Images
Bandwidth theft or "hot linking" is directly linking to a website's files (images, video, etc.).
Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred from a website to a user's home or office computer. When you view a web page, you are using that site's data transfer to display the files. Since web hosts charge a website based on the amount of data transferred, bandwidth is a major concern. If a site is over it's monthly bandwidth, it's billed for the extra data transferred or taken offline.
An example would be using an [IMG]; tag to display a JPEG image you found on someone else's web page so it will appear on your own site, journal, blog or forum posting, etc.
A simple analogy of bandwidth theft:
Imagine a random stranger plugging into your electrical outlets at your house, using up your electricity without your consent. Sooner or later you would have to pay the bill for it. Not to mention bandwidth theft is just plain rude, so please don't practice this in our forum.
Hot linking or bandwidth theft can have a lot of undesirable consequences. One outcome is the so-called "switcheroo". If you've linked to an image on someone's server, what's to prevent this website from changing the image you linked to?
Most web sites now days have software coded in them that will change out the image to prevent hot linkers from stealing bandwidth. If this happens the you will see "Image Not Found" or a red "X" in place of the image.
The solutionis to post images from a third party website, there are plenty of free ones available on the web. You can easily upload your own images into these image hosting accounts and then repost any of these the images. You can get a free account at any of the following links
How to Post Images on the Web
If you're using one of the previous listed image hosting accounts, most of them have really great tutorials on how to post images on the web.
Use This Format, To Post Images:
[IMG]http://url image address[/IMG]
Image size:
Sorry folks...size matters!
If you're image is too large then people with dial up connections will never see it, it will take too long for them to download. Images in the forum are best displayed a 7.00" wide which is about 700px and whatever the height maybe be. Images that are larger than 7.00" or 700px wide begin to distort the pages in the forum and it's annoying for readers.
The more pixels per inch that you have in your image the slower the download. In order to decrease the amount of pixels in your images, you can decrease the size of your image or just scale it down. To resize images, you need software. If you're using Photobucket, it has the capability to resize an image that is already uploading into your account, but once you resize the image, you can not retrieve the original size. Just a note...only crop or resize copies of your images in case you make a mistake or if you want to keep the original size.
Alternatives to resizing images:
Post a link to the original image itself by writing text that with hyperlink to the URL address of the image.
Use This Format, To Post a Hyperlink to an Image:
[URL=http://url image address] text displayed to the user [/URL]
Post a thumbnailof an image, so when the user clicks on the thumbnail of the image it takes them to the URL address of the original image. This also means that you must make a thumbnail of your image and load it into your image hosting account. If you're making your own thumbnail images, usually they are sized at 150px by 200px.
Don't wanna make thumbnails? If you have an Image Shack account, it has great thumb nailing capabilities and this image hosting account will thumbnail the images for you so you don't have to create your own.
Use This Format, To Thumbnail an Image:
[URL=http://url image address][IMG]http://url thumbnail address[/IMG][/URL]
Troubleshooting:
If you're image don't show up, here's a list of problems to check first:
- If you've hot linked to a website that doesn't allow it.
- The url address of the image is incorrect
Note Case sensitivity - If the image filename was in lowercase ensure that the filename in the url is in lowercase.) - You forgot to put the correct file extension on your image (.jpg .gif or .png etc.)
- The image is unavailable because you have gone over your bandwidth limit.
Smiles
Smiles are animated emotion icons that we use to communicate our feeling to each other in our forum.
Most of the smiley web sites display the text already formatted to post the icon on the web so all you have to do is copy and paste the text underneath the icon into your post.
Use This Format, To Post an Emotion icon on the web:
[IMG]http://url emotion icon address[/IMG]
Here is an example:
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Banatic/English/Ecstatic/icon.gif[/IMG]
To See A List of Smiley Sites see the Links page.
Signatures
Signatures are images that go under your post and can contain pictures, text, advertisements for other site or other forums etc.
You can create your own signature, using any imaging software like Photoshop or PhotoEd. They can be also be made to link to other web sites.
Signature sizes are generally 700 pixels long and 100 or 150 pixels high.
How to install a Signature on Your Post:
To install a signature on your posts, go to runboard.com and login. Click on Control Panel > Change Miscellaneous Settings. In the second box from the top labeled "Signature (optional):" paste the URL address of you signature here.
Use This Format for Signatures:
[IMG]http://url signature address[/IMG]
Here is an example:
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Banatic/Avatars/name of avator.gif[/IMG]
Click the "Save settings" bottom of the page.
Use This Format To Make Your Signature Hyperlink to a Website:
[URL=http://url website address][IMG]http://url image address [/IMG][/URL]
DVD Regions
If your collecting DVDs from other countries, there's a couple of things that you need to know...
DVDs have the ability to encode an option which specifies which regions in the world the discs can be played. The movie studios have collectively divided the planet earth into zones which corresponds to their distribution system. Which means that if you have a DVD from a different region other than the region that you live in, you must buy a region free DVD player to view these DVDs.
Here's the regional codes:
(See Map Below)
DVD Region Codes:
- 0 - No Region Coding
- 1 - USA, Canada
- 2 - Europe, Greenland, Iceland, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, South Africa
- 3 - Korea, Thailand, Borneo, Indonesia
- 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, The Caribbean, South America
- 5 - India, Africa, Russia
- 6 - China
- 7 - Unused
- 8 - Airlines, Cruise Ships
- 9 - Expansion (Used as Region Free)
You will also run into the same problems if you try to buy videos from other countries... Some countries use PAL and some countries use VHS. These two technologies are not compatable with each other.
For more information about this topic see:
HomeTheaterInfo.com
To Shop for Aussie DVDs: Click Here
