Formatting your posts and other coding stuff

[Grahame]

Formatting your posts

To create a hyperlink to another website or forum article, enter the link without the <> brackets, then select (highlight) the text of the link by clicking and dragging your mouse over it, and then click the box above the posting window that says insert URL when you hover over it (looks like two chain links). This will add the required codes either end of the hyperlink text. It will look like this:

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[url]insert website link here[/url]

You can do the same to add formatting to other text, by highlighting the text you want, then click on the other boxes to add bold, underline, italic. etc.
You can also change font colour and size from here.

To quote text from another post in your reply like this:

To quote text from another post in your reply like this

you can either click the button "reply with quote" (looks like inverted commas) at the top right of the posting, which will open up a reply window and paste the entire message of the post into it between the words 'quote' in square brackets. You can then edit out the bits you don't want (but be sure to leave the 'quote' codes in), and add your reply below. OR you can copy just the text you want from the post before clicking on the "reply" button, paste the text into your reply, highlight it and then click on the "quote" box above in the same way as you would for other codes. However, this second method won't include the name of the original poster and is best used for multiple quotes from the same person in the same post.

To edit a post you have made , look at the icons at the top right of your message window. The first one looks like a pencil - this opens your message for editing. The second icon with a large 'X' will delete the post entirely. You will only see these two icons on your own posts. The next one, a large exclamation mark '!', allows you to report a post that you feel inappropriate, perhaps it's a junk post from a spammer or it's insulting somebody, or you find it offensive in some way. You will be asked to enter a reason why you are reporting it, then it gets sent to one of the moderators for action. The last icon with the double quote marks opens up a reply window with the text of that post copied in ready for your response between two sets of codes. You can also highlight the piece of text that you want before clicking this to quote just a part of the message.

[Grahame]

To make any bit of text link to a webpage, you can enter the link in this format:

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[url=http://www.whatever the website is/particular page I want]text I want to be displayed[/url]

.

When displayed in your post, this will read as text I want to be displayed and will be a clickable link, such as: click here to go to the main website.

[Grahame]

To link to another topic in the forum, open a new window or tab and search the forum to get the thread you want. Then just copy and paste that full URL from your browser address bar into your post in the same manner as described earlier; your coded text should look something like this: {url=http://britishdowsing.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=(a long string of numbers)}your link text{/url} (remembering to replace curly brackets with square ones).

If there is a particular message you want to link to, click the little file icon just to the left of the author's name where it appears under the subject line, then copy the resulting URL as before. This will link directly back to that message; which is very handy if the thread is a long one. For example, to put a link to this particular message, you would use this:

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 [url=http://britishdowsing.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=886&sid=5a18b723f06b3a7d622e418b1e35dbf6#p886]link to this message[/url]

Which would display as this: link to this message. (Go on, click on it!)

You can also find these things out by holding your mouse pointer over any of the code buttons when you are making a post, whereupon a little help line will appear, telling you what the codes are.