guide: bb codes
Introduction
What is BBCode?BBCode is a special implementation of HTML. Whether you can actually use BBCode in your posts on the forum is determined by the administrator. In addition you can disable BBCode on a per post basis via the posting form. BBCode itself is similar in style to HTML, tags are enclosed in square brackets [ and ] rather than < and > and it offers greater control over what and how something is displayed. Depending on the template you are using you may find adding BBCode to your posts is made much easier through a clickable interface above the message area on the posting form. Even with this you may find the following guide useful.Top
Text Formatting
How to create bold, italic and underlined textBBCode includes tags to allow you to quickly change the basic style of your text. This is achieved in the following ways:
To make a piece of text bold enclose it in , e.g.
Hello
will become Hello
For underlining use , for example:
Good Morning
becomes Good Morning
To italicise text use , e.g.
This is Great!
would give This is Great!
Top How to change the text colour or sizeTo alter the colour or size of your text the following tags can be used. Keep in mind that how the output appears will depend on the viewers browser and system:
Changing the colour of text is achieved by wrapping it in [color=][/color]. You can specify either a recognised colour name (eg. red, blue, yellow, etc.) or the hexadecimal triplet alternative, e.g. #FFFFFF, #000000. For example, to create red text you could use:
Hello!
or
Hello!
Both will output Hello!
Changing the text size is achieved in a similar way using [size=][/size]. This tag is dependent on the template the user has selected but the recommended format is a numerical value representing the text size in percent, starting at 20 (very small) through to 200 (very large) by default. For example:
SMALL
will generally be SMALL
whereas:
HUGE!
will be HUGE!
Top Can I combine formatting tags?Yes, of course you can, for example to get someones attention you may write:
LOOK AT ME!
this would output LOOK AT ME!
We don’t recommend you output lots of text that looks like this though! Remember it is up to you, the poster, to ensure tags are closed correctly. For example the following is incorrect:
This is wrongTop
Quoting and outputting fixed-width text
Quoting text in repliesThere are two ways you can quote text, with a reference or without.
When you utilise the Quote function to reply to a post on the board you should notice that the post text is added to the message window enclosed in a block. This method allows you to quote with a reference to a person or whatever else you choose to put! For example to quote a piece of text Mr. Blobby wrote you would enter:
Originally Posted by Mr. Blobby
The text Mr. Blobby wrote would go here
The resulting output will automatically add "Mr. Blobby wrote:" before the actual text. Remember you must include the quotation marks "" around the name you are quoting, they are not optional.
The second method allows you to blindly quote something. To utilise this enclose the text in tags. When you view the message it will simply show the text within a quotation block.
Top Outputting code or fixed width dataIf you want to output a piece of code or in fact anything that requires a fixed width, e.g. Courier type font you should enclose the text in tags, e.g.
Code:
echo "This is some code";All formatting used within tags is retained when you later view it. PHP syntax highlighting can be enabled using [code=php][/code] and is recommended when posting PHP code samples as it improves readability.Top
Generating lists
Creating an Unordered listBBCode supports two types of lists, unordered and ordered. They are essentially the same as their HTML equivalents. An unordered list outputs each item in your list sequentially one after the other indenting each with a bullet character. To create an unordered list you use and define each item within the list using[*]. For example to list your favourite colours you could use:
Red
Blue
Yellow
This would generate the following list:
Red
Blue
Yellow
Top Creating an Ordered listThe second type of list, an ordered list, gives you control over what is output before each item. To create an ordered list you use to create a numbered list or alternatively for an alphabetical list. As with the unordered list, items are specified using[*]. For example:
Go to the shops
Buy a new computer
Swear at computer when it crashes
will generate the following:
Go to the shops
Buy a new computer
Swear at computer when it crashes
Whereas for an alphabetical list you would use:
The first possible answer
The second possible answer
The third possible answer
giving
The first possible answer
The second possible answer
The third possible answer
Top
Creating Links
Linking to another sitephpBB BBCode supports a number of ways of creating URIs (Uniform Resource Indicators) better known as URLs.
The first of these uses the tag, whatever you type after the = sign will cause the contents of that tag to act as a URL. For example to link to phpBB.com you could use:
Visit phpBB!
This would generate the following link, Visit phpBB! Please notice that the link opens in the same window or a new window depending on the users browser preferences.
If you want the URL itself displayed as the link you can do this by simply using:
http://www.phpbb.com/
This would generate the following link,
http://www.phpbb.com/
Additionally, phpBB features something called Magic Links, this will turn any syntactically correct URL into a link without you needing to specify any tags or even the leading
http://. For example typing
www.phpbb.com into your message will automatically lead to
www.phpbb.com being output when you view the message.
The same thing applies equally to e-mail addresses, you can either specify an address explicitly for example:
[email protected]
which will output
[email protected] or you can just type
[email protected] into your message and it will be automatically converted when you view.
As with all the BBCode tags you can wrap URLs around any of the other tags such as (see next entry), , etc. As with the formatting tags it is up to you to ensure the correct open and close order is following, for example:
is not correct which may lead to your post being deleted so take care.Top
Showing images in posts
Adding an image to a postphpBB BBCode incorporates a tag for including images in your posts. Two very important things to remember when using this tag are: many users do not appreciate lots of images being shown in posts and secondly the image you display must already be available on the internet (it cannot exist only on your computer for example, unless you run a webserver!). To display an image you must surround the URL pointing to the image with tags. For example:
As noted in the URL section above you can wrap an image in a tag if you wish, e.g.
would generate:
Top
~rachet
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