The discussion revolves around showing an image that links to something else. BDub initially sought a way to achieve this using BB forum code, markdown, or HTML, but found the solution through nested markdown: [](target_url). codinghorror pointed out that this is also supported through the UI by uploading an image and entering a separate link URL.
The conversation also touches on other image-related features, such as uploading images directly from the clipboard, as mentioned by supermathie, and the fact that Discourse saves a copy of the image to prevent broken links.
However, littleviolette reported that the “from the web” option is no longer available, which codinghorror explained is a recent change to simplify the image-adding flow.
I’m looking for a way to show an image, but link to something different like a video.
I can’t seem to make this work with typical BB forum code, markdown or HTML.
Reason for this might be something that’s not supported in one box, or maybe I just want to take more control over what is displayed and linked to… for instance just making the image much smaller or different.
EDIT: aww snap, I got it… nested markdown
[](target_url)
This is also supported through the UI. In the editor…
Click/tap image upload icon
Click/tap “from the web”
Click/tap “show more”
Enter URL for image. Enter URL for link.
Done:
Oh nice! In the 1000’s of posts I’ve made on discourse I’ve never used that uploader more than a couple times. The automagic One Box thing has always just worked for me so I never bothered to upload. Most of the images I include are fast screenshots that I annotate and automatically upload to imgur.com, which I just paste the link in the post thereafter.
Did you know that if you have an image in your clipboard you can just paste it into the editor? Yeah, an image, not a link to an image.
We’re in the future, man.
That’s way cool too. One thing I like about imgur.com is I upload to my own account, so all of my images are saved online whenever I need them. Regardless of where it comes from, I know discourse always makes a copy of it to keep forever (preventing broken image links in the future). 
Is this feature still available? When I click the uploader icon, it opens up my local file window directly instead of giving me the option to add an image from the web. While it is possible to add image using the nested markdown syntax mentioned by the OP, it would be nice to have the click count icon just like the one next to the Google example.
Thanks!
Ah, thanks for bumping this topic. You are correct, we now skip the “from the web” step because it was almost never used. This is a recent change to Discourse to simplify the flow of adding images to posts.
As for click counters, you should continue to get a click counter on any link to an external source.