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Pinterest is a virtual social cataloging and bookmarking site designed around pinning images to virtual bulletin boards. If you haven’t joined yet, you might want to read this post first: What is Pinterest? What is it for?
Are you using it to bookmark websites and blogs?
Or to bookmark specific blog posts?
To save recipes or craft directions?
For inspiration?
Or for planning?
To remember things?
Or share things?
To make a wish list?
Or a gift list?
Or just to save pretty pictures?
Are you pinning things from around the web or just repinning?
Did you know you can add pictures from your own computer?
When I started, I thought I could just pin anything anywhere and organize them later, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Currently, organizing is very limited. You can reorder your boards, but you can’t change the order of the pins on a board. even moving the pins to a new board doesn’t work, they still sort by your original add date. I know it’s still a pretty new site, so hopefully it will get better.
I want to replace some of my pins, both to use better pictures and better sources, but I’m afraid of breaking the links for other people if they’ve repinned or liked my pins. I’m afraid of adding duplicates for the same reason, but it’s hard to know if I have a particular item when I can’t put my pins in any usable order.
How are you using Pinterest? Let me know in the comments.
Related articles
- Meet Pinterest: A Private Social Pinboard That Collects Your Online Memories (mashable.com)
- Best Use for Pinterest (blogher.com)
- Addicted to social media? One more Pinteresting site (ctv.ca)
- Pinterest Productivity (boastinginmyweakness.com)
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I’m so lame..I totally use Pinterest when I’m bored–then I spend WAY too much time on there!
I don’t think it’s lame to use it for entertainment. I do think some people think it’s only for crafters and recipes. I think it’s useful for much more, but you’re right in can be a huge timesuck.
Although the “Help” section says you can upload pics from your own computer, I haven’t found that to be possible. I have tried repeatedly to upload a photo of a project I did, and it won’t accept anything but website pins. The biggest thing I dislike about Pinterest is that there’s no “Home” tab anywhere, so the only way to get back to the Home page is by repeatedly back-browsing. Not very user-friendly.
I have uploaded pictures from my computer before, but it doesn’t seem to be working tonight. The red Pinterest logo at the top of the page is the “Home” link.
OK, I was just able to upload a picture from my hard drive. I still got the 404 error, but when I went to my board, the picture was there.
Oh! and I forgot to add that there’s no way shown to contact the creators with suggestions for corrections or improvements.
You can email them at hi@pinterest.com
this is no longer a valid email, altho they respond to it. to save time, email support@pinterest.zendesk.com
Sent an email to them complaining about the lack of functionality in the program. How on earth can they expect a person to build a pinboard that they wouldn’t constantly want to rearrange? It is in the natur of pinboards to rearrange them. How could that function be so overlooked. There are ways to do it, but they are clunky and time consuming.
Go to this page: https://support.pinterest.com/forums/21117848-top-ideas-and-feature-requests
Click on each idea that you like, then click me too.
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May I ask will you give step by step instructions on how to load a photo from my hard drive please?
It’s the bullet list in the middle of this post: http://debsanswers.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/where-is-it-on-pinterest/
Let me know if you have any questions or if any part doesn’t work.
I have been getting a 404 error when pinning this week, but it still uploaded the image, just wait a few minutes and see if it’s there. I kept trying because i thought it wasn’t working and had to delete the duplicates.
I have unsuccessfully tried for two months now. When I first starting pinning I could upload from my hard drive, now it goes into a never ending “loading indicator” with the circular dots moving mode. I never even get a 404 error. I’ve tried emailing them at hi@pinterest.com and have never heard back from them. Anybody else have a solution?
Do you have a blog or flickr account you can upload it to and pin from there?
Deb, I do not have a blog or flckr. You would think if they used to allow it, and changed something that now prevents uploads, they would mention it. Just a little frustrating. Merry Christmas
They do still allow it. I can upload pictures. I just tested it to be sure.
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Hi Deb, I am new to Pinterest. I am wondering if there is a limit to the number of images I can pin to a board. I could not view more than a certain number . Thank you for your time!
Not that I know of, I have seen over 800 on a board before. I think it’s better to keep them at a more manageable size.
Here’s a board with over a thousand pins.
http://pinterest.com/giosmama26/christmas-love/
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I’m losing a lot of my likes on Pinterest…?
Is there a limit?
Not that I know of, how many do you have? I don’t really look at my likes very often. Are the original pins still there? If the person who pinned it deletes the pin or moves it to another board it might break the link since you only liked it instead of repinning it.
I can’t upload a pin (photo) on my laptop or PC. I get a message…IE won’t download…risk…I click “Download File” and the photo won’t load. “Circle” spins continuously without ever loading photo. What am I doing wrong?
Also on my iPad, the box just turns grey when I try to upload a pin and it’s not possible to click “browse”. So here I am with 3 devices that I’m trying to upload a pin and can’t. Can you help??
Probably not. I don’t have any problems uploading pictures from my laptop. I use chrome, not IE and I don’t have an iPad. Do you have another place you can upload the picture to (a website, blog, flickr account, etc), then pin from there?
deb… i have been trying to upload a pin for quite a while now and it just wont work! it wont stop loading, i wasnt sure if it was my computer but after reading a few of the questions above i realise tht a few others have had my problem. could it maybe be the format or the size of the picture?
Maybe, have you tried different pictures? You could try downloading a picture from pinterest, then try uploading it again.
Just a note: I found a way to reorder pins. I had pinned some workouts titled by the days of the week and I failed to put them in order, so, once I had them pinned to my board, I just re-pinned them from my own board in reverse order. I, then, deleted the original pins and voila! Sunday through Saturday workouts in order.
That’s way to much trouble for an entire board. I want a drag and drop method or a numbered method or even a sorting method.
Me too! I’ve just emailed complaining about this, as I really want to change pictures around. I also wouldn’t mind being able to put them closer together (i.e. put two images with colours overlapping so I can assess whether the colours look good.)
Hi, there. Great to find you.
Firstly, if I delete one of my pins, that someone else has re-pinned, will that person lose that pin? I don’t want to cause any aggravation. Because I was thinking of recreating one of my boards as you’ll understand from my second question.
On one of boards I’m missing many pins. So as an experiement I deleted some of the expendable pins and I noticed a few of my older ones popped back up. So there are there, but ‘hiding’. I cannot scroll down to see any further, the scroll bar won’t let me. Has this happened to anyone else? Did your pins all return?
Thank you so much.
Good question. Let’s test it. Go to my testing board at http://pinterest.com/debsanswers/testing/ and pin the images to one of your boards (an existing one or a new testing board). Let me know when you’ve pinned them and I’ll delete the pins and we’ll see what happens. My guess is that you’ll still have the pictures, but I’m not sure if the source will remain. Please pin all of the pins, I want to test different sources. Thanks
I don’t know if I’missing any pins. There have been glitches when they change things. Sometimes it appears that there are duplicate pins, but it clears up eventually.
Hi,
Okay, I’ve pinned all four of your pins into a test folder on mine. I’m interested to see what happens. Thanks so much for helping, I appreciate your time and advice.
Regards
Liz
P.S. I should mention you can find me here http://pinterest.com/ellierosecreate/
Liz
That’s OK, I found you through the pins. I deleted all four pins.
Good News! Your pins are all still there and you can click on the two book pins and still reach the original webpage.
The other two pins were uploaded by the user and no url was provided, but the pictures are still there at still list me as the source. Unfortunately you can’t tell that I had repinned one of them. That is a problem with user uploaded pictures, if you want them to lead somewhere, you have to manually add the url.
Thanks so much for helping me test that.
You’re welcome. And, I’m glad I can delete and re-pin my ones without upsetting other pinners. It’s a nuisance but I want to look back on all my old pins. Thanks.
Just a headsup for you and other posters (apologies if this is old news). It seems if you edit a pin and send it to a different board it will take a fellow pinner or someone who likes it along with it. Thus saving me the headache I thought I’d have.
On my original board the hidden pins are appearing one by one as a pin is moved to the second board. Hope this helps.
Hey Deb,
Great post!
I just started pinning the other day and I am addicted.
I made a few boards with furniture sets with each about 20 images and pinned from a large variety of vendors. Today, none of them opened and showed the 404 message.
Should I just wait or should I re-pin everything?
Would you have any suggestions?
Just wait. Most of the errors do clear up eventually and it’s the weekend. I doubt that any staff is working over the weekend.
Hmmm….still doesn’t work. I will a bit longer.
Thanks for the response
Are you having problems with all boards or just your own? I’ll see if I can get to them, if you give me a link.
mostly my own, even the small ones…
http://pinterest.com/3ddecors/furniture-set-girl-s-room-2/
I got the same error.
I know
I am at a loss…It’s been for over 48 hours now….I don’t know what to do. I had pinned so many design sets from my bookmarks….
I would try emailing them. include links and details. Most people don’t seem to be getting responses, but during a weekday probably has a better chance of getting seen.
I found it!!! Yaaaaay!
I am so happy!
My account had logged in through one of my Facebook pages, thus a different name than my user name – the link did not correspond…something like that…Anyhow I just changed the username and now it seems to be working.
OK, going back to the candy store
))))
Thanks for your prompt responses Deb!
That’s Great! Thanks for letting me know.
My pinterest has stopped working for me
. I started using pinterest around October of 2011 using an invite that my sister-in-law sent to me and I found right away that I love it. It was working fine up until about 3 weeks or so ago. I have been patiently waiting for it to fix itself, but it hasn’t. I sent a request for help to pinterest about a week ago through their “support” page, but haven’t heard anything back from them yet 
. When I sign in to pinterest the first page won’t fully load in. It normally will have a list of pins that the pinners I follow have recently pinned that all comes up in a pile on the left side of the page then all the pins will spread out onto the page so I can see them. Well it sticks on the left hand side of the page where they are all piled on top of each other and won’t spread out onto the page. I tried clicking on the top one and it will show up like it does when you click on somebodys pin. I tried to repin it to see what would happen and it goes to a page that has a 404 in a circle and underneath it says, “Oops! The page you’re looking for could not be found. Go back?” I did try to sign into my niece’s account from my computer and it did the same thing with hers not loading the page in all the way. OK, I just called my sister-in-law to try to bring it up on her computer and it works fine on hers…..now what? I miss being able to use my pinterest 
. I can click on to the “boards” button to go to my boards and they all show up fine with my pins on them but as I said, I can’t add any pins and I can’t get the first page to load in that shows up when you first go to pinterest. Does anybody know what I can do to fix the problem or know where I can ask how to fix it?
Sounds like it’s your computer then. Have you tried clearing your cache? What browser are you using? You might want to try a different browser like firefox or chrome. Does it do the same thing when you aren’t signed in? Have you tried clicking a link to go directly to someone’s boards?
I did try clearing my cache and it didn’t make a difference. I am on aol and have internet explorer. I just tried it while not signed in and it is doing the same thing. I am so computer illiterate that I may have to ask my son to come over to try different things for me. I am always afraid that I will mess up my computer’s mind to the point of no return. lol.
Oops, I forgot to say, I have Windows.
I don’t know what my son did but my Pinterest now works! Yayyyyyyyyyy! I love my Pinterest! I have to go now, it has been so long since I have been able to use Pinterest…..I have to get back to it!!
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Hello, I thought your page was magnificant!
Thanks! And thanks for commenting.
Hello Deb,
I am new at Pinterest and I want to acknowledge the original poster or source when I write description or comment on images because this way, I might have followers. I use @username and take note of this username from the name of the post but when I write @, Pinterest shows only 2 – 3 people, not all?
Does Pinterest use username or full name of the user? The reason I ask, if it’s full name, where will we get the full name if the username is name of the site or keyword of the niche of the Pinterest user?
Hope you can help me.
Thanking you in advance.
You use the username with the @ to mention someone. You can only mention a person if you are following at least one of their boards.
hey, can you help me please…I hit some pins blocked on other pinterest pages and then I can not access to the board which i put that pin blocked..I tried so many ways, whatever I click to the board, it shows 404 error, and totally can not use or access to this board, even I still see the pin on board cover
urgent pleaseee
hey, can you help me please…I hit some pins blocked on other pinterest pages and then I can not access to the board which i put that pin blocked..I tried so many ways, whatever I click to the board, it shows 404 error, and totally can not use or access to this board, even I still see the pin on board cover
urgent pleaseee
I don’t understand. What do you mean by blocked? Do you mean a user blocked you? I thought you could only block users not pins.
I can’t do anything about error messages. You can go to support from the help page and report any bugs you encounter.
Hi, I am trying to load a few pictures from my laptop onto Pinterest. I have followed their directions. All of my attempts result in the picture loading to the “add a pin” page. I then select my board, and add a comment, but when I click “Pin it” , and the circle quits going round and round, I go to my board, and what is there more often than not, is a light blue screen with a red X in the left hand corner, and no picture where the picture should be. So I delete and start the process over again, most often to no avail. A couple of times it did load a pic into the board. They are all jpg files, and should be “loadable” according to Pinterests information.
I just tested it and it’s working fine for me. Did you go to the support page in the Pinterest help section and look for related issues?
What browser are you using? Is it up-to-date?
Hi Deb, Thanks for getting back so timely! The Pinterest support page was no help, just the same instructions I am already doing. My browser is IE 9, which is the latest version. Hmmm
I guess you’ll have to submit a request then. I’m using Chrome and it worked fine for me.
Thanks, I’ll download google chrome and give that a try!