Global Voices Online

Pictures are, of course, another way of telling stories, and a very powerful one. They enhance our understanding of each other in a way that stories sometimes can't. And they make our site look interesting too!

Thought must be given to what sort of pictures we would like to post. There is an interesting post from Global Voices about how we present ourselves through the images we choose - Another Belarus which raises a lot of the issues. We must be careful that we are not posting images only because they are glamorous or exotic.

The most important point to remember is the issue of copyright. We must always make absolutely certain that any picture we want to reproduce is legally available for us to use.

We can use anything which is issued under a creative commons licence. Otherwise we have to contact the photographer directly and get their permission to reuse the image - and make sure it is their original work and not someone taken by someone else.

Once you have found the picture you want to use (and have checked all the copyright issues) you must download it to your own computer.

Step 1: Resize the image

At this point you need to resize the image so it is no wider than 500 pixels. This is to make sure it fits properly inside the left-hand column of the blog.

If you don't have image software on your computer and you use microsoft you can download free picture-editing software from google here. There is also a free online image resizer here. Mac users will probably have iPhoto. If not there is a free iimage viewer/resizer available for download here.

If the original picture is less than 500 pixels wide there is no point making it bigger because it will become blurred and distorted.

If you can't resize the picture for any reason then there's a quick-and-dirty solution which comes right at the end of the process (and these instructions) but is much better avoided.

Step 2: Upload the image to GV

Go to the GV WP page and click on the “Upload” tab which will take you to the screen shown below:

Locate the image file on your computer which you want to upload to the GV server. The easiest way to do this is to click on the “Browse” button.

Type in a line to identify the picture in the “Description” box - the more factual the better, and don't forget that whatever you enter will be visible on the blog.

Leave the “No thanks” option selected since you do not wish to create a thumbnail of the image.

The page should look something like this:

Once all that is done, hit the “Upload File” button.

Step 3: Put the code linking to the image in your post

After you've hit the “Upload File” button you will be shown the code to copy and paste into your draft post, as shown in the example below. Notice how the description has been used as the “alt” tag, which means it will show up when someone reading the post puts their mouse over the picture.

If you have more than one picture to upload, repeat the process by clicking on the “upload another” link.

And that quick-and-dirty solution for if you can't resize the image file yourself to be less than 500 pixesl? When you have copied and pasted the code for the image into your blog post, add in the instruction width=”500px”. So with the example above the code given was this:

and with the added instruction it would become this:

That's it! Easy when you know how. And if you have difficulty posting pictures, get in touch with your regional editor for advice and help.