Formatting on the Travelers Helpline
For those of you familiar with formatting posts on other forums, you will find that our BB (Bulletin Board) code system used here on ricksteves.com is very similar. If you're unfamiliar with it, here's what you need to know!
When writing your post, you need to write "tags" to indicate what part of your text should be formatted. The following tags can be used on ricksteves.com:
| BB code tags | Effect | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| [b]bold words[/b] | bold words | |
| [i]italicized words[/i] | italicized words | |
| [u]underlined text[/u] | underlined words | |
| [s]strikethrough[/s] | ||
| [url]http://www.ricksteves.com[/url] | http://www.ricksteves.com | If the full URL (aka web address) including "http://" is not used, the link you are trying to create will not appear. *Some URLs containing question marks or foreign domains unfortunately cannot be linked. |
| [url=http://www.ricksteves.com]test link[/url] | test link | If the full URL (aka web address) including "http://" is not used, the link you are trying to create will not appear. *Some URLs containing question marks or foreign domains unfortunately cannot be linked. |
| [quote]indented/quoted words[/quote] | indented/quoted words |
|
| [color=red]red words[/color] | red words | Other colors include orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, violet, cyan and more. |
| [color=FF0000]red words[/color] | red words | This more complex way of writing in color requires knowledge of the hexadecimal system. More info is available on Wikipedia. Note that "#" shouldn't be used before the hexadecimal. |
| [list] [*]list item 1 [*]list item 2 [/list] |
|
Numbered and lettered lists are also possible if you replace "[list]" with "[list=1]" or "[list=a]". |
Here is an example of how you would write a post:
Hello, this is [b]bold text[/b]. Sharing my [i]travel experience[/i] with other travelers on the [url=http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline]Helpline[/url] is [u]more valuable[/u] than giving someone a link I found on [url=http://www.google.com]Google[/url]. If Helpline members wanted something from Google, [color=green][u]they'd just use Google[/u][/color].
This is how your post would appear on the Helpline:
Hello, this is bold text. Sharing my travel experience with other travelers on the Helpline is more valuable than giving someone a link I found on Google. If Helpline members wanted something from Google, they'd just use Google.
Notes about using BB code:
- If you write something incorrectly within your brackets, the entirety of what you have written within your tags may not appear.
- Proper nesting is required. "Nesting" refers to the order in which you open and close multiple tags. For example, [b][i]this is proper nesting of bold and italic tags[/i][/b]. [b][i]This will not appear correctly[/b][/i].
- Formatting does not continue between line breaks. In other words, if you have added formatting to one paragraph, it will not continue into the next paragraph unless you specifically code it to do so.
- Because brackets are required to make tags work, placing text within brackets will not work on the helpline. For example, if you try to write "I like Rick Steves [he's my hero]", the section of text that says "[he's my hero]" will not appear because our website will think that "[he's my hero]" is the name of a tag it doesn't recognize. Sorry, we do not have a [code] tag to allow for writing normal text within brackets.
- BB code tags not listed above will not work on our site. We use a custom set of tags that is different from other forums.
- Sorry, no image or video embedding is allowed on the Helpline.
- Having trouble? Please review the instructions above carefully or read more about how BB code generally works on Wikipedia before contacting the webmaster. The webmaster is here for you if the website is not functioning properly, but the responsibility to learn how to properly write BB code is on you.
Return to the Travelers Helpline.