Frequently Asked Questions

Posterous lets you post things online fast using email. You email us at post@posterous.com and we reply instantly with your new posterous blog.

If you can use email, you can have your own website to share thoughts and media with friends, family and the world.

Posterous is NOT a micro blog. There's nothing micro about it! There are no limits to what you can post. We're here to build the best web publishing platform out there, whether it's your gateway to Twitter, your family website, or your pro blog. There's nothing Posterous can't do.

You can send anything! Posterous will accept any file you send and convert it to the most web friendly format available. We'll host everything and publish it online instantly.

You can attach any type of file and we'll post it along with the text of your email.
We'll do smarter things for photos, audio files and links, documents and video (both links AND files). Here's just a sample of what we support.

If you attach one photo (of any size, even direct from your camera!), we'll resize it to a web-friendly size and post it. If you attach more than one photo in the same message, we automatically create a good looking image gallery like this one:

We'll drop the music into a web MP3 player so that your readers can listen to it right there in their web browsers.

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We will transcode your video so that you can see it in a flash player right there in your browser. It will even play on an iPhone without flash.

We take almost all video files you can think of, and we'll host the file too, so you don't have to do any work at all. Posterous is THE easiest way to post a video online using email.

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We turn any URLs into links. But we try to do smarter things when we can.

If you paste a YouTube link, like this video of Kansas playing Carry On Wayward Son:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB17uWuBrL0

We automatically turn it into a YouTube embeded player for your new post:

We currently automatically embed players for the following sites: YouTube, Google Video, Hulu, Funny Or Die, Omnisio, MixWit, Justin.TV, Fliggo, Vimeo, motionbox, TED Talks, Viddler, Dailymotion, Blip.tv, Revver, TeacherTube, GodTube, seesmic, Brightcove, and others.

Are you on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and other networks? Don't post to each of these places manually! Post to Posterous by email and we'll update all the other communities you are a part of.

Autopost to everywhere
Just set up your other accounts here. The next time you post to posterous, we will instantly autopost everywhere else.

A full list of supported autopost sites can be found here.

Absolutely. You can set a password on your site so only the readers you want can see it. They don't need to create an account to see your site, just enter the password you give them. Simple. More information about private sites can be found here.

You can also make a single post private by emailing it to private@posterous.com. We'll send you back a secret URL to that post.

Posterous is great for group sites. You can add your friends or family’s email addresses to any Posterous site you control. Then they email post@sitename.posterous.com to post to it. They don't even need to create an account.

All posts and comments on that site will be emailed to all contributors instantly. It's works just like an email list, but smarter.

Posterous groups are useful for families, sports teams, etc. to share photos and video. No registration required, no software to learn, no hoops to jump through.

Add tags simply in the subject of your email using the syntax ((tag: apple, gadgets)). This works in the bookmarklet too. You can see your tags on the homepage of your site and click on them to see those posts. You can also see what people are saying about any given topic.

Our bookmarklet is smart as heck. It automatically extracts photos, video, music, and text from the sites you are on. Get started and install it now.

Posterous is a great companion to Twitter. How else are you going to share photos and video in 140 characters? Check out our Twitter help page.

Instant audio podcast
Your RSS feed at http://yournamehere.posterous.com/rss doubles as an iTunes-ready podcast feed. Just attach an mp3 to an email and you're good to go. Link to itpc://yournamehere.posterous.com/rss and let your friends subscribe in iTunes directly.

Custom domain names (yournamehere.com)
Got a domain name already? Want to use it with your posterous? No sweat -- just set up the DNS and run with it. More info is here.

Remove your email signature
End your post with '#end' and we'll ignore any text we find after that.

Email can easily be spoofed, but Posterous has come up with some ways to figure out if the email we receive comes from you. If we think it might not be you, we ask you to confirm the email before we post it.

No matter what, you always get an email notification of every post we put online for your blog, with an easy link to remove the post if you didn't do it.

Heck no. We only share what you tell us to share. We will always keep your email address and personal information private. See our privacy policy.

Yes, Posterous is enthusiastically a free service. Later, we'll be adding premium features we know you'll love, but there will always be a useful free version you can use.

You get up to 1 GB of total space for personal use. When you approach 1 GB, we'll contact you to make sure you still need the space and, if so, increase your limit. We'll be rolling out more space and unlimited premium accounts in the months ahead.

We focus on THE best email experience, and do a lot more to support large photo galleries and other file downloads. Other sites force you to upload through cumbersome web forms. With posterous, you can attach any files you want. Plus, you don't have to remember a gibberish secret email address. Just post@posterous.com and that's it.

We can import your old site from most blogging platforms. Just go to the Switch page and get started now!

We're working hard to make posterous better every single day.

Cool, check out http://help.posterous.com for more info.