Posting hints and tips:urls and pics

[Aun O Vader]

Ok guys, I know some people arent that aware of some of the subtlties of using bb code to post in a forum, especially those who have mainly posted in the GW forums before here, that didn\'t even allow you to put in a link, only a url! I know I really struggled with this when I first joined astro so I\'m going to try and help this one a bit.

Links
We all love to see other people websites and to check out links to cool pictures and things, but when you post long urls this results in the whole page being thrown out of kilter, meaning that you may lose the whole ability to edit or reply to posts when this happens. if you are posting a lengthy link then it may be just as simple to change the way that the code is entered. bb code works by putting square brakets [ ] around certain letter strings to make them do specific things. If you use [ url] (without the space) before a link then it will automatically become a link, but it will just make the entire phrase a link that it will join together. if on the other hand you use [ url=www.zzz.com] (without the space) then it will mean that your link will be enclosed within the open and close url brackets, and you can type in a quick phrase to link through (here is fairly popular). This will also make your poss slightly shorter. Don\'t forget to close all links by using [/url ] without the space between the l and the ]. This is how the link in my signature to the karma article is created.

Pictures
Similarly to links a particularly large image will distort the size of the webpage. so you can constrain the size of an image within the brackets. instead of simply using as the opening code use [ img size=300] or something similar, but without the space between [ and img. This will restrict the size of the image to a particular size. The maximum image size on astro is 450. Don\'t foget though that a small image will lose a lot of resolution if you make it too big.

You can combine both of these features together by nesting codes together, so you can code it as [ url=][ img size=] and by typing in the url and image size after the = then you create an image that if it is clicked upon it will link to a particular page, for example:
[img size=300]http://www.astronomican.com/images/logo.jpg (http://www.astronomican.com/index.php)

Don\'t forget that there shouldn\'t be spaces after the [ symbol, but I have had to use them to prevent this whole article being linked and imaged! Hope this helps, we can answer questions a bit more clearly, but this is intended as a starting point.

[adders]

Nice one Aun, I\'m locking it so that it doesn\'t get lost under a load of posts.

Cheers

Post edited by: adders, at: 2006/11/16 12:02

[Aun O Vader]

Ok guys, I\'ve seen this becoming an increasing irritant on the site over the last few months so I thought I\'d best bring the subject back to people\'s awareness. When posting images on astro the maximum image size allowable is 450 pixels. I appreciate most people use a large screen resolution and this doesn\'t affect them but I don\'t, for various reasons, but it does allow me to spot when people are in contravention of these rules. It winds me up and it irritates the other mods and admins having to go into people\'s images and edit the code to make it work. I wrote this guide for a reason and I\'ve had it as a link in my sig since I wrote it. I commend the article to all members to read and remember. If i have to keep editting people\'s posts because they are to lazy to add in an additional 9 characters then I will start to undergo a sense of humour failure!

Please don\'t let me down.

[DarthXander]

For a bit more on the Links front, here is an example.
I may have a very long url such as;

www.ridiculouslylongurlthatdoesnotneedtobethislong butforwhateverreasonitis.com

When I could quite easily enclose it in square brackets with a word or short phrase e.g
link (www.ridiculouslylongurlthatdoesnotneedtobethislon gbutforwhateverreasonitis.com)

The coding for which looks like this (minus speech marks)
[\"url=www.ridiculouslylongurlthatdoesnotneedtobeth islongbutforwhateverreasonitis.com\"]link[\"/url\"]

As you can see this makes the page a heck of a lot tidier. As astro links are highlighted yellow, we can all see it is a link. Also, a short phrase will make people more inclined to check out your site as you can be descriptive than some Emperor damned long line of numbers and letters that makes R2-D2 sound English.

Thanks
DX

[The Dim Reaper]

And just to remind everyone links and images that may be offensive, hurtful or of a pornographic nature are not tolerated and will result in a permenant banning from the site, no exceptions.

Also anything that might be perhaps over PG-13 (swearing, graphic violence, kittens getting shot out of cannons) please notify everyone beforehand in big red letters like this!

Cheers,

Dim

[Indra]

A point that I have lately found myself referring new members to is that if you host your pics on a free online album site such as www.photobucket.com it will allow you to have images of the right data file size and provide a facility to direct link in the posts as well, so it may bw worthwhile getting an account over there, it\'s free after all.

Indra