I’ve seen multiple entries on this. I’m completely confused as to why, when everything else about Basecamp is so lovely, elegant, and easy that the process of embedding an image within a message is so confusing and undependable.

I use Basecamp for just about everything that can be deemed a “project” in my life, from marketing materials approval to focus groups to the current remodel of our home. I’m aware images can be “attached” and in this case behave dependably. But I’ve had the same problem with embedding images as others have: I’ve uploaded the pictures to the “Files” section, then embedded it using the Textile ”!” method. However, the image links always break. There are instances where I’ve even changed the links multiple times, only to come back to find them broken yet again.

I’m an advanced user but not always the most thorough guy on the planet—am I doing something wrong here? Is there a dependable way to embed images within a Basecamp message that will ensure an image stays there that does NOT involve having an outside, dedicated ftp server to use for image uploads? I have a separate Amazon S3 account, but because this is integrated into Basecamp, I feel like this may be part of the problem.

Please: all I want to do is be able to show my contractor images without making them click-thru to the attached file. They’re not the most online-savvy guys in the world, and if it isn’t as simple as going to the message page and seeing a “list” of images right in front of them, they’ll simply stop logging on. As much as I personally love Basecamp, there have been more than a few times I’ve had to stop using it for particular projects and revert to “old” ways like emailing crap back and forth, because some people simply don’t “get it.” I feel like I continue to “fight the good fight” by forcing those I can, like vendors, to use the system, but I need some help on this issue in particular.

We use Jing to make screen shots and video tutorials, and found that its easy as pie to embed Jing images into Basecamp.

You may want to give Jing a try, at the moment the service is free from TechSmith (the makers of Snagit). They have both Mac and Windows versions.

http://www.jingproject.com

Thanks – just downloaded Jing for Mac and have been playing with it for a few minutes. It does seem to solve the issue, although at some point, at the end of the “Jing Project,” image hosting will no longer be free. It’s a somewhat complicated solution to what seems like it would be a simple problem. Files I post to Basecamp should live at a permanent location so they can be embedded in perpetuity.

But I’m intrigued by some of Jing’s other applications, so definitely thanks for the recommendation! I’m going to have fun playing with it.

As a security measure, links to files you upload to Basecamp will expire after a short period. (While not ideal in your case, this is actually a good thing in the long run.) We don’t offer pure embedding of images but Basecamp will automatically make a nice thumbnail of any image file you upload to a message, which may be a good alternative for you.

That seems silly – there’s surely some way around the security issue. And the thumbnail alternative is not a solution, it’s a Band-Aid that requires additional click-thrus, especially when dealing with a long series of images. I personally don’t understand how files can be uploaded to Basecamp, which is supposedly a secure system, but not have a consistent URL – unless, of course, it’s because it’s more cost-efficient to host on a cheaper service like Amazon S3, so your own servers don’t host and service higher traffic – which begs the question as to why, at various points in my history with Basecamp, have I paid as much as $150/month for the service? As I wrote in my original post, it just seems to run counter to everything else Basecamp is about – or purports to be about.

The Jing/Screencast solution suggested by wesvt is working quite nicely at the moment. Effectively, Screencast has solved 37signals’ problem.

I couldn’t understand “links to files you upload to Basecamp will expire” part. What does this mean? What link are we talking about? If I right click and say “copy link location” and put it in a message, does that link expire after a while? Is there another link? Is there a way to share a link (making it public?)?

Could you please explain the expiration?

Iv been using basecamp for a while I cant remember files leaving do they? If so whats a short period of time… I am assuming as long as I don’t go over my allotted space all is well. For as long as I own the account. Is this not correct… archived files are slowly deteriorating and I don’t even know it?

Again, I cant remember once instant where something was gone that I uploaded.

The files are still there but the URL pointing to the file gets regenerated each time the file is accessed so linking them in messages won’t work in the long term.

Thanks for the update on that.

Sarah Hatter said: “As a security measure, links to files you upload to Basecamp will expire after a short period.” . People without login cannot access the links; so how can expiring the links be a security measure? what is the security threat? I am confused. Could you explain?

I’m curious on this, too. I was about to post and ask for a “Links” tab. I don’t want to post a message, writeboard, etc. with my links. I’d like to have a sidebar or tab dedicated to links that I can put up for my customers.

cagdas brings up a great point about security. What’s the threat if the only people who can access the project are users who must log in? In general, what’s the security threat? If I were to post a link to my intranet site, even basecamp users couldn’t click it and access the site without VPN access and username/password for our internal server.

We actually prefer the current way. First, we usually pass around high-res screenshots, and having those inline would be quite cumbersome. Second, seeing them inline would only be useful the first time; after that, every time you revisited the thread to read a reply, you’d have to scroll past all the images. I can understand how it would be useful for some people, but I need to throw my vote into “keep it as-is”, personally. :)

Having just switched from FTP to Basecamp file hosting, I’m finding this non-persistent url thing particularly painful. I have a lot of non-savvy clients, whom in the past I would send a link to their new screenshot. This expiring url thing renders that impossible, so like others have mentioned here, I’m now forced to email screenshots to these clients.

I’d like a proper explanation of this, as it doesn’t seem to have been resolved here.

Has this changed recently? We’ve always been able to post a file in Files, “copy link as” then post that link with the exclamation marks around it to display the image inline within a Message. For 4 years, I’ve never seen this break.

Are you saying it now breaks?

We had similar issues so are building this http://www.vyoopoint.com as an add on tool for BC (which we love and use all the time). The cool thing is you’ll see thumbnails of all your images and then clicking on one will pop a gallery of all the images where you, or your clients can comment and mark them up.

I have to say this might just be a deal breaker for us. Without the ability to point to a final image from our requirements documents, there’s no way to make sure our QA dept. is checking against the correct mockup. Sure, we can link to the message, but then they have to scroll all the way down to the bottom and check it against the others in the thread. Is there anything we can do but go elsewhere?

Check out ProofHQ – it’s a much richer file proofing app (review, edit, markup, annotate images) that integrates with Basecamp.

There seems to be 2 different URLs for an image uploaded to the Basecamp file hosting.

Once uploaded, if you right-click on the thumbnail and copy the link, you get something like this:

http://youraccount.grouphub.com/projects/00000/files/00000/filename.jpg

If you click on the thumbnail, the URL becomes something like

http://s3.amazonaws.com/basec/00000/0000000/filename.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=00000&Expires=00000&Signature=00000

From what we experienced, you can embed the first link in exclamation marks within your message and the link will not break. The s3 links are public so therefore they need to expire.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.