you are going to check on your rep comments. On the left-hand side of the screen, in that list of different options, the second section is headed "Networking" and the fourth option in that section is "Pictures & Albums." Click on that.
In the window that will open then, click on the link that says "Create Albums." You will be prompted for a title and a description; enter whatever suits you. At the lower part of that screen, you will see three options: Public, Private and Profile. If you are creating the album for the purpose of posting the photos in a thread, you will need to choose Public (which is the default). If you want to set up an album for just your friends to see, choose private, but be aware that if you post a photo from a private album in a thread, anyone who is not on your friends list won't see it.
Click on "Submit Album" and in the next screen, click on "Click Here to Upload Photos." You will see a screen where you can upload up to three photos from your computer at a time. That part is pretty straightforward: you click on "Browse" and find the photo you want in whatever directory you placed it in your own computer. The file name and path will appear in each little box.
So after you have done the browse function and you've got up to three photos ready in the little boxes, click on the "Upload Now" button at the bottom of that screen. And then go have a cup of coffee or read an article or two in the newspaper. It'll take several minutes, or at least it does on our DSL connection. If you've got a T1 line, it'll probably go a lot faster.
Once you finally get the message that the photos have been uploaded, you can either go on and upload more photos (you can also go back later and add more photos to the same album) or you can move on and finish the process.
Now, what I've been doing as I write this is to open a second tab and actually go through the steps, so I can tell you exactly where to look and what the buttons say in each screen, up until the point of uploading photos, which I did from memory. And the remaining steps for creating an album are from memory, also, so they won't be as detailed - but the directions given in each screen are also pretty self-explanatory, so you shouldn't have any difficulty at all.
Once you get your photos uploaded, you will have an opportunity to add a title or description to each photo, and you will have the opportunity to choose which photo goes on the "album cover," which is what will appear in your profile. I believe that the program will choose one photo more or less at random (maybe the first one you uploaded? I don't recall) as a suggested album cover, but you can pick whichever one you want. Follow the directions on the screen, and you'll have your first photo album.
Then, on to posting one of those photos in the thread. For this, I do generally have two tabs open in my browser, one set for the album where I have my photos and the other in the thread where I want to post one of them.
First, I start the post in the thread with whatever descriptive verbiage that I want to include.
Second, I go to the album tab and click on the photo I want to post to make it appear full-screen. Don't worry if it looks as though it's bigger than the screen; all of mine appear that way. Once it's displayed full-size, right-click on the photo and drag down to the option "Copy Image Location." IMPORTANT: don't choose "copy image;" you need the option for Image Location.
Then, I go back to the post I started in the first tab, place the cursor in the appropriate spot in the post, and click on the "insert image" icon, the little symbol that looks like a square box with mountains. That box will come up with the http: characters already in it, and it's important that you NOT leave those in there when you paste in the location that you copied in the second step. The location that you copied will already have the http prefix, and having two of them in that box will result in no photo appearing. So clear those default letters, then right-click on your mouse again and choose "paste."
Then, click on either submit or ok (I don't remember the exact button to close that "insert image" window but it's pretty obvious) and submit your post.
Likely the first time it comes up, the photo will start out looking huge, possibly even off the screen. Click on the "Refresh" button in your browser and it'll appear normal-sized.
If you opt for using the Photobucket or Flickr version, you basically do the same thing from that site: you call up the photo you want to display, right-click on it and drag to "Copy image location," then go to your post and use the "insert image" icon to include it in your post.
I know that's a looooong list of directions - I hope it doesn't intimidate you! I found that once I went through the process a time or two, I didn't need to go back and refer to the directions again, but at least for the first time, I really needed someone to spell out every single step along the way. If you are more tech-savvy than I am (which is quite likely, as I think most of the world is!), you will probably find them more detailed than you need, but I'd rather err on the side of caution than assume that you can figure out the bits I leave out.
Good luck, and we look forward to seeing your photos!
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