How can I add images?

Louis wants to know how to add images on the Internet.

“In your Tech tips, you include some images. Could you explain how could integrate this marvelous  “imaging”  idea when I write on the internet? Here in Montréal, we say that a picture is worth 1000 words (“Une image vaut mille mots.”)”

For images to display on the Internet, you need to find a site to host them. That means you upload your images to that site’s servers. This doesn’t have to be complicated. When you add a photo to Facebook or Instagram, you’re uploading it to their servers in order to display it online.

You don’t say which platform you’re writing on the Internet with, but most services that allow you to create a website offer a fairly easy way to add images. For example, here in WordPress, the software I use for creating this site, there’s an Add button located in the menu with my text options where I can choose to add media like images and videos.

When you see an image in an article on the Internet, the image isn’t actually part of the article. The article is just displaying the image from the server it’s been uploaded to.  For example here’s how an image displays in an article about charging a laptop.

But if I look at the html for the site, (HTML is a programming language the makes sure things on a website display properly.) you see that what’s actually on the page is a direction to view the image on the server where it’s been uploaded.  Fortunately, when you use sites like WordPress, Blogger, or Facebook, you don’t have to write the code. Their software figures it out for you.

If I were to delete that image from its location on the server, it would disappear from the article.  Here’s an example.

You may have noticed when looking at some of your old newsletters from WorldStart that the images are missing. That’s because the pictures weren’t actually contained in the newsletter. That would make newsletters much too large to send. Instead, what you were viewing were the images stored on WorldStart’s servers. When those servers shut down, those images disappeared.  The best example I can think of is that it’s like watching a webcam of some fish in an aquarium at a zoo. The fish may be far away, but as long as that camera is still trained on those fish, you can pull them up and watch them anytime. But if the fish die, the aquarium is moved, or someone pulls the plug on the camera, you can’t see them anymore, even if you still have the link to watch the webcam.

The same thing applies to adding images to newsletters. You could actually attach a lot of images to an email, but it would take a long time to send and clog up inboxes. Most businesses upload the images to a website and then use the html language to direct the newsletter to show that picture to you.

Email programs like Outlook.com and Gmail give you the option of uploading large images to their cloud drives and displaying them from there instead of attaching large files.

I hope that makes it a little easier to understand.