Posting images from your computer (not an URL)

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How do I do it?

sorry, but as long as i've been here, direct posting [except for one's avatar] of images from one's own puter has not been allowed on wrong planet, the only way is to take images from one's puter and upload them to a photo hosting site such as imageshack or photobucket. then once you have said accounts at one or both of those places, you just right click on the photo, select "properties" from the pop-up menu, then go halfway down the properties page until you find "image path/url"- highlight [by clicking/dragging mouse] everything from "http" in the beginning, to ".jpg" at the end. hit CTRL-C or right click over the highlight and select "copy," then go back to your wrong planet "post a reply" window, then hit CTRL-V or right click and select "paste" in between [img]and[/img]. hope this helps.

It's not allowed for various reasons - some technical, some security-related.

Here's a simple security-related reason for not allowing it: if you were able to post an image here which is physically sitting on your hard drive you would be giving anyone caring to browse through WP direct access to that image - and therefore to your computer.
A related practical reason: if you switched off your computer the image would disappear from WP until you switched it back on again.

@auntblabby: That's not quite correct with the avatar - when you select one from your computer it's actually uploaded to WP so access is not required to your computer in order to display it.
While the same technique could be applied to images generally, WP would then need some very large servers - just to hold the image content.

oh.

Incorrect

By posting an image on your hard drive, You'd need to upload it to the WP Server, So that the PHP can call the image. Unless you're running a webserver on your computer, chances are that there are no actual physical ways for that to happen, not without a massive PHP File, that'll take ~2hours to execute.

It would be logical to assume it is a cost (And presumably space) saving measure.

Sorry, Cornflake, I'm not having a go, But I'm providing more correct information

You really do elevate failing to read posts to an art-form, don't you?

You're not providing "more correct information" - you're poorly re-explaining with mangled technical detail and agreeing with what I'd already said to auntblabby, where images could be uploaded to WP in the same way as avatars and I briefly mentioned that this would require some hefty resources at WP to deal with the large number and size of images posted here.
The clear inference being: the cost of additional resources which would just end up performing as an unnecessary image duplication service, and that from this viewpoint it's cheaper and more efficient to publish URLs for images hosted by dedicated image hosting services like Photobucket or Imageshack etc.

I'm well aware that there would need to be some means of "publishing" the image on a local hard disk so it would be accessible from the WAN but since it wasn't worth the complexities of explaining the technical detail involved to non-technical viewers, it was cleaner to address this as if it had already been done and an image was accessible externally.

So with reference to my saying that a security-related reason for not allowing it is that anyone caring to browse through WP would require direct access to that image and therefore to the computer - this remains fully correct, and I intentionally avoided trying to explain that the image would need to be published (and avoided explaining how to install and configure a web server), that the firewall would need to be tweaked, that port-forwarding may need to be tweaked, that the ISP may not allow direct access to popular ports anyway, etc - because these are some of the technical reasons why it's not allowed. You'd like to explain to every member wishing to post an image on their hard disk how to set up all this stuff - irrespective of OS, connection method or ISP? And having done that, you'll take responsibility for any compromise to their system's security as a result of following your instructions?
It's also still correct that even if all of this was implemented, the image would vanish from WP when the PC was switched off.

So yeah... thanks. Or something.

Um, thanks guys.