P4C: Getting an Image URL

Getting your photo into your gallery on Geocaching.com is just the first step toward inserting it into the description for a cache or trackable. The next step is to grab the URL for the image you want to use. Just head to the image and grab that URL. How that works varies based on which web browser you happen to be using. We'll start by getting to the right image from your gallery on Geocaching.com (assuming that you're not at that image). You'll need to start by going to your public profile (when logged-in, click on you're screen name, then the stats bar). Across the top are several tabs, click on the "Gallery" tab for a table of recent images you've uploaded. This page shows only the twenty most recent images uploaded so you might have to go a few pages into your gallery if you want something less recent. Once you've located the image you want to use, click on it's thumbnail. You'll find your caption and description on this new page with the image to the right. To grab that URL for the full resolution image, you'll need to right-click (control-click for Macintosh users with a single mouse button) on that image but the menus vary based on which browser and plug-ins you have installed (see the screen capture). Firefox users will pick "Copy Link Location," in Internet Explorer choose "Copy Shortcut," and in Safari you'll pick "Copy Link." Before continuing I'd suggest pasting that URL into the browser's address bar to validate that you have the right URL. It should always look like this (but longer):

http://host.com/image.jpg

(Look for that ".jpg" or ".gif" at the end to confirm that it's a image rather than a page you'll be calling.) Don't loose that URL though as you go to the cache or trackable page where you'd like to use that image and we'll start there next week.

Text and images in this post are copyright 2010 by Darryl Wattenberg, all rights reserved.