Hosting images

A picture often explains more than a paragraph: a diagram in a quiz question, a map, a chart students should interpret. You can host such images directly in Novedu. The image gets a stable name, you don’t need a public web server, and every activity you write can reference it by that name.

Upload an image in the app

Open the Images page in the app (you need a teacher account).

Select New image.
Enter a name. Use only letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens, for example compass-rose or sorting_diagram_1.
Pick the file: a PNG, JPEG, or SVG, at most 5 MB.
Optionally add a credit line, for example a licence notice like Compass rose — CC BY 4.0. It appears in small print under the image wherever the image is shown.
Upload. The image appears in your list, and the name is ready to use in your YAML.

The list holds every teacher’s images, and it opens on your own: the Owner box starts on your name. Pick All owners to see everyone’s images, pick a colleague to see only theirs, or select Clear to come back to your own. You can also filter by name, and sort by any column header. The View button opens an image so you can check you picked the right one.

An image’s owner is whoever saved it last, the same rule that applies to hosted activity files. Uploading an image under a name that is already taken is rejected, so an image only changes hands if someone deletes it and uploads a new one under the same name.

Upload an image with the CLI

If you already work in the terminal, or you let a coding agent manage your activities, the novedu-cli command line does the same job (the introduction chapter on the Novedu CLI and its AI skill covers the CLI itself; sign in once with novedu-cli login):

npx @novedu/cli images upload compass-rose --file ./compass-rose.png --credit "CC BY 4.0"
npx @novedu/cli images list

images upload needs the file via --file; the type comes from the file extension (.png, .jpg/.jpeg, or .svg). images list shows your images the same way the Images page does.

Show the image in an activity

Reference a hosted image from your activity YAML by its name, with hosted: true. For example, above a quiz question:

image:
  hosted: true # look the image up by NAME in the app's image store
  src: sample-compass-rose # the hosted name
  alt: A compass rose showing the four cardinal directions. # accessible description
  credit: Compass rose — CC BY 4.0 # optional, overrides the stored credit

src is the name you chose at upload, not a link.
alt is the accessible description read aloud by screen readers; write it in the YAML for each place you use the image.
credit is optional here: without it, the credit stored at upload is shown.

Tutors and fragments accept the same kind of image block; check the authoring guide of the module you’re writing for where it goes.

Replace or delete an image

An uploaded image can’t be edited or overwritten. To replace one, delete it on the Images page (tick it, then Delete Selected) and upload the new file under the same name. Activities that reference the name then show the new image. Deleting is only possible in the app, not with the CLI; an activity that references a deleted name simply shows no image.

Three things to get right

Reference images by name with hosted: true, never by pasting a link. The link the image list offers only opens for a signed-in Novedu user, in a browser; the name keeps working everywhere, including in the YAML.
A name that is already taken is rejected, in the app and in the CLI alike. Pick a new name, or delete the old image first if you want to replace it.
Hosting an image is not the same as letting students answer with a photo. Photo answers are a quiz setting (imageInput); hosted images are pictures you show to students.

Building a quiz

Publishing your YAML file

Check your activity with the CLI

The Novedu CLI and its AI skill