Rumfish.net:BBCode

BBCode is a special formatting language that is used in both our forums (as well as most other forums out there), and (optionally) in stories on our main page. Our implementation of it has a few extra features, so even if you are familiar with BBCode from other sites (including our previous site), you still might learn something here.

Introduction
In BBCode terms, you use "tags" to add formatting to your text. Every tag is enclosed in [ and ] brackets. If you want to mark some region in your text, you need to use an opening tag and a closing tag. Closing tags start with [/, as you will see in the examples below. If you mistype a tag or forget to close it, you will not get the desired formatting.

Simple text formatting
BBCode allows you to make some parts of your texts stand out from the context by adding [b]old, [i]talic, [u]nderlined and [s]trikeout formatting to them. The [color], [size] and [font] tags allow you to change the color, size and font of portions of the text you enclose with these tags. Both require a parameter (which colour, how big, what font) that is suffixed to the name of the tag by an equals sign (example below). You should not repeat the parameter in the closing tag!

You can specify any recognized color name (red, blue, green, white, etc.) or a hexadecimal color value (#CDCDCD, #FFFFFF, etc.) as the parameter of a [color] tag. The [size] tag allows you to set the font size between 6 and 48, 6 being the smallest size. Note that using very large text is considered by many to be annoying, and it is seldom a good idea to try to attract more attention to your post in this way. The [font] tag can be set to any valid font face, such as Arial, Arial Black, Courier, Courier New, Helvetica, Impact, Times New Roman, Verdana, etc.

Creating links
You have multiple options to specify links to other destinations in your posts.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) starting with "http" or "ftp" (eg. http://www.example.com) are automatically recognized and replaced with links. You can also use the [url] tag with a parameter to specify a link with meaningful text to click on. If you use the url tag without the parameter, the enclosed text is assumed to be a URL, and a link is created to that destination.

Email addresses in posts are also automatically converted to email links.

Displaying images
The [img] tag allows you to display an image in your post. You need to specify a URL to the image, so it needs to be accessible somewhere on the internet. Beware of adding very large images to your text, or the page will load very slowly!

If you enclose a URL in an [img] tag, then it will be replaced with code to display the image. For example A good screenshot: [img]http://example.com/screenshot.png[/img] will show you the screenshot (if it exists).

You can also specify the desired display dimensions of the image by adding a dimension parameter to the [img] tag. A good screenshot: [img=640x480]http://example.com/screenshot.png[/img] will display the image in 640x480 (though the full image will be downloaded). Do not use this to show a thumbnail of an image!

You are free to link an image to an external destination by enclosing the [img] tag with a [url] tag: See [url=http://example.com][img]http://example.com/screenshot.png[/img][/url].

Ordered and unordered lists
The simplest list type is the unordered list, which means that there is no numbering applied to the elements. You can make such a list by enclosing the list elements in [list] opening and closing tags. Specify the start of one element with the [*] list element marker, which has no closing tag pair.

To create an ordered list, you should add a parameter to the [list] list tag specifying what type of ordered list you would like to see. The possible parameters are "i", "I", "1", "a", "A", "c", "d" and "s" which all correspond to the display of the first list element.

Text and block alignment
You can also set the alignment of the text by using [left], [right] and [center] tags. The [float] tag can be used to place floating boxes in the text (especially handy for images). You can specify the direction of the floating with [float=left] and [float=right]. The [justify] tag can be used justify text on both sides of the page.

Additional tags supported by the Main site
rumfish.net/filter/tips contains additional information on tags supported by the main site

Special tags
There are several custom tags supported by the site (these are currently only supported in the forum.: If you have need of the functionality of these tags for a story on the main page, let me know. Ports of the [gallery] tag and [story] tag, as well as a tag are being created for the wiki as well.
 * [wiki] tag
 * [gallery] tag
 * [story] tag