Volume 6: Internet Forums 103: Helpful hints for using the Historic-Hillyard.com Community Forum, Advanced Forum Personalization.

Welcome back class, I hope you enjoyed Internet Forums 101 and 102.  This class will further delve into what makes using Internet forums fun.  Like anything else, if you don't make it your own, you're not going to enjoy it to its full potential.  So, this article will focus on formatting text and adding graphics, links and other web elements in your posts.

The first part of forum personalization is formatting your text.  Some users like to use a certain color or font in their posts, some like to change the text for added emphasis and effect.  Either way, knowing how to format text in the forum is the first step to not only personalization, but being a real advanced forum user.  Hopefully you are familiar with this sight in your postings:

These are the tools you use to format your text.  The first line is screen size.  Most won't need to use this, however if you want to change the size of this interface, use the drop down menu and make it bigger or smaller.  Feel free to play with this, you can't screw anything up (I'll be saying that a lot in this article).  The second line is Format Mode.  Most don't use it, but it turns out this is a very interesting and helpful feature of the forum.  I would suggest you try the "Prompt" setting.  It's the best tool for adding graphics, e-mail and web addresses, but more on that later. 

The third line is what we will focus on.  As I explain each icon, remember you don't have to memorize these things, if you hold your mouse pointer over the picture, it will give you a description of the action.  The first group of four buttons should be familiar if you use Microsoft Word or another similar word processor.  These are the bold ( B ), italicized ( I ), underline ( U ) and strikethrough (  S  ) commands.  These work pretty much the way they do in Word, you simply highlight (with your mouse pointer, left click and drag) the text you want to change and then click the button.  The difference is, for each format change you will have to re-highlight the text and instead of the changes showing up on the screen, a bit of code will appear around the highlighted text.  (If you want to familiarize yourself with the code, check out the Forum Code link next to the Message field.) 

For instance:

Play with it.  This works the same way for the next 3 buttons.  Again you might recognize them, they are Left justified, Center justified and Right justified.  These settings determine wither your text will be lined up on the left side, the right side, or centered on the screen.

The next button, with the HR on it is the horizontal rule button, if you want to place a horizontal line in your post, click the button.  Again, play with it, it will just put a little [hr] in your message, it's easy to delete if you decide you don't want it.

The next three buttons are very handy.  The first is the "Insert Hyperlink" button.  This is what you will want to use if you want to post the web address of something on the forum.  You might have noticed that you can already type out an address and it will automatically become a link.  That's handy, but sometimes you want to have text linked instead of the full web address, especially if it's long.  For instance, say you want to link to a website about long web addresses.  You can cut and paste the address, but when it is long like this, http://www.historic-hillyard.com/this_is_a_really_long
_hyperlink_that_really_needs_to_be_made_smaller.html.  Instead you can have a link: Long hyperlink.  To do this, set the Format Mode to Prompt and type in your message the text of the link ("Long hyperlink") and click the "Insert Hyperlink" button.  It will ask for the URL for the link, cut and paste the web address. (Be careful, the http:// is already there, only copy and paste the from the www. part.)  Click Okay and you will have something that looks like this:

[url="http://www.historic-hillyard.com/this_is_a_really_long
_hyperlink_that_really_needs_to_be_made_smaller.html"]Long hyperlink[/url]

but it will look like this: Long hyperlink  in your message.  I know that seems complicated, again, play with it.  That's the only way you are going to learn.  Use the Preview button on the bottom of the interface to check if you are accomplishing what you are trying to do.  (If you are already kind familiar with html code, learn how to write the forum code yourself here)

The next button is super easy.  In fact, I'm not even going to explain it.  It is the "Insert E-mail" button.  If you want someone to be able to e-mail you either by clicking a text link like above, or by seeing your e-mail address use this button.  It is super easy and the instructions are in the pop up as long as you are in the Prompt Format Mode.

The third button of this batch is the "Insert Image" button.  This one's pretty easy too.  The only catch is the image you want to post must already be on the internet.  You cannot upload an image to the forum; you cannot attach a picture like you would in a e-mail.  Your picture has to be already on the internet, or "hosted" somewhere else.  (I'm not going to get into hosting too much, feel free to e-mail me if you want more information on how to do this.  In general, you need someplace to host it, Comcast has an image hosting service for their customers or try a free one like Image Shack.)  When you find a picture on the internet you want to share, right click on it and click "properties."  This will bring up a pop up with image information.  You will want to highlight, copy and paste the image's URL, (Starting with www again, watch for the http:// already being there).  Then click the "Insert Image" button, again just paste it into the field and press okay.  That will include a picture in your post.

You might also want the picture to link to a website, like using your company logo and having it link to your company website.  To do this, create an image like described above and then highlight the coded text (i.e. [img]http://www.historic-hillyard.com/images/linkBack.jpg[/img]) and click the "Insert Hyperlink" button, then type or paste the web address you want the picture to link to. 

Do I really have to say it?  Play with it, you'll get it.

The last set of buttons are the "Insert Code", "Insert Quote" and "Insert List" buttons.  The "Insert Code" isn't used in on our forum because html code is disabled.  The "Insert Quote" button is very handy.  It is the standard way to quote someone or something otherwise posted on the forum or even around the internet.  Just copy the text to be quoted, click the button, paste the text and click okay.  The "Insert List" button is for making lists, it's pretty self explanatory like the "Insert E-mail" button, try it if you're feeling adventurous, it can be a little quirky. 

Finally, below all those buttons are the "Font," "Size" and "Color" drop down menus.  As you might have picked up on by now, you just have to highlight the text, use the drop down menu to select what you want and the code appears in the message.  Try it out, use "Preview" to see if it's working.  The one other thing you need to know is, you can't just change the font, size or color of text by highlighting it again and clicking another setting.  You have to delete the code on either size of the text first and then re-highlight and choose.  The code you want to delete is going to be your selection inside [brackets].

Now class, here's your homework:  Try these things out.  The Moderator of the forum has created a place to practice these skills.  Click here to go to the thread.  Next month, we will apply your skills in next month's Hillyardite's Guide to Computers and Stuff, Internet Forums 104, Advanced Forum Interaction 2: Signatures.

Thanks for reading and remember, feel free to e-mail me, Luke Tolley, any questions you might have about computers and stuff and I’ll do my best to answer them.  Click here to e-mail me.

Resources:

• Historic-Hillyard.com Community Forum

• ImageShack