We sure do have a lot of rules and guidelines threads - find them all here, and please make sure you've read them! Also, community-wide announcements (that aren't major ZDoom News) go here as well.
Warning: Do NOT just "click-through" this message to get to the button to enable images. Violation of these rules unconditionally results in a board action (usually an official warning that goes on your record) - it is assumed you have read these rules fully!If you want the protection of having leniency when you make a mistake, use the [imgur] tag instead!
Much like every other phpBB forum, it is possible to embed images and other media in your forum posts. However, there are some things you should keep in mind. On older versions of the forum software, if an image was larger than the browser window, the forum layout would be messed up as it tried to expand the post to fit the image. Currently, though, phpBB will simply crop the image; it is possible to scroll it around, but there is no bar, so users have to use other means to do so, which isn't convenient, and large images also take up valuable bandwidth (not everyone has unlimited bandwidth, sadly). My hard rule is no images larger than 800 pixels wide.
So above all else, this is vital knowledge: Spoiler tags DO NOT stop images and videos from loading! Spoiler tags make large images harder to view!
Directly embedding a large image, even behind a spoiler tag, is inconsiderate to users on limited bandwidth (such as mobile broadband, or Comcast customers) or users with small screens. I will suggest that, if you can't resize it any other way, it is better not to use an img tag, and use a url or imgur tag instead (described below). Otherwise, read the spoiler for suggestions on how to use the img tag properly.
HOW TO USE IMGUR TAGS
A new tag has been added. It should be pretty straightforward to use - just paste an imgur link inside imgur tags - like so:
This automatically resizes your image according to forum rules and creates a link to imgur for the full-sized image. This is meant to take a lot of work out of getting imgur links to work properly on the forum. Note that this does not work with album links. This can only be used for individual images.
To get the proper link, click on the "copy" in the upper right corner of the image (screenshot)
Spoiler: Using img tags
If you are going to post a very large image (especially screenshots of your mod at high resolutions, such as anything higher than 640x480), I highly recommend that you resize your image manually to a sane size before you upload. A program like Irfanview will be extremely handy for this. Please do not upload images wider than 800 pixels. For image hosting, we recommend an ad-free, hotlinkable service like imgur; sites like Photobucket and Dropbox often demand that you actually click through to their websites to view images, which is very inconvenient.
If it's too late to resize your images manually and you've already put them on Imgur, Imgur still has a "hidden" function that will generate them for you. When you upload to Imgur, you will get a link that looks a bit like this:
Imgur automatically creates several sizes of that image that you can invoke by adding one extra letter to the end of the filename:
A lowercase l turns it into a Large Thumbnail.
A lowercase m does a Medium one.
A lowercase s creates a Small one.
There are Tiny and Huge thumbnails as well, but please use the Large ones where applicable, as they're the most compatible with most peoples' browser sizes (and bandwidth - we can't forget bandwidth!). So in order to use these, pick the lowercase letter of your choice from that list and apply it like so:
The lowercase letter should go at the end of the file's name, but BEFORE the file's extension. So instead of deqttQY.jpg, it should be deqttQYl.jpg.
If you're at all confused about how to do this, either resize your image manually before uploading, or contact a moderator and we'll rehost and resize it for you.
[EDIT By Rachael]: This button will grant access to the [img] tag:
Do not just click this button without understanding the rules above! Violation will result in board action unconditionally! (Usually a formal warning that is permanently on your record)
HOW TO USE YOUTUBE TAGS
By popular demand, ZDoom Forums can embed YouTube videos within your posts. There is a very specific way you must do this, however. First, copy the YouTube video URL. You can get this from your address bar or by clicking "Share" on the video's page and copying the URL. It should look like this:
In your post, use a youtube tag and copy only the video ID - that is, only the characters to the right of watch?v=. An example of how that should look in your post:
To restate again from earlier: hiding your images and videos in Spoiler tags DOES NOT STOP THEM FROM LOADING. Browsers have crashed for less. If you NEED to post a lot of videos, post them as clickable links instead using the URL tags, for the sake of our sanity and everybody else's bandwidth.
(Updated to include Rachael's [imgur] instructions --Caligari87)
Although putting these types of items into spoilers does not prevent them loading, I have noticed that if I go to a thread with lots of videos posted, the page takes a long time to load and scrolling down the page is very jerky/stuttery. As a result, I sometimes avoid threads such as the what are you listening to and funny videos threads. If, however, the videos are in spoilers, I find scrolling through such threads easier/smoother. Given that it's not a loading issue, I'm not sure what it is, but it's definitely a thing for me.
