How about some info on the various formatting options? For example, I know Dewi was all excited about the "textile" option, but I have no idea what it is or does.
Another example: here is one bit of a description from an option: "Filtered words will be replaced with the filtered version of the word."
Hm. Who is doing this filtering? Where does the filter live? What are these filtered words? Is this admins keeping it clean, or what?
And I don't _like_ to display my ignorance, but what is BBCode? Can normal human beings learn to use it, or is it hopelessly geeky? Would I want to use it? Why?
I hope you see my problem.
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formatting options in posts
My understanding (without being too geekily-inclined) is that BBCode is the [ b ] bold [ /b ] codes that you use to add emphasis to posts. I actually miss the old buttons that we used to have, because I'm just too lazy to learn to do it the geeky way.
Looking at the Input formats, I'm not sure I see a huge difference between Filtered HTML and Textile (at least, if there is one, it's not listed) Seems like Textile format has fewer allowed HTML tags, and textual smilies aren't replaced with the graphic ones. I'm not sure I see what the big deal is.
As for the filters, let's try it out! Bum! Boobies! Are they being filtered out, or shall we try for harsher language?
28:06:42:12...
Re: formatting options in posts
How about some info on the various formatting options? For example, I know Dewi was all excited about the "textile" option, but I have no idea what it is or does.
Excellent question M! Textile is a wonderful, nifty little markup language which lets you do most stuff you could in HTML but without all the longwindedness of it, or the anal-retentiveness (but admittedly semantic advantages of) XHTML. So basically it's marking up text to make it do a bit more than the simple stuff most content mgt systems do for normal users.
Having said that, we were having some problems with site indexing for the site-search function and the closest we could trace it to was the textile control module
No idea why but we've disabled it until the next upgrade when a lot of low-level annoying things like that should sort themselves out.
Another example: here is one bit of a description from an option: "Filtered words will be replaced with the filtered version of the word."
Hm. Who is doing this filtering? Where does the filter live? What are these filtered words? Is this admins keeping it clean, or what?
Yep, that's the one. We set up a few words on the old forum to be *****'ed out if they were used but they never were. At the moment we're kind of going on exception reporting(ish) in that if we get complaints, or we notice something that just shouldn't be, we'll add it to the filter. have anything you want filtered out? Let's know here.
And I don't _like_ to display my ignorance, but what is BBCode? Can normal human beings learn to use it, or is it hopelessly geeky? Would I want to use it? Why?
BBCode is Bulletin Board Code and, like textile, is a shorthand way of marking up text to do nice stuff. When you create content (i.e. post something to the forums, blog, etc.) you'll notice some buttons between the "Title" field and the "Body" textarea. One is the word "Quote" inside a box then a "B" inside a box, then a slash, then "Link" then "Image". These are for inserting BBCode into a post like in with the buttons that used to be in old forum. They work the same way. Click on the box with a slash line in it, type a word then click on the same box again and the word you typed will be italicised (or bolded with the "B", etc.). There's loads more BBCode and this site respects most of it but I note Mr Scrub is back from his overseas jaunts-- I'm sure he will know where some good references are out there
I hope you see my problem.
Oh, indeed; and I believe I promised to you (or Dewi, or Dearmer, or OB or someone.... I forget...) to put some stuff up about how to do things on the site. It's coming, i promise. I've just finished Corporation Tax, VAT and Companies House accounts today so there'll be much more time for this sort of thing now
Thanks to everyone for your patience!
Lee Alley
"I could tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel"
formatting options in posts
So my next question would be, how does all this strike the average viewer? And I guess the question has two parts:
1) Is the average user put off by not understanding what many of the options are, or are they used to that, and don't care? Or does the average user understand all that? and
2) Is the site average for communities in terms of geeky options available, or on the bleeding edge?
This is a question of look and feel for the target audience. Are we hitting the mark? People with more experience hanging out in places like this would need to comment here, because I'm no help with this. I only know what my individual reaction is.