the easiest way is to send jGeoff your photo in an email.

BUT if you want to post your *own* photos in your messages you have to do it by "linking" to them .... heeeeeeeeeeeeere's how to do it.

1) goto Yahoo and open your own "Yahoo Group". This is kind of like a little personal homepage with a couple pre-arranged areas like "messages", "Files" and ... "Photos".
(Making it a completely restricted private group, with a restricted membership - where no one else can join - makes it easier to manage ... and private.)

2) upload from your computer the photos you want to post and put them in the "Photos" section of the Yahoo group you've just opened.

3) once a photo is uploaded to the "Photos" section; open that photo to it's largest size by clicking on the thumbnail (the "Photo" section is a thumbnail gallery).

4) once the nice large version of the photo is opened, *right-click* on the photo, and from the little menu that pops-up, select "Properties".

5) using your mouse, highlight the URL (in the normal fashion) that is listed in the "Properties" box that you just popped-up ... note that you may need to pull your highlighting down to get the whole URL because the URL's 'scroll' if they don't fit on just 2 lines ..... once the URL is completely highlighted; then "copy" it (again by *right-clicking* on the URL *while it's still highlighted*; and selecting "copy" from the little menu that pops up.

6) you now have the URL of the photo copied into the memory on your computer (onto the "clipboard" as they say).

7) now, goto our GF BB and open the message you want to stick it in. There is a button on our message-writing screens that says "IMAGE"; use that button to insert the image ...... just paste the URL that you had copied into your computers memory into the "IMAGE" box.

That's it!

I realize this sounds complicated, but it's really very simple once you've done it a couple times.

The reason this works is because there is a yahoo security code at the end of the URL for your photo ... that is ... the URL doesn't end with ".jpg" ... it ends with the security code; this is the code that allows the photo to be accessed (at yahoo) by our bulliten board system.

However; note that this same security code also *prevents* the use of photos linked from yahoo groups from being used as **avatars**.
For whatever reason the avatar-link function doesn't like the security codes.
For an avatar, you need to have a photo whose URL ends in the letters "JPG". That is why photos often have to be sent by email to jGeoff if you want to use them as an avatar.

One final note: occasionally, yahoo mysteriously changes the security codes on some photos (I'm not sure why this happens) and suddenly the photo in your BB message/post isn't showing. When that happens you have to go back to your Yahoo group and recopy the URL again (with its 'new' security code) and re-insert the photo into your post. It doesn't seem to happen that often though.

If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them. I don't get the chance to post as often as I used to, so if I don't respond to a question right away you can send me a "private message" that you've posted, and it will forward a note to my email which I check all the time ... but I'll check back here for a bit in case anyone posts.

Tony