Avatars, Signatures & pictures in messages

[Mrs. Higgins]

This thread contains some instructions for setting up an avatar/icon or a signature, and how to put a picture in a message.

1. First save the picture to your computer.

2. Then you need to store the photo on the web. Sign up for a Photobucket album. Go to www.photobucket.com and follow the instructions to register. A basic Photobucket account is free, but you can upgrade to Pro for $25 a year if you need more space.

When you’ve done that, you have to upload the photo from your computer to the Photobucket album. Under Upload Images and Videos, click on Choose Files and point to where you saved the photo on your computer. It should then be uploaded to Photobucket. If it works, the photo should now be shown further down the page.

3. You can always add more pictures to your Photobucket album at any time. It's a great place to store pictures instead of having your pictures taking up space on your computer.
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[Mrs. Higgins]

To use a picture in a message.

Go to your Photobucket album and find the photo you want to use. Underneath the photo, click on the text in the “Img” box. It will be copied to your Clipboard. Then, when you write your message on Victorian Fashions Tea Party, simply paste it into your message (right click in the message, and select Paste).


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[Mrs. Higgins]

To set up an avatar.

Your avatar is the picture on the left of your messages under your name. To set one up…

1. While signed in to VFTP, go to your profile (click on the Profile button towards the top of the screen). Click on "Modify Profile" at the top of your profile.

2. Go down to the section called Personal Information. The box labelled Personal Text is where you can type any text that you’d like to appear underneath your avatar picture.

3. Under the Avatar drop down box, select the word "None"

4. Then open up another copy of Internet Explorer or Firefox, go to your Photobucket album, and find the photo. Underneath the photo, select all the text in the box labelled “URL" and copy it.

5. Go back to your VFTP profile. Paste the text you copied from your album into the long box to the right of where it says "Avatar URL".

6. Put some values into the "Avatar Width" and "Avatar Height" boxes- any number up to 100. If the photo is square, choose 100 and 100. If it isn't square, you'll need to experiment with a width and a height that will make the picture appear correct (otherwise it will appear squashed). Experiment – type in couple of values for a Width and a Height. Then click Modify Profile. You’ll be able to see the result. If it needs adjustment, go back to Modify Profile and try some different values. An avatar can be no more than 100 X 100.


Note: In Photobucket, it's possible to put all your photos into one big album. However, you can also create sub-albums, and arrange your photos in them. If your avatar picture is in a sub-album, make sure that the name of the sub-album doesn't have any spaces in it. If it does, the avatar photo won't work. It must either be in the main album, or in a sub-album whose name doesn't have any spaces.

This only affects avatar pictures. Pictures in messages or signatures can come from sub-albums with spaces in their names.


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[Mrs. Higgins]

To set up a signature.

Your signature appears at the bottom of your messages, in small type.

Go into your profile, as above. Then go down to the Personal Information section. Type what you want into your Signature box (you can type in up to 400 characters).

You can even put in a picture. Just follow the instructions for putting a picture in a message. In other words, under the picture in Photobucket, copy the text in the box labelled "Img" and paste it into the Signature box in your profile. If you want to centre the picture in your signature, type {center} before the name of the picture, and {/center} after it - but use square brackets instead of {} Then click Modify Profile.


If you use a picture in your signature, please note that the VFTP rules ask that you keep the size of your signature to no more than 500 pixels in width and 200 pixels in height. This applies to the whole signature, so if it contains more than one picture, the total size should be no more than 500x200.

You should be able to find out the size of an individual picture fairly easily, for example in your photo-editing program, or in Windows Explorer if you hover the cursor over the file name.