vbCode, smilies, making posts better & more.

[Mark]

Special Codes / Tags:
For the most part, your posts will contain plain text, but on occasions, you may want to emphasize certain words or phrases by making them (for example) bold or italic.


Depending on the rules of the forum, you may use HTML code to produce these effects. However, more often than not, the administrator will have disabled HTML code, and opted instead to use vB Code: a special set of tags which you can use to produce the most popular text-effects. vB code has the advantage that it is very simple to use, and is immune to malicious javascripts and page layout disruption.


You may also find that the administrator has enabled smilies, which allow you to use small icons to convey emotion, and the [img] code, which allows you to add pictures to your message.


For more information & to see some samples on vB code, click here.

Smilies:
Smilies are small graphical icons which you can insert into your messages to convey an emotion or feeling, such as a joke or embarrassment. For example, if you entered a sarcastic comment, rather than type 'that was a joke', you could simply insert the 'wink' smilie.

If you have used email or internet chat systems, you will probably be familiar with the concept of smilies already. Certain combinations of text characters are converted into smilies. For example, is converted into a smiling face. To understand smilie codes, tilt your head to the left and look at the text: you will see that represents two eyes and a smiling mouth.


For a list of the smilies currently used by this forum, click here.


On occasions, you may want to prevent the text in your message being converted into smilies. You will see a checkbox which you can select when you make a new post, which will allow you to 'Disable Smilies'.