Images in bulk mails.

Inserting or adding images to a bulk mail will add a bit of colour and variety to your text. There are a couple of things to keep in mind.

• Keep your images small - anything over 80kb will cause you trouble in the long run, and will take more bandwidth to send and download on the other side. If your images are quite big - resize them - to do that you can use a program if you know how to do that - or send them to us to resize for you. Please DO NOT just put the image in your mail and grab the edge and make it smaller. This distorts your image and does not change the actual image size.

To add images to the mail - you first need to upload them onto the server. Once you have the image to a good size, and saved on your computer - go to your compose email screen. On the FCK editor menu bar - you will see an icon that looks like a small picture of a mountain on a yellow background: . Click on that and on the pop up box that appears - click on Browse Server: . This will then take you to your server - where the images will be saved and stored. If you have a specific event or occasion and want to keep all the images for that together - then you can create a folder to put those into. Once you have browsed to the space where you want to save the image - click on the browse button at the bottom of that window, and browse to your image - double click on it - and when you see the file path in the browse field - click on upload.

The image will now be saved on the server. Please note that images cannot be removed or deleted off the server once they have been uploaded. If you need to change an image - you need to upload it with the exact same name - and the first image will be replaced.

So once the image is uploaded to the server - you need to insert it into your mail. The best thing to do is start with tables - create these right from the start - as they keep the text and images in the correct places. Type out the text into the mail where you want it - and in the spaces where you want images - click with your mouse - then click on the Insert/edit Image icon: and browse to where you uploaded the image - click on it, and once you have checked in the window that it is the correct image - click on OK. The image will now be in your mail!

You have the choice to send images as either linked images or embedded images, by checking the check box on the right of the screen next to the the Subject line.

If you choose to send images as embedded images - the recipient will not have to download the images - they are shown by default. There is however an increased risk that the mail may be picked up by anti-virus filters, or end up in a spam box. If you want to send the images as linked images - just leave the embed checkbox unchecked - and the images will be sent as linked images - and the recipient will have to download them on the other side.

For tips on using GIMP - a great image manipulation program available for download on the internet - click here.