One Way to Make a Slideshow using PhotoBucketThis assumes that you already have an account with PhotoBucket and are fairly comfortable using it; I have a Pro account which may give me additional options that aren't available with free accounts - I'll try to avoid using any of those, but it's not always obvious which is which.
First, choose your pictures and upload them as usual. I often either make a "title page" the same size as my pictures, giving the name of the cam and the date, or else make a copy of the final picture, and put "The End" in large letters across it. The standard slideshows keep cycling through the pictures, and especially if you have a fairly long slideshow, it's not always easy for viewers to be sure they've seen all the slides. This makes it clear people have seen all the pictures.
The good folks at PhotoBucket keep moving things around, but at the moment, if you go to the album where your pictures are and click the Tools tab at the top of the page, "Make Slideshow" is in the upper right of the next screen, with a cutesy "try it now" button. Click that.
I find the next screen a bit distracting because there's a sample slideshow running initially, then your slideshow starts to run as you build it - but it does let you see what you're doing. There are three panels. First, in the left panel, click your pictures in the order you'd like them to be in the slide show. If you hold your mouse on them, you should be able to see their names (which helps if you named them in order).
Next, at the bottom of the right panel, pick a size. The pics I'm using while I write this were saved to 480x360 - so I'm choosing medium (which is 480x360. You don't need to resize your pictures - the slideshow maker will resize them down to fit in the slideshow size you choose. It won't make them larger - if you choose a size bigger than your pics, it will add a border. And it's fine to use the large size slideshow for large pics - the link you include in your post will be thumbnail size so won't cause scrolling.
Also on the right panel, you can pick from an overwhelming number of styles - I use Fade (currently in the first column, fourth row). It's fun to see some of the others in the display window, but I think a lot of them tend to distract from the eagles or whatever is in the slideshow, so while it's a personal style thing - for our purposes on the forum, I think less fancy is generally better.
If you look at the slideshow images below the three panels, you'll see that each has an "add title" place. (To back track - if you gave the pictures titles when you uploaded them, those titles will be there by default; I didn't do that this time, but there should be a button to remove all titles if you want to remove the original titles from the slideshow and either leave them blank or add captions.) If your pictures are the same size as you've chosen for the slideshow, the captions will be on the pictures (as in my sample); if you choose a larger size slideshow so there's a border, the captions will be in the border.
Save the slideshow - I generally include the date in the title as it helps me keep them sorted, but that's also a style thing. That will bring you to another window with your slideshow running on the left, and a box titled "Share this Slideshow" on the right. As far as I can tell, you can click either IMG code or IMG thumb - either will copy the code you need to insert a thumbnail link to your slideshow - like the one below!