Since a few users requested this - here is a topic to explain how to post properly on Diablofans. It's meant to give you a general idea of how to format your posts and make them work nicely with our forum. If you have any specific questions you're free to ask. This post may get updated if new things are requested.
Pasting
When pasting things the forum tries to keep the old formatting intact, which sometimes makes the post look quite ugly. Here's an example:
Gather your gear, heroes, and get ready to face down the Burning Hells on the PlayStation 3!
Our action-packed single-player hands-on demo will showcase several key elements that make Diablo III on the PS3 so much fun, including a reimagined interface and inventory system, direct character control, updated camera, and bosses and monsters specifically tuned for console. Players will also get to experience gameplay from Act III of the campaign where they’ll get to test their mettle as either the cunning Demon Hunter or mighty Barbarian.
In order to avoid these things you should use the "Remove Format" button, which, believe it or not, removes all formatting from the selected text. To straight out paste things without the old formatting you can use the key combination ctrl+shift+v. A fair warning is that all other formatting, like URLs, bolded text and other such things, will also be removed. To see how to properly post a Blue Post check the Quoting section below.
Quoting
Quoting text generally has no issues, but here are some tips that might help you make your quotes a bit more more elegant. Quoting Blizzard posts happens with the "blizzquote" tag. Inside it you can also use a few more lines of code that could make it more complete. Here's an example:
In the example "author" is obviously the author of the quote, while "blue" is the source of the quote in our Blue Tracker. You can also use "battle" to link to the official forums, the same way "blue" is used. In all cases the information must be surrounded with an apostrophe and preceded by an equal sign coming from the code as is shown above.
This is how it looks like when I pull the example out of the code tag:
Originally Posted by 'Blizzard' (Blue TrackerOfficial Forums)
*Text*
There is also a "dfansquote" tag, which is meant for text that isn't a direct Blizzard code and might not have a "quote" button associated with it. It is used in exactly the same way as "blizzquote". Here's an example of how it looks like:
DiabloFans Quote:
*Text*
The way we use "dfansquote" is to quote things involving the game or the forums without it being attached to a blue poster. Using the normal quote tag usually signifies a quote from a forum member, so "dfansquote" gives it that "slightly more important or unusual" vibe.
Note: it is very important to first remove the actual link from the pasted text. You can do this by pasting the link unformatted with ctrl+shift+v or by selecting the text and using our "Unlink" button , which is located right next to the Link button.
This is the result - overneathe. The positive thing about this and not just pasting a URL on top of the text is that our user tooltip works with it when you hover above the name.
Tooltips From Battle.net
A nice feature of the site is that you can link straight to Battle.net items, spells and builds and on hover you can view their tooltips. Like this. To make users more aware that this is likely an item link with a tooltip it's preferable if you type out the actual name of the item, like Mempo of Twilight.
There is no code associated with this feature. Simply select the text you wish to link, press the "Link" button on your post and paste in the address for the item. The tooltip is automatic.
Separation Line
The code for the separation (or "horizontal") line that is used in this post a lot (the long red one) is:
[hr]
How to Make a Table of Contents
To be able to do this you need two tags. One is "anchor" and the other is "alink". "Anchor" is attached to text you wish to be linked (like a paragraph in your text), while "Alink" is used in the table itself and tells the code to go to a specific "anchor". Here's an example:
Table of Contents
[alink='items']1. Items[/alink]
*lots of text*
[anchor='items']Items[/anchor]
In the example your anchor is named "items" and the link tag from above is also named "items" which prompts the code to send you to the anchor of the same name.
Spoiler tags are generally used in two ways: to hide spoilers or to hide huge amounts of text that are not critical but are useful in context. The code for them is pretty straight forward:
Adding tables on Diablofans is a bit tricky. Sometimes they break and it's not pretty. It takes a few tries to get the table going, but when it's done it looks quite nice. There's almost nothing in terms of code that goes into them. The only important part is to add the "|" symbol to let the code know where your new column begins and linebreaks for a new row. Here's what you have to do:
[table]Item | Explanation | Summary
Mempo of Twilight | |
Link to Item | Helm with horns! | This helm is good because it has horns.
Inna's Radiance | |
Link to Item | Helm with a gem! | This one on the other hand has a gem in it![/table]
Table of Contents:
Pasting
When pasting things the forum tries to keep the old formatting intact, which sometimes makes the post look quite ugly. Here's an example:
Gather your gear, heroes, and get ready to face down the Burning Hells on the PlayStation 3!
Our action-packed single-player hands-on demo will showcase several key elements that make Diablo III on the PS3 so much fun, including a reimagined interface and inventory system, direct character control, updated camera, and bosses and monsters specifically tuned for console. Players will also get to experience gameplay from Act III of the campaign where they’ll get to test their mettle as either the cunning Demon Hunter or mighty Barbarian.
In order to avoid these things you should use the "Remove Format" button, which, believe it or not, removes all formatting from the selected text. To straight out paste things without the old formatting you can use the key combination ctrl+shift+v. A fair warning is that all other formatting, like URLs, bolded text and other such things, will also be removed. To see how to properly post a Blue Post check the Quoting section below.
Quoting
Quoting text generally has no issues, but here are some tips that might help you make your quotes a bit more more elegant. Quoting Blizzard posts happens with the "blizzquote" tag. Inside it you can also use a few more lines of code that could make it more complete. Here's an example:
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
*Text*
In the example "author" is obviously the author of the quote, while "blue" is the source of the quote in our Blue Tracker. You can also use "battle" to link to the official forums, the same way "blue" is used. In all cases the information must be surrounded with an apostrophe and preceded by an equal sign coming from the code as is shown above.
This is how it looks like when I pull the example out of the code tag:
Originally Posted by 'Blizzard' (Blue TrackerOfficial Forums)
*Text*There is also a "dfansquote" tag, which is meant for text that isn't a direct Blizzard code and might not have a "quote" button associated with it. It is used in exactly the same way as "blizzquote". Here's an example of how it looks like:
DiabloFans Quote:
*Text*
Inserting Videos
Proper inserting of videos, with displaying the actual video on the site instead of just linking to it, is made with the "media" tag. Example:
Note: it is very important to first remove the actual link from the pasted text. You can do this by pasting the link unformatted with ctrl+shift+v or by selecting the text and using our "Unlink" button , which is located right next to the Link button.
Linking to Another User
You can link to other users with this:
This is the result - overneathe. The positive thing about this and not just pasting a URL on top of the text is that our user tooltip works with it when you hover above the name.
Tooltips From Battle.net
A nice feature of the site is that you can link straight to Battle.net items, spells and builds and on hover you can view their tooltips. Like this. To make users more aware that this is likely an item link with a tooltip it's preferable if you type out the actual name of the item, like Mempo of Twilight.
Absolutely the same works for spells and builds.
There is no code associated with this feature. Simply select the text you wish to link, press the "Link" button on your post and paste in the address for the item. The tooltip is automatic.
Separation Line
The code for the separation (or "horizontal") line that is used in this post a lot (the long red one) is:
How to Make a Table of Contents
To be able to do this you need two tags. One is "anchor" and the other is "alink". "Anchor" is attached to text you wish to be linked (like a paragraph in your text), while "Alink" is used in the table itself and tells the code to go to a specific "anchor". Here's an example:
In the example your anchor is named "items" and the link tag from above is also named "items" which prompts the code to send you to the anchor of the same name.
Spoiler Tags
Spoiler tags are generally used in two ways: to hide spoilers or to hide huge amounts of text that are not critical but are useful in context. The code for them is pretty straight forward:
Here's the result:
Adding Tables
Adding tables on Diablofans is a bit tricky. Sometimes they break and it's not pretty. It takes a few tries to get the table going, but when it's done it looks quite nice. There's almost nothing in terms of code that goes into them. The only important part is to add the "|" symbol to let the code know where your new column begins and linebreaks for a new row. Here's what you have to do:
(don't mind the different colors)
And here is the result:
Updates:
04.07.2013 - Added some more info on "dfansquote"; added "Spoiler Tags"; added "Adding Tables".
Ha. Bagstone.