How would you upload an attachment without a thread/post?
 

I was thinking of a feature that used to exist on another board sometime back, and I'm wondering if it's possible to upload a picture attachment without having to post a thread or reply to associate it with.

Albums?

basically what I want to do is have the option to add pictures/attachments without having a thread for them, then when I make a post or reply, I'm given a list of available attachments to select which one I want to put with that post.

probably a lot harder than I think it is.

It sounds like you're describing the built in Albums feature... if you don't want to use Albums or don't have a recent enough version there's an old mod called "VB Image Hosting" for VB 3.6 that does the same thing, arguably better, and works with all 3.x versions since 3.5.

actually the main reason is a bbcode tag I have that aligns images. It chooses the image by attachment ID, so if I upload an image to an album does it still get an attachmentid? looking at the url it looks as if it gets an albumid and a pictureid instead of a basic attachmentid.

The bbcode might be able to be modified to use those 2 options, but I want to try and make it easier on the users to be able to use the code and/or determine attachmentid's

without trying to be rude, in simplest terms, we are talking true internet/forum idiots as the target audience.