Demo Site

It's indeed unfortunate that there isn't a true WYSIWYG rich-text editing tool with Fireboard forums. Basically there's only whatever standard font (as defined in the site's Cascading Style Sheet) and all messages are left justified. The following features are missing:

• no support for tables
• no centering or right justification of text
• images cannot be aligned, which means that text cannot be made to "wraparound" the image
• no "easy" indentation of text

I've also discovered that the range of options available to the site administrator is huge! It certainly pays to experiment. I discovered that whenever I created a new topic for discussion (or replied to a post) there's a little checkbox located just above the submit button which was checked on by default. This meant that every time someone replied to a posting that I'd made, I received an email containing the details of what was posted. I've now figured out how to turn that feature off (and I've unsubscribed to all the threads that I'd previously "subscribed" to)!

It doesn't look as though there's the means to copy-and-paste an image here, in the message forums ... which is a pity. We can, however, post images:


Unlike normal HTML, the posts in most message forums use a thing called "boardcode". With HTML we would display an image in the following way: Instead, with "boardcode", it's achieved using the following method:It certainly will take some getting used to!

At least, if you make a mistake you have the means to correct it after it's been posted!

For those of you who are following this saga, I've loaded a new FireBoard Forums template which is packaged with some new stuff. The new template is a lot more streamlined and I like the look of the board icons.

One "drawback" is that all forum categories are not displayed on the forum's "front page" like they were with the old template. This is changed by the new "tabbed" behaviour at the top of the forum's pages (the tab marked "categories").

I still have to work out how to link the forum's "rules" and "help" tabs to something meaningful.

I have created a "help" page

I wasn't too keen on the new FireBoard template, but I do like the new icons, so I've reverted to a hybrid mix of the two - the original template and the new images. I've also located a few "patches" to fix up some programming errors (not of my making) and I've done a bit of work on the Cascading Stle Sheet that's responsible for displaying a user's forum contributions. If you click "My Profile" you'll see how I've rearranged things.

I've also experimented with an "forum announcement".

I've upgraded from FireBoard Forums V1.0.4 to V1.0.5RC2. I'm usually fairly circumspect in using a "release candidate" for a final version in production, but today's examination has shown that V1.0.4 was rather buggy and the developers reckon that V1.0.5RC2 is fairly stable. We'll have to see.

One thing that I do like about the newer version are a couple of extra editing tools, like the "video" tool:

The following embedded YouTube player is achieved by



Fun, eh? :laugh:

They wouldn't let me look at your help page. I got an error telling me to effectively bugger off.

I assume the help page that didn't display for you was the link to help at the top of the forum, or perhaps it was the Boardcode link that's displayed when you're editing a message? Whichever one it was, they both should render effectively similarly within your browser.

What was the error message, if any, that appeared, please?

Sorry it took me a bit to get back to this. The following is the text of the error message. I tried to get at your help link again and I still got this message...

404 - Component not found
You may not be able to visit this page because of:

an out-of-date bookmark/favourite
a search engine that has an out-of-date listing for this site
a mistyped address
you have no access to this page
The requested resource was not found.
An error has occurred while processing your request.
Please try one of the following pages:


Home Page

If difficulties persist, please contact the System Administrator of this site.

Component not found

That's very strange, 'Ness. In message #23 I included a couple of links to the help pages that are contained in the forum. I've indicated in the following partial screen snapshot where they are located:



Although there's a minor difference between the two URLs, they're similar in the way they work (or they should be)

• www.enduring.com.au/40P_demo/forum?func=faq
• www.enduring.com.au/40P_demo/forum?func=faq#boardcode

Could you please show me the URL you get when you try to get to the help page? Thanks.

This isn't a show-stopper (there are other ways around the problem) but, as I haven't been able to reproduce the problem, I'd like to know what's going on.

Hi Sozz, I like this set-up but I have a problem uploading a profile picture of myself as whichever I choose from my pc, is too big. The allowed amount is 100kbs & there is no automatic re-sizing which means many of my sign-in pics will also be too big.

G'day, stormy and thanks for joining.

That sounds like a bit of a "gotcha" - the 100 Kb size limit - doesn't it?

Well, in truth, I "decided" it that way. However, you can resize your image yourself and then upload a smaller file. Of course, you need an image editing program but even Windows Paint ought to be able to do the job.

Image file sizes are dependent on three things:

• the format - eg JPEG, GIF or PNG
• the physical dimensions of the image - the height and width of the image (in pixels). Images used as "avatars" must be no larger than 200 px wide x 500 px high; and
• the "resolution". Resolution includes image "compression" - the ratio of pixels per centimetre - and the number of colors used. The more colours and/or the more pixels per centimetre, the larger the file size.

I can change the existing parameters but I'd like to keep them in place for the time being.

There's no easy solution to this problem. If the worst comes to the worst, e-mail me your image and I'll reduce it so that it's smaller than the 100 Kb limit and you can upload that.

Signing in to say hello

This site looks good and it seems pretty straight forward to use
- I gotta work out what those things all are on the top....code ul ol li....
i know img and URL

Does colour work?
whats spoiler?

Is there a list of these things...??

Yes, I can assure you that the colour works. Try typing some text, hilight it with your mouse and click the colour tool. If you know about colour hex codes, you can change your colour into anything.

The detailed instructions are available here. See my message to 'Ness this morning.

I haven't played with the spoiler tag. My guess is that you select text and then click the spoiler button. It's used when you want to warn someone who's reading your message, that you're about to reveal the plot, or the result of a game of footy that they haven't yet seen. Click on the "pinch" smiley below to see what "hidden" text is there.



Speaking of "hidden" text: there's a hide button.

Something is hidden for guests. Please log in or register to see it.

oooooooo I just noticed threaded and flat -- i like the threaded better as you can see the whole discussion rather than pressing each post individually

wasnt sure where to the post this but thought this one was as good as any lol

gonna try the colour now

I have noticed that the colur we choose for our text actually doesnt change until the post has been submitted. How does one add a pic to the post?