Setting up your account
If you have a yahoo account you are already 9/10ths done to getting your flickr account set up, Yahoo owns Flickr now.
After making an account the first thing you want to do is head over to the blue “You” menu and go down to “My Account” to start setting up some preferences as you how your page looks and who can do what with your photos.
The personal Information tab has quite a bit in the way of choices for you to set up. be sure to look through them all.
Look through all the tabs, I recommend letting anyone note, comment or blog your photos. These are all great ways for people to communicate with you and tell others about your items. we’re going to tackle these tab by tab:
Personal Information:
This is your basic account functions. Set your avatar, Screen name, set your flickr web address, fill out your profile (more on this later), edit your Yahoo login info, and delete your account.
Screen names can be changed at any time I suggest using the username you are most known by, or your real name for either or both.
IMPORTANT! Be sure to set your Flickr Web Address!
When you sign up you have a user number in your URL to reach your pictures, like http://www.flickr.com/photos/83186333@N00, unless you are a memory superhero you will never remember this. You want an easier to remember URL to give out to people. You can choose anything as your URL to reach your pictures, but you CANNOT change it once set, so pick something you want long term – like your name or usual username you use online or on your stores (I use verybigjen on everything) instead of a url with a impossible to remember numeric user number in it.
http://www.flickr.com/verybigjen/ is so much nicer than http://www.flickr.com/photos/83186333@N00 isn’t it?
Privacy and Permissions:
This section has many settings to set for your own wishes and I won’t advise you other than to make these suggestions:
Allow anyone blog your photos, this will add a “blog this” button to all your pics and could result in someone blogging you easier. Remember, this is photo SHARING – not photo keeping.
I also suggest that on the issue of who is allowed to download and print your photos that you set it to at least “You and your friends and family” so when and if you add personal photos (which you can also set separately to “friends and family” only to keep them more private) your relatives and buddies can print them out easily.
Email:
Where you change your email, and set up notifications on your recent activity, but also has a couple select personal-to-you addresses for you to add to your camera phone etc so that you can email direct to your flickr account! Pr even Instantly blog something via email!
Extending Flickr:
This is where you can add or delete blogs that you can blog to from within Flickr, set up your facebook account, and where a list of flickr tools sites you’ve issued permissions (if any) to access your pictures for various things. You likely won’t have anything listed there if just starting out.
Whew! That is pretty comprehensive.
People should know though, that even if you set your photos so that no one can download and print them, they still can download and print them. It’s just a little more work but any photo from Flickr can be saved to someone else’s computer and printed. Their “spaceball” trick will only slow down a determined image thief, not prevent them.
If you really REALLY don’t want anyone saving your photos, it’s best not to put them online at all.