Inserting images into blogs

I don't believe that exactly what you're looking for exists.

The closest is to allow attachments (under content -> configure -> content types) which uploads the file, but doesn't just display it. The user could then use something like the image assist module to browse all the uploaded photos and add the appropriate code to the blog automatically. But they would have to save the blog after adding the attachments so that the photos get uploaded. Then they would have to edit the blog to actually display the photos.

It might make more sense to allow the users to have an image gallery. The only module you need for this is image. They could go to their image gallery to upload all their photos. Then when they are editing their blog, they can browse all their uploaded photos via the image assist module, and automatically add the image code or filter tags.

The advantages to this, over the system you described, is that if they post the same picture more than once, they won't have to upload it again. They can also post thumbnails in the blog, that link to the actual image node. If you are allowing comments, other users would be able to add comments to the blog and the images separately.

Sorry, that's all I can think of to suggest!

One method is to use the image support in the HTMLArea WYSIWYG editor contributed module. The required steps are (this is from memory, so excuse any slips):

1. Download and install the 'Image' contributed module.
2. Download and install the 'HTMLArea' contributed module.
3. Navigate to Admin->Settings->HTMLArea and check the option to allow uploading of images.
4. In the Toolbar settings tab (still in HTMLArea settings), enable the button to insert an image.

The 'Add Image' button brings up a nice little dialog box that allows you to upload your image to whichever taxonomy you want and then insert it into the post.

Hope this helps

David Hamilton
http://www.jiffle.net/

I from time to time add pictures to my blog entries. I do this with the file-attach module and some basic html in the following steps.

* Type in my blog
* Select the picture with the browse button
* Attach it with the 'preview' button
* Uncheck the 'list' option for the attachment and copy the location of the image.
* Make a simple line like this:

<image src="files/thepicture_i_just_uploaded.jpg" align=right border=0>

* Then hit preview again.

image_assist probably is easier but this isn't all that complicated either.

Andri

Administrator by day... Hobby programmer by night...

If you don't want to use WYSIWYG in your blog posts, then the 'Image-Filter' module might help. Unfortunately you will have to upload the images separately (beforehand), but this will allow you to reference them in your post. The markup/markdown for the image takes the following form:

[image:node_id align=alignment hspace=n vspace=n border=n
     size=label width=n height=n nolink=(0|1)
     class=name styl3=style-data]

(Note that the last attribute is actually 'style' not 'styl3' - the correct word messed up the page format!)

Also, the 'Inline' module allows embedding of uploaded files (as opposed to images, so your images won't have the option of appearing in the Image Galleries). This can include images, although you cannot control the individual sizes of the images - they'll size to the image dimensions, although you can apparently set global limits of the maximum width and height that the images will be sized to.

David
http://www.jiffle.net/

This is this one I use myself (because I happen to prefer rich Markup to WYSIWYG or HTML). Install the 'Image' and 'Marksmarty' modules. Arrange your image gallery taxonomony so that you have two sets of images - the ones that appear in Image Galleries and the ones that do not.

Upload your images and note their node numbers. I use a browser with tabs (Firefox), so that I can have one tab with the main article and the other tabs uploading the images at the same time. Don't worry - You can submit images while you are authoring your article.

In your article, you embed your images (in this case our image has uploaded as node 24) with the following code:

![Alt text](/image/view/24)
or
![Alt text](/image/view/24 "Optional title")

The 'Alt Text' is the required alternative text to allow reading of the page by the blind and Google crawlers, so I would strongly advise using it! The 'image/view/24' picks up the raw image for node 24 from the image gallery module.

More details of the Markdown syntax are available here.

David
http://www.jiffle.net/

Just use XHTML and CSS, that's what I do on my site. Of course, it sucks, but it's the only solution which gives me total control over how the images appear.

--
NSK, Founder of the Wikinerds Community. See my Drupal site, the Wikinerds Portal.

I can relate to your need for an EASY solution. My users sometimes have difficulty logging in and changing their password, so I definitely can't expect them to upload or attach images and then type (or copy and paste) a filter tag into their post.

For my sites, I'm about 99% done with a complete rewrite of img_assist. Like the original img_assist, it's a popup window. It works best with TinyMCE (you won't have to see any filter tags), but it can also be launched from an optional text link below the textarea. Anyway, take a look at some screenshots: http://www.benjaminshell.com/demo/img_assist.htm

Although it's 99% done, I'm just not sure what to do with it. There are already so many different ways to do inline image related things with Drupal that I hate to start yet another new module!

I only tried Mambo for a short while before ditching it for Drupal, but it was incredibly easy to add an image *and* align it at the same time- you could just set this in the input form as left or right etc and that was it.

The problem with all the existing solutions is in their flexibility... There's literally too many uses for img_assist and the like, and no simple way to insert an image into a blog post.

Ideally, something "blogger simple" would be good, but as an absolute baseline, I'd like to see the following option in core/attachment/upload/wherever:

"Display image file types INLINE"

Of course, this would just plop all the images in at the end of a blog post, without nice formatty-ness, but for the most basic users, this is how their post is going to look anyway (though, again, with blogger you might have the image on top, say).

I'm not one to knock Drupal at all - I think it's the best of many solutions out there for a whole lot of things (including my company's intranet)... But, for any story, but especially blogs, having this "dumb" level of functionality is aboslutely KEY to driving Drupal adoption for beginners, who can then take baby steps into learning hand-coding HTML, WYSIWYG editors, etc... But, it's a pain in the ass if your cat had babies and you can't even get a little picture up to say "kittens for sale" until they're six weeks old. ;)

I don't even rate myself a beginner - but I'm definitely too busy to mess around with TinyMCE on a REGULAR basis for my posts. Something simpler is needed, and if it can be simple now and featureful later, that would be best!

I've looked at this question further, and assuming you do want to give your users rich WYSIWYG editing capability then you can do the following:

If you don't want the images to appear as Drupal nodes, then install the HTMLArea module, go to 'plugins' in 'Admin->Settings->HTMLArea' and check the 'ImageManager' plugin. You may want to customise it to use Drupal's file upload area, installation details here. Also Usage Instructions and Screenshot.

If you do want the images to integrate with Drupal Galleries then install the HTMLArea and Image modules, go to 'plugins' in 'Admin->Settings->HTMLArea' and check the 'UploadImage' plugin. Usage Instructions and Screenshot.

If you don't want rich-text editing then the 'Img_Assist' module may well suit you perfectly (as others have suggested) - it just doesn't work with TinyMCE or HTMLArea.

BTW, those that find TinyMCE too complicated to set up might want to try HTMLArea. It is much easier to configure and, in my opinion, more powerful. The only advantage that TinyMCE has it that it allows profiles to display different toolbar layouts to different user types.

edit: As my web host has trashed its server, I have changed the URLs to make it easier to recreate them, if I have to.

edit#2: My web host has got the server back on-line, with the posts restored.

Hope this helps
david

David Hamilton
http://www.jiffle.net/

I created a tutorial on how to install the img_assist. There are a lot of screenshots and you can try it live on my Drupal site. I hope it will help somebody not to break his head trying to solve the inline image uploading issue.

Please, comment on the tutorial page or here if you think something could be added or clarified more.

P.S.
Similar well-screenshotted tutorial on TinyMCE + image uploading is planned