Notes on Editing Posts and Suchlike

Much of this has been explained piecemeal across the forum by me or others. However, it would be handy if all such information were in one place. Please feel free to add stuff and/or point out anything that's poorly explained -- or undiluted gibberish -- and I'll deal with it. Some of this might seem simplistic but I've seen everything here cause problems in the past.   

Editing and deleting posts
It doesn't seem to be common knowledge that you can always edit a post. The one caveat is that once half an hour has passed since originally posting, you'll get an unsightly message at bottom right... as you can see here.* So if you're editing grammar, correcting typos and/or adding information, you would do well to do so within 30 minutes.

The big advantage of being able to edit a post until eternity is that you can, for example, delete or replace embedded videos that have been removed. As for deleting entire posts, click on the "cogwheel" at far right and scroll down. You can also use this feature if you wish to revise a post on the strength of new information received. Save the post in question to your PC/tablet/whatever, delete that post here and repost it in the form you'd prefer. Needless to say, the ability to edit and delete posts can be abused, like anything else.

Polls
You can only organize a poll in the opening post of a thread. If you forget, save that poll-less opening post to your hard disk, delete the topic and begin again before others join in. If they do, it becomes a job for the mods that could have been avoided.

Uploading images
If the image is on your hard disk, drag it to the Desktop (or anywhere else you consider convenient). Then go online to "postimages.org". Click on "Do not resize my image" and scroll down to "640x480 (for message boards)". Then go to "Choose image", go to Desktop, click on that image and then "Choose". It will upload in seconds. This gives you a "direct link", which is what you need for posting, so copy that. Click on the image logo, the little square with a landscape on it at top right (you'll see it when you're creating or editing a post), and paste the direct link into it, making sure the "http://" bit isn't double.

If you're looking to embed an image that's already online, this example may help. Say you want a picture of a particular 45 by The Euclid Beach Band. Google the string "there's no surf in cleveland" and then go to <images>. Click on an image of the 45 (in this case "45cat"), which duplicates it in its own box on the right, where you right-click the option "Open Image in New Tab". Then copy and paste the new tab's URL (in this case images.45cat.com/euclid-beach-band-theres-no-surf-in-cleveland-1978-12.jpg) into your reply post; you do this by clicking on the image logo (see previous paragraph) and pasting the image's URL into it. 

You can also try dragging the image into the post -- sometimes it's the only way to get an image of, say, an album cover up to a size where you can read the information. So there's that option too.  

Shouts
You can always edit a shout. Move the cursor onto your shout and "Edit" will appear at the right. (Click on the X to delete a shout).

To be continued, no doubt.

* Of course, you can always make light of that "edit" message by adding a comment, as here.