Before HTML, there is bulletin board code

I want to start off easy.

Before we get into the sort of real HTML you've been dreading, the kind you know you need to do but have been avoiding, let's look at something easier. Let's just look at formatting text in comments or on a forum that permits you to use bulletin board code. Most forums use this code, which is based on a simplified HTML. You can't do as much with it, but you could do some cool things if you could figure out how.

Everybody else seems to understand, right?

If you know this already, you're ahead. If you don't ever post on a forum, you can skip ahead, or you can just read it through before going on.

The first thing you need to remember is you are going to be formatting things, and you will need to wrap the things you want to format in tags.

There is a start tag and an end tag for everything you want to do.

You start a section of bold text with a [b] and end it with a [/b]. Like this: [b]bold[/b].

See how the 'end' tag has that forward slash in it? That's what makes it a end tag.

You start a section of italic text with a [i] and end it wih a [/i], like this: [i]italic[/i].

You change the color of a word like this: [color=red]color[/color].

Make a link show up as http://google.com like this: [url]http://google.com[/url].

Make a link show up as text: [url=http://google.com]text[/url].

Make an image appear: [img]http://yourimageurl[/img]. Your image must be online for this to work, either on a site you control or on a free webhost.

Make an image into a link to another site: [url=http://google.com][img]http://yourimageurl[/img][/url].

There's more, but for now that's plenty. If you need to do more, you should follow the link below. If you want to do a lot of exotic stuff on a forum that only permits bulletin board code, you're going to be frustrated, because it is limited.

But you will be able to make your text stand out a bit now that you understand it.

More on bulletin board code from Wikipedia.