SETTING UP YOUR OWN
ONLINE INSECT COLLECTION

STEP ONE:

   A) JOIN A PHOTO SHARING WEBSITE

Photo sharing websites offer online software tools that allow you to upload, store, organize and share your digital photos and some sites even allow you to edit your pictures. Some limit storage and photo size so check the site's terms and conditions. To find a free photo sharing website use a search engine such as Google and do a search on "free photo sharing websites". Some of the most popular are Webshots, Yahoo's Flickr, or Google's Picasa Web Albums. Once you've found one you like, it's easy to join.

OR

   B) GET YOUR OWN SITE

One way to find a free site is to use a search engine such as Google and do a search on "free websites". One place offering free websites is bravenet.com. This company also offers sites with no ads, but can cost from $4.99/month, up. For-free sites may require setup fees. Some other free sites are yola.com or webs.com where your pages will bear their ads. Sites with fewer ads require membership fees. While affordable web hosting services are easy to come by, costs and services can vary considerably, so it's important to compare reliability, reputation and customer support features, the amount of multimedia storage each provider offers and also find out what the limitations are on file sharing, uploading and downloading.

STEP TWO: SCAN OR PHOTOGRAPH YOUR INSECTS

If you have a digital camera you may want to look over our notes on how to use it here. For info on scanning, visit our Scanning Page.

STEP THREE: IDENTIFY YOUR CRITTER

USING BUGGUIDE.NET FOR IDENTIFICATIONS If you own a digital camera you can have your digital pictures of insects identified online at BugGuide.Net. At the above page register for free, then  log in and click on  "ID Request." On the resulting page click on "add image," and fill in the information boxes. When you come to the box called "Image" you need to tell BugGuide.Net where your picture is found in your own computer. Click on "Choose" at the right of that box, then navigate the subdirectories or folders of your  computer until you find file holding your file. When you finish all the boxes and click on  "Submit,"  in a few seconds your photo will appear at the head of the line of photos needing to be identified, and probably someone, someplace in the world, will let you know your bug's name.

Our Backyard Insects Section introduces the world of backyard insects and shows how to get started identifying them. There we explain how to use a field guide and how to do a search using the internet. If you are still having trouble IDing your critter you can always post your image on What's That Bug or on Bugguide.net.

STEP FOUR: POST YOUR IMAGES

AT PHOTO-SHARING SITES: If you're using a photo sharing website, simply follow their instructions to upload your pictures.

AT YOUR FREE WEBSITE: Some free websites enable you to post your text and images without having to know anything about HTML code and without having to use a special FTP program. Other free websites may require you to learn some very simple HTML code, which is no big deal. A good place to learn the basics is Mike Smith's Basic HTML formatting tags page. Notice the "Insertion of in-line images" link, which you'll use for placing your insect image on a web page.

Once you have your page made with your pictures on it, send it to your new website. Each site provider has its own way of uploading your pages from your computer into their computer, so they can put them onto the internet. When you get your site, just follow your company's instructions. If your company requires you to FTP your work, that's not a problem because you can download a free FTP program. Just use a search engine and the keywords "WSFTP free download." WSFTP is freeware and comes with instructions on how to FTP files from your computer to your website host.