The British Towns and Villages website is nearly 10 years old and over the years we have had a great deal of email from people who wished to contribute to the site in one way or another. In the early days we had to do all that manually but now we can let you contribute directly. We have set up three different ways, or formats, that will allow you to input your content to the site and this is how you go about doing it.
Before you can add anything to the site you will need to get a PIN code. Your PIN code is valid for all user upload, you do not need to get a new one for different locations. Getting a PIN is easy and automatic, it simply confirms you are who you say you are. You can get a PIN code from your local page on this site; either use the search box at the top right of this page or our location finder. When you get to your local page click on "News, stories and Images" and you will see a link to get your PIN code.
We have created three different formats for upload content as follows
* All photographs must have a title and a short, one line description.
This will allow you to add most things about a particular location, written text on its own could be a history of your village or part of it, written text with a picture could be a news worthy event or a description of something special like the church or chapel where you wish to write something about it, however if your writing is not good but your photography is then you can just upload photographs on their own*.
We display your images at around 700 pixels wide/high and our servers will automatically adjust them to that size. If you upload a very small image it will go FUZZY when the server expands it to a size suitable for public display. Please note we will delete images that are not of sufficient quality for display. If your first attempt does not work or looks horrible, just try again, we will sort out and display the best image.
You cannot upload images that larger than 10,000 pixels in either dimension (That is they must be less than 10Mb in size) but that will cope with most of your images without the need for you to do anything with them.
If you wish too your image will be of the best quality if you resize it before you upload it to us, that way you are in control of what it will look like. What you should do is shrink you image until the longest side is 1000 pixels. It is always better to reduce a big image than to expand a small one.
Maximum size is 10,000,000 pixels overall BUT the best size is 1000 pixels on the longest side.
It is also best not to upload too small an image as our systems will automatically make the image 650 pixels and small images will become very fuzzy when they are expanded. If you cannot make your images exactly 1000 pixels, don't worry anything between 500 and 1000 will do, the upload process will sort them out automatically.
However, it is very useful to learn how to resize images because you should also do this if you are sending images attached to emails so that you do not overfill the inboxes of your friends and family.
Here are some FREE tools to help you resize images...
If you need to reduce the size of your images you can do it online here
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We suggest you use the "Forum BIG 650 x . " pre-defined size option
if you use XP you can download a FREE Image Resizer direct from Microsoft
More information about MS Power Toy Image Resizer
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If you have Vista on your PC then follow this link to VSO Software:
(External site will open in a new window)
Check your camera software on your PC as most have an "image Export" function that will make reduced size copies of your images
Other than the size of the image we can allow you to upload there is no limit to the number of articles, news stories or photographs you may submit. You do not need to confine yourself to one location either, your PIN will work for any city, town, parish or village.
The content that you upload displays on the specific location pages on this site, so photographs of Chester are on the Chester pages however as the quantity of items user upload increases we will think of new ways to display all of it. For example we already display eight of the latest images that have been uploaded on our Home Page and we have created individual display pages for users that become regular contributors like some kind of online photo album. These album pages automatically appear when a user reaches a given number of contributions.
You are probably as keen as us that your images get indexed by Google so that the entire World can see them but if that is what you would wish there are a few simple rules to follow.
If you take a picture of a church then don't title the image "Church" because there are millions of churches! - say which one "All Saints Church" and the description would be something like "The west side and tower of All Saints Church in St Ives"
We will automatically add other details about the location in the United Kingdom to the display pages like the Borough or District and the Country (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, etc. even Jersey and Guernsey) so you just need to concentrate on what is "in" your photograph.
You may find occasionally that we edit the title or description to prevent duplication of names.
Simply go to the local page on this site whose location is the same as the content of your article, news story or photograph and follow the instructions on the page. You can go directly to any of our local pages using the Find a Location facility
Hopefully you should not have any as we have very carefully tested our systems and they have been in use for a while. There are however two things that can cause problems and they are as follows;
If you are in any doubt or wish to ask a question regarding the submission of user content please use the FEEDBACK form and make contact with us.