How can I host images on the Web?

You're exactly right that many services will let you include images in your blog entries, your MySpace profile, and so on, but that they won't actually host the images on their server.

In case you're not entirely sure what I'm talking about, let me explain that just a wee bit more. When you have images, photos or pictures on your computer, the only person who can access it is you. If you want to include it on a Web page, etc., then you have to put it somewhere before others can see it, and that somewhere is a Web server somewhere on the Internet itself.

There are a number of choices for this, including Flickr (which I've written about in How can I host blog images on Flickr?) but this time let's focus on a different image storage site that's also free, and also easy to work with: Photobucket.com.

Your first step is to Register for Photobucket.com. Do that, then we can continue...

Good, you're back. You got past all the "special offers" that are presented during the Photobucket.com signup process. Did you notice that if you click on "No Thanks" on the bottom of the signup offer pages you could skip it all?

Now, let's say that you have a handy photograph sitting on your computer like I have on mine. It's easy to upload it to Photobucket.com. Click on "My Album" on the navigational bar and you'll get here:

Now, click on "Choose File" and find the particular graphic image or photograph you want to upload. On my Mac it looks like this:

Once you've done that, you should see the image name appear on the Web form:

Now, almost done, click on "Upload It." and after just a few seconds you should see "Image Uploaded" and see it, with the key information you want immediately below:

See the box labeled Tag? That's probably what you'll want to copy and paste into your blog entries and/or your MySpace profile or similar. I'll do that here and let's see what happens:

That's all there is to it!