Larger Than Life

I'm under the impression that a few of the members have some problems with using the BBCode in their posts.

I "borrowed" the texts provided on the phpbb website to make these tags a bit more clear.

BBCode 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
  Code:
  [b] [/b]
  , eg.
  
  Code:
  [b]Hello[/b]
  
  will become Hello
  
• For underlining, use
  Code:
  [u] [/u]
  , eg.
  
  Code:
  [u]Good Morning![/u]
  
  will become Good Morning!
  
• To italicise text use
  Code:
  [i] [/i]
  , eg.
  
  Code:
  [i]That's Great![/i]
  
  will become That's Great!
  

To alter the color 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
  Code:
  [color=] [/color]
  You can specify either a recognised colour name (eg. red, blue, yellow, etc.) or the hexadecimal triplet alternative, eg. #FFFFFF, #000000. For example, to create red text you could use:
  
  
  Code:
  [color=red]Hello![/color]
  
  or
  
  Code:
  [color=#FF0000]Hello![/color]
  
  will both output Hello!
  
• Changing the text size is achieved in a similar way using
  Code:
  [size=][/size]
  This tag is dependant on the template you are using but the recommended format is a numerical value representing the text size in pixels, starting at 1 (so tiny you will not see it) through to 29 (very large). For example:
  
  
  Code:
  [size=9]SMALL[/size]
  
  will generally be SMALL
  
  whereas:
  
  
  Code:
  [size=24]HUGE![/size]
  
  
  will be HUGE!

Yes, of course you can; for example to get someones attention you may write:



this would output LOOK AT ME!

We don't recommend you output lots of text that looks like this, though! Remember that it is up to you, the poster, to ensure that tags are closed correctly. For example, the following is incorrect:

There 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
  Code:
  [quote=""] [/quote]
  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:
  
  
  Code:
  [quote="Mr. Blobby"]The text Mr. Blobby wrote would go here[/quote]
  
  
  The resulting output will automatically add:
  
  Mr. Blobby wrote:
  
  before the actual text. Remember that 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
  Code:
  [quote] [/quote]
  tags. When you view the message it will simply show:
  
  Quote:
  
  before the text itself

If you want to output a piece of code or in fact anything that requires a fixed width with a Courier-type font, you should enclose the text in tags, eg.



All formatting used within tags is retained when you later view it.

BBCode supports two types of lists, unordered and ordered. They are essentially the same as their HTML equivalents. An unordered list ouputs 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 favorite colours you could use:



This would generate the following list:

• Red
• Blue
• Yellow

The 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:

will generate the following:

1. Go to the shops
2. Buy a new computer
3. Swear at computer when it crashes

Whereas for an alphabetical list you would use:

giving

1. The first possible answer
2. The second possible answer
3. The third possible answer

phpBB 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:



This would generate the following link, Visit phpBB! You will notice the link opens in a new window so the user can continue browsing the forums if they wish.
If you want the URL itself displayed as the link you can do this by simply using:

This would generate the following link: http://www.phpbb.com/
Additionally phpBB features something called Magic Links, which will turn any syntatically correct URL into a link without you needing to specify any tags or even the leading http://. For example typing into your message will automatically lead to www.phpbb.com being output when you view the message.
The same thing applies equally to email addresses; you can either specify an address explicitly, like:



which will output no.one@domain.adr or you can just type no.one@domain.adr 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.

Adding an image to a post
phpBB 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 second, 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!).

There is currently no way of storing images locally with phpBB (all these issues are expected to be addressed in the next release of phpBB). 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, eg.



would generate:


...which is a clickable image, linking to another web page.

No, I am afraid not directly in phpBB 2.0. We are looking at offering customisable BBCode tags for the next major version.

How can I embed a YouTube video?

With the new youtube tag... When you see a great YouTube video, such as this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzN0etdN7Ek

...and you want to embed it in a post, just copy the bit after the "=" in the URL (the video id), in this case "lzN0etdN7Ek" and put that between the youtube tags. How?

Just paste in the video id in the text of your post, double-click it to select it, and click the "youtube" tag button above the post edit window. This will then show up as

How have the text in a post appear centered on the screen?

Use the "center" tag..

Will show up like:



How can you hide text behind a button (i.e. to hide the spoiler when reviewing a book or movie, or the punch line in a joke)?

Use the "spoiler" tag..


Will show up like:

How can you have a bit of text appear to be striken? By use of the "strike" tag.
This particular tag took some time, but now it is there.

Use:



Will appear like:

She looked like something you'd wanna eat very attractive!!