How to add pictures and gifs to your blog

Hello MooMoos!

Thank you so much on a wonderful response on my previous post in this How to Amino series! I'm glad that you find it helpful! :grin:

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Today's topic is a bit more colourful.

So, after you learned the basics of the blog post, you want to spice it up. We're going to talk about adding pictures and gifs, YouTube videos (there's a disclaimer with this) and managing all of these added stuff. I'll make sure to give you many examples so that you can clearly see what is happening.

1. Inserting pictures and gifs

Initially there are two ways to add these - by tapping the camera button in the bottom left corner (left pic - way 1) or by double tapping anywhere on the blank space of your post and selecting the first icon in the top row next to the Bold button (right pic - way 2).

Whatever way you pick, you'll get the same menu. There are various options you can choose from: you can use your camera, search gifs online, add a picture or gif from your gallery and add a video from YouTube. However this way of adding a YouTube video doesn't work for me - I keep getting an error - so, I'll show you the method I use later.

Camera option will open your camera and you can add a freshly photographed pic. I don't use it because there's some delay with the shutter and pictures just end up blurry. Searching for gifs and adding from gallery is very similar and it looks like the interface when you want to send a picture in the chat.

how I said there are two options to add these stuff? Well the difference between those two is that the camera in the left bottom corner allows adding multiple pictures/gifs (and puts them into a certain database), while the one in the upper row allows only one and it will automatically add the picture/gif on the place you tapped in the post.

Which brings me to the next point - how to add the picture/gif in the right place in your blog. That's what that button in the upper row actually does. However, now that you have some pictures in the database of your blog, this option will let you select which picture/gif you want on this specific place where you tapped. I'll cover more about this interface where you can pick stuff from in the Managing part of this post.

☆Bonus information☆

This might be a bit advanced for now, but I want to mention it while on the topic. Feel free to skip this part if it sounds too complicated for now.

You've seen that people sometimes add transparent still stuff to their posts. Because it's still, you may think that it's a picture, but it's actually a gif.

Why? Well, Amino doesn't png format, so every png file pic will be converted to jpg. Instead of a nice transparent background, you'll get a white background where you don't want it. You can google about these two formats if you want, but I'm just going to tell you that png allows transparent parts on the picture, while jpg does not. That's why people use converters - just type: "png to gif converter" in your browser - to make gif format and tell some sweet little lies to Amino.

2. How to add a YouTube video

At the time of making this post, I discovered there's an Amino problem with adding videos. :sleepy: If you want to share a YouTube video, you might want to use a separate link option to do so - our Swan advises this as well. However, you'll only be able to share one video and not multiple ones. Hoping that this bug will be fixed, I'll still explain how I usually do it.

As I said, I keep getting an error if I try to add a clip through the app. That's why I go directly to YouTube, copy the link of the video I want and then add it here.

Normally, the video would show up in the same post database where all of your pictures and gifs are. You would add it to a specific spot in the post the same way you add a picture/gif - with the icon in the upper row. The only difference is that now there is an additional option - a.k.a. the YouTube link you copied.

3. Managing the stuff you added

I keep talking about this post database, but how do you access it? In the bottom left corner, there's a spot between the camera button (which is for adding media) and the wiki button (I'll explain wikis in a separate post in more detail). If you haven't added a single picture, this button won't show up. But, if there is even one picture, it'll there. If there are more pictures than one, there will also be a number of inserted stuff.

This will let you manage your added media: pictures, gifs and YouTube videos (🤞hoping for the bug to be fixed!). There is also an option to add more stuff - consider this as the extension of the first way of adding that I showed you already. You can reorder the inserted media by holding those three dashes on the right and dragging them up or down.

If you press the little pencil icon next to the three dashes, you will get a menu where you can choose if you want this particular pic/gif to be your cover image or if you want to delete it. There is also the "tap to add caption" option where you can type whatever you want and it will be added on your picture.

Delete command will, obviously, remove the content you want. Set as a cover image is also self-explanatory. There will be a tiny yellow banner in the corner of the pic. I hope it is visible here (perfect time to choose yellow cover image lmao):

If you don't select the cover image, your first three added images/gifs/videos (or any combination of those three) will be visible on your profile for that certain post. The first among those three will act as a cover if your post is featured or if you're sending someone the link of your post.

It is also worth mentioning that the limit of stuff you can put in this way is 25. So the sum of all pictures, gifs and YouTube videos has to be less than or equal to 25. If you're making a post on the computer, you will be able to add a few more pics, but you'll experience A LOT of crashing both during the drafting phase and while posting. If you want to then edit something in your post from your phone, you won't be able to post it with more than 25 pics.

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This will be enough for this part. There is a lot of information and this one sounds the scariest, but it's not. And trust me, everything revolving around blogs is much easier after this topic. Next time we will learn how to add links, backgrounds and wikis and that is honestly a walk in the park. :blush:

Soon you'll be pros when it comes to this app!

#blogposts