Inserting images from Wikimedia Commons

[Phidippides]

As you may know, Wikimedia Commons is a great place to find free historical photos.  I believe within the last few months, they've been implementing a system which allows users an even easier way of placing those images on web sites, including discussion forums.  It does it while keeping any image licenses intact without having to do anything additional, and it also stores the image on Wikimedia's servers.  Here's how to do it.

First, find an image you like and click on "Use this file on the web" (note: not all image pages have this link, but most of them do).



Second, in the box that pops up, click on the radio button which says "BBCode".  This automatically formats the image so it will work on discussion forums (like WCF).



Next, pick the width you want to display.  Most people's monitors will work best if you choose either 512 pixels wide or 1024 pixels wide.  Wider images than that lead to forced scrolling.  The code is automatically generated in the HTML/BBCode box below, so just click on that and copy the highlighted portion.



Lastly, go to WCF and paste what you've copied into the message box.  The code output will look something like what is below.  



This is the end result.  Enjoy!


RosewellPlantation [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], by Agadant (Own work), from Wikimedia Commons

[Aetheling]

Noted, thx

[scout1067]

I will probably use that for some photos on my webpage.  It will let me save storgae space on the server.  Thanks for the tip.