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The link I want to use to post a picture on MySpace is too long, what can I do?

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Summary: Putting pictures into comments on MySpace is easy - unless the URL is too long. We look at how to post a picture in a MySpace comment with a long URL.

I'm trying to use your instructions to put a picture into a comment or put a picture into the caption of another picture but it won't let me. The link to my picture is apparently too long. What can I do?

You've stumbled onto a common problem. In fact, it's typically the cause of the "I only see two dots" complaint.

The good news is that there are services out there that make this very easy to deal with.

In order to post a picture into a MySpace comment or picture caption, you need to actually type in HTML, the "language" of web pages. What you're typing in is the instructions that says "put that picture, here".

It looks something like this:

<img src="http://myspace-355.vo.llnwd.net/00573/55/34/573024355_l.jpg" />

The link we're talking about, called a URL, is this part:

http://myspace-355.vo.llnwd.net/00573/55/34/573024355_l.jpg

If that's too long, then MySpace will not display the picture, and may display something else, like the two dots, instead.

We need to create a shorter URL.

The easiest way to do that is to use a service like SnipURL. Visit http://www.snipurl.com and you'll see this:

SnipURL UI

On the SnipURL site, enter the "long" version of the URL that you have.

Important: do not enter the actual file name - the characters following the last slash! Only enter everything from the "http" to, but not including, that last "/".

So, using our current example, I would enter this:

http://myspace-355.vo.llnwd.net/00573/55/34/

Note how I left off the file name, "573024355_l.jpg". We'll get to that in a second.

Here's what is looks like in SnipURL:

SnipURL with data

Now, press the SNIP URL button. The resulting page will show you your now much smaller URL. In my case, I get:

Snip URL Results

Now we'll put the new SnipURL together with the filename:

http://snipurl.com/15jq6/573024355_l.jpg

is now just a short version of:

http://myspace-355.vo.llnwd.net/00573/55/34/573024355_l.jpg

Which you can now use anywhere you would have used the longer version.

So, to come full circle, in our MySpace "picture in a comment" example, instead of:

<img src="http://myspace-355.vo.llnwd.net/00573/55/34/573024355_l.jpg" />

after creating the SnipURL, we would use this instead:

<img src="http://snipurl.com/15jq6/573024355_l.jpg" />

As you can see, it's much shorter.

Caution: in putting together this article, I attempted to use a similar service called "TinyURL". I'm not certain, but it appears that MySpace is actively preventing TinyURL from being used in cases like this.

As a result, I'm not certain of the future for SnipURL. However, for the moment, I was able to confirm that everything above, when followed exactly, works.

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Article C2876 - December 21, 2006

Recent Comments
118 Comments

It worked with one picture i put on, but now i am trying to out on a picture i made with Paint, and the picture won't show. It will jst come up with an X.

Posted by: Britt at April 22, 2008 9:42 PM

hayy....when i put the picture in and i get the pictre but the public view has the picture and thiss..... var captionID = ""; if (captionID.trim().length > 0) MySpace.Util.applyWBRToElement($get(captionID));

how do i et rid of that?

Posted by: k at April 26, 2008 7:40 AM

omg i'm not computer literate to say the least i've tried all of these short cuts but none are helping do you have mypace tidbits for dummies especially with picture comments

Posted by: miki at June 7, 2008 12:25 PM

Tinypic.com worked for me, and I'm not good at this stuff at all. Just choose a size, and then once you've uploaded, use the HTML for Websites code in your comment on myspace. It starts like this

Posted by: TheTrekhippy at June 13, 2008 7:09 PM

alright, well i've tried all of this but now i get to the shortening step and it won't let me but the url in the box so you can snip it. this is so frustrating. i'm not as good with computers as i thought i was. please helpy. thanks.

Posted by: Christina Sheridan at August 24, 2008 7:54 AM

wat i did is i used da other code [idk if its da same code] but yea i used dat code and instead of puttin da html code i put da direct link and it worked so u can try dat

Posted by: hanna at August 30, 2008 11:01 AM

it doesnt work.
when i click 'save'
it shows up as a little
box with an 'x' in it.

Posted by: jasmine at October 30, 2008 11:37 PM

too bad so sad for everyone else bc I followed your instructions and came out successful. thank you so much for the site reference to snipurl also. it works great!

Posted by: megan at February 4, 2009 7:46 PM

Hi,
i did exsactly what you told me to do and this red 'X' appears. I know you have lots of comments saying this but please help. Thanks.

Posted by: ashley at February 24, 2009 3:21 PM

This should help anyone who doesn't know how to upload pictures to a forum. I made a video with point and click instructions on how to do it. The link can be found here.

http://helpviavideo.com/watch.php?vidid=34

I also made a video on how to quickly and easily resize your photos before uploading. It can be found here.

http://helpviavideo.com/watch.php?vidid=33

Posted by: Martin Sandbach at October 19, 2009 9:50 AM

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