Tips & Tricks - How to use these forums

Official announcements about the SWNZ forums and website; learn about the new software and post any questions or bug reports.
Post Reply
User avatar
MattG
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 4920
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:46 am
Country: New Zealand
Location: Auckland

Tips & Tricks - How to use these forums

Post by MattG »

This thread is for tips & tricks on how to use these forums, specifically the phpBB software, which may have functionality or ways of doing things that not everyone is fully familiar with.

These posts will supplement the existing FAQ/Help files.

Lets start with a very common requirement:

Posting images as attachments.

If you have an image that is already online somewhere, you can insert it into your post using the IMG bbCode, but this will present the image in it's raw resolution.

The more common, and tidier, scenario is that the image is located somewhere on your computer, and you want to present it in your post as a thumbnail/reduced size version that readers can click on to view the full photo. First, get the image on to the SWNZ Server, using the "Upload Attachment" form, which can be found just below the main post window and buttons. It looks like this:
Uploaded_Attachment.jpg
Hit "Browse", find the file on your computer, type a title/description/comment in the "File comment" box (optional), and select "Add the file". You can upload multiple photos, in a single post, by repeating this process. As a minimum, that's all you need to do. If you complete and submit your post at this point, the attached image will appear at the end of your post. A section below the main post forum will confirm that the attachment has uploaded, and allow you to delete it if you change your mind, thus (if you click on the link provided as the photo filename, you can review the image):
Uploaded_Attachment2.jpg
If, instead of having the pics at the end of your post, you instead want to structure your post with photos inline with your text (eg, between paragraphs, such as in the post you are reading right now), then, once attachments are uploaded, there is a subtle additional line below the main post forum which allows you to select between your uploaded photos (if there are more than one), and "Place [them] inline".
Uploaded_Attachment3.jpg
You won't see the photo in your post, until it is actually submitted. What you will instead see is a bbCode placeholder that looks like the following. You can just continue to add text around this placeholder.

Code: Select all

[attachment=1]Uploaded_Attachment3.jpg[/attachment]
User avatar
MattG
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 4920
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:46 am
Country: New Zealand
Location: Auckland

Re: Tips & Tricks - How to use these forums

Post by MattG »

Embedding YouTube vids in posts

I've just written a little BBCode function which lets you embed your own YouTube videos in threads. It's easy to use...the only information you need to make it work is the 11-digit alphanumeric identifier for the video that you want to embed. You can find it in the URL/address of the video (eg, it's the identifier, Q1Z7ZZ6U628, after the equals sign in this standard YouTube URL...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1Z7ZZ6U628). That's probably the easiest way to find the identifier, but you will also see it in the 'embed code' on the page a specific video, amongst all the other code you'd use to embed a vid in an HTML page.

Anyway, once you've got that code, just put it in a post between two BBCode YouTube tags, like this:

Code: Select all

[youtube]Q1Z7ZZ6U628[/youtube]
Note that the second BBCode tag, as always, has the slash in it. For more info on the available BBCodes to use for post formatting, click here.

And, this is how it will appear in a post:

[youtube]Q1Z7ZZ6U628[/youtube]
User avatar
MattG
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 4920
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:46 am
Country: New Zealand
Location: Auckland

Re: Tips & Tricks - How to use these forums

Post by MattG »

Just a heads-up for anyone who didn't notice...I've now incorporated quick-buttons for Youtube and Spoilers in to the post creation screen, just below the text formatting buttons. Now all you need to do to embed a Youtube video is hit the corresponding button, and copy the alphanumeric code in between the tags; or, to post a spoiler, hit the spoiler button and move all your spoiler text/images in between the tags.
User avatar
MattG
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 4920
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:46 am
Country: New Zealand
Location: Auckland

Re: Tips & Tricks - How to use these forums

Post by MattG »

Embedding Media, Including YouTube:

The previous YouTube BBCode has been supplanted by a new, universal media BBCode.

The media BBCode works with links from all sorts of media sources, including YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and many more. It will auto-detect media URLs and automatically embed them (otherwise, simply put the whole URL between the media BBCode tags as below, or press the media BBCode button above the text box when making a post).

Code: Select all

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYDcNo8Tozw[/media]
Examples:



Post Reply