How to create bold, italic and underlined text
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 , e.g.
- Code:
-
[b]Hello[/b]
will become
HelloFor underlining use
- Code:
-
[u][/u]
, for example:
- Code:
-
[u]Good Morning[/u]
becomes
Good MorningTo italicise text use
- Code:
-
[i][/i]
, e.g.
This is
- Code:
-
[i]Great![/i]
would give This is
Great!How to change the text colour or size
To 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
- Code:
-
[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:
- Code:
-
[color=red]Hello![/color]
or
- Code:
-
[color=#FF0000]Hello![/color]
Both will output
Hello!Can I combine formatting tags?
Yes, of course you can.
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:
- Code:
-
[b][u]This is wrong[/b][u]
Quoting text in replies
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="Kittenlover3000"]The text Mr. Blobby wrote would go here[/quote]
The resulting output will automatically add "Kittenlover3000 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
- Code:
-
[quote][/quote]
tags. When you view the message it will simply show the text within a quotation block.
Outputting code or fixed width data
If 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
- Code:
-
[code][/code]
tags, e.g.
- Code:
-
[code]echo "This is some code";[/code]
All formatting used within
- Code:
-
[code][/code]
tags is retained when you later view it. PHP syntax highlighting can be enabled using
- Code:
-
[code=php]
[/code]
and is recommended when posting PHP code samples as it improves readability.
Generating lists
Creating an Unordered list
BBCode 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:
- Code:
-
[list]
[*]Red
[*]Blue
[*]Yellow
[/list]
This would generate the following list:
Creating an Ordered list
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:
- Code:
-
[list=1]
[*]Go to the shops
[*]Buy a new computer
[*]Swear at computer when it crashes
[/list]
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:
- Code:
-
[list=a]
[*]The first possible answer
[*]The second possible answer
[*]The third possible answer
[/list]
giving
- The first possible answer
- The second possible answer
- The third possible answer
Creating Links
Linking to another site
phpBB BBCode supports a number of ways of creating URIs (Uniform Resource Indicators) better known as URLs.
The first of these uses the
- Code:
-
[url=][/url]
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:
- Code:
-
[url=paintclan.board-directory.net]Join Paintclan![/url]
This would generate the following link,
Join Paintclan! 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:
- Code:
-
[url]paintclan.board-directory.net[/url]
This would generate the following link,
paintclan.board-directory.net 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
https://paintclan.board-directory.net into your message will automatically lead to
https://paintclan.board-directory.net being output when you view the message.
The same thing applies equally to email addresses, you can either specify an address explicitly for example:
- Code:
-
[email]kittenlover3000@gmail.com[/email]
which will output
kittenlover3000@gmail.com or you can just type
kittenlover3000@gmail.com 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
- Code:
-
[img][/img]
(see next entry),
- Code:
-
[b][/b]
, etc. As with the formatting tags it is up to you to ensure the correct open and close order is following, for example:
- Code:
-
[url=http://paintclan.board-directory.net][img]http://orig00.deviantart.net/a511/f/2015/084/1/a/paintclan_symbol_by_lillybug360-d8n58u6.jpg[/img][/url]
Will be