Many members like to have a map of the States they have visited in their signature. The instructions for building the map can be found at
http://www.epgsoft.com/VisitedStatesMap/ Following the instructions there results in you having a picture of the States you have visited stored as a .jpg file on your computer. I assume you have finished the process of building the States Visited map and have stored the resulting image as a .jpg on your computer.
Upload the Picture to Tinypic
The next step is to load the picture (let's say you named it states.visited.jpg) to a web site. I use Tinypic for my pictures, so that is what I will show you. Go to
www.tinypic.com and you should see this screen (there is more, this is just a partial image).
Select "Browse" to the right of "File Name:" and locate the file you saved as states.visited.jpg. Double clicking on it will bring you back to the above screen with the fully qualified file name loaded. Now click on the "UPLOAD NOW!" button. You will be prompted to answer a "security question" (what characters are displayed?) and then your picture will be uploaded. Assuming the upload was successful (I am not going to try and cover what to do if it fails), you should see a screen like this:
You want to save (cut/paste) the data in the second box entitled "IMG Code for Forums & Message Boards". In this example the data is
[IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/14bi4n5.jpg[/IMG
] Save the data in a file somewhere where you can find it later. I have a Word document in which I keep all of the Tinypic links with comments about what they are.
Update Your Profile
Next we will add the Tinypic link information to your MOC Profile so it will be displayed on each of your posts. In the upper right hand corner of every MOC page is a number of options, you want to click on the "Profile" one
Provide your User Name and current password and click on "Submit". Here is an example (my profile) of what you will be looking at:
What we want is the box labeled "Signature". Anything in this field is automatically added to every post you make. As you can see, I have some text about my truck and Montana along with a link to Tinypic for my current picture. Actually there is more there but this gives you an idea of what it looks like.
You can also add other text, pictures, or most anything you want. But let's start with your States Visited picture. You need to store that Tinypic link data you saved earlier in your "Signature" field. Cut/Paste it (you can type the whole string by hand, but if your typing skills are like mine, it will never be right) into the "Signature" field, then Click on the "Preview button. Hopefully an image of your States Visited will magically appear. Assuming it does, don't forget to click on the "Submit" button at the bottom of the page. This saves your updates for future use.
Hopefully this makes sense to you and results in a profile signature you like.
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