PROFILE POST HACKS (ie: Inserting Smilies, Gifs, Photos and Links into Profile Posts)

Discussion in 'Site Questions, Support and Feedback' started by Nick Delmacy, Feb 20, 2019.

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  1. It's perfect. Keep the Profile Posts short and the Forum Threads for longer discussions.

  2. Please allow more characters for the main post only, not the replies.

  3. Please allow more characters for just the replies, not the main post.

  4. Please add 100 more characters to both.

  5. Please make them both unlimited like the forum threads.

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  1. Nick Delmacy

    Nick Delmacy is a Verified MemberNick Delmacy Da Architect
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    Since more ppl are using the Profile Posts and creating comments that have led to Thread worthy discussions, I just want to make sure everyone knows how to add gifs, photos and links when responding to a Profile Post.

    First tip: If you want to add a line-break to your Profile Post by pressing ENTER without having it post prematurely, hold down the SHIFT key at the same time: SHIFT-ENTER.


    ADDING IMAGES AND LINKS TO PROFILE POSTS

    Everyone has likely seen these ways of starting a Profile Post:

    Screen Shot 2019-02-20 at 12.18.18 PM.png

    Screen Shot 2019-02-20 at 12.26.13 PM.png

    The camera icon allows you to add a photo to the original comment, but not subsequent comments and replies.

    Like the forum threads, the Profile Posts use a shorthand web encoding system called BBCodes: "BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards." - Wikipedia

    Using these codes, you can do a ton of formatting for your profile posts and the replies, including adding gifs, photos and links.

    We have a help page here: Using BBCodes

    But essentially, if you want to add a gif to your reply you would use the Image code:
    Code:
    [IMG]
    at the beginning of your image link to tell the software that you want to embed an image.

    Then you want to tell the software when the image link ends by "closing" the Image code with a forward-slash:
    Code:
    [/IMG]
    The link to the image you want to add should be added between the two.

    Example: https://cypheravenue.com/assets/gif/chloe2.gif

    So this:
    Code:
    [img]https://cypheravenue.com/assets/gif/chloe2.gif[/img]
    becomes:

    [​IMG]

    It's pretty simple once you memorize the codes that you will use most often. For me I use IMG and URL a lot for adding images and links to Profile Posts and replies. Remember to add the brackets to both the open and close of the link and remember to add the forward-slash to the second set of brackets.

    There are more things you can do like add bold to text or change the color of your replies, but for the most part I think the IMG and URL tags will be the most used.

    Screen Shot 2019-02-20 at 12.48.28 PM.png


    ADDING SMILIES TO PROFILE POSTS

    The method for adding Smilies (the face cut-outs seen in the forum threads) is similar but a little bit different. For the smilies, the forum uses text shortcuts that we have created nicknames for...

    For example: the nickname for this :salute: is the word 'salute' with a colon added to the beginning and end of the word:

    Code:
    :salute:
    Sometimes the nicknames are easy to remember, sometimes they are kinda random. But a list of all of them can be found here: Smilies | The Boards

    We may be adding new smilies to the list soon, namely smilies that look more like the emojis we all use on our smartphones.

    Some of you can also add your own custom smilies. You can see that option here:

    Screen Shot 2019-02-20 at 1.08.13 PM.png

    EMOJIS

    [​IMG]


    Unfortunately, the version of the forum software that we use on the site does not allow for using emojis directly from your mobile device or desktop.

    The only alternative is for me to manually add each one as a Smilie and give them nicknames like the 'salute' smilie above.

    The newer version of the forum software (2.0 and above) enables this feature directly from mobile devices and desktops, but if we upgrade we will lose a ton of other third-party features that seem to currently be more important to the forums (ie: the entire FEATURED page that many people scroll through would have to go away).

    I've downloaded the new version of the software and somewhat tested it...It's pretty robust and has a lot of modern mobile device friendly features. So maybe one day soon we will select Squad Members to beta test it (like we did with the main site redesign) and decide if the pros outweigh the cons in upgrading.


    THE LENGTH OF PROFILE POSTS

    Many of you, including myself, have run into the problem getting the error message about a profile post or reply being too long.

    Screen Shot 2019-02-20 at 1.38.09 PM.png

    Currently it is set to 300 characters for the Original Post and 400 characters for all replies to that original Profile Post. We've battled with this length since the early days of the forum.

    Seeing huge paragraphs in the Profile Posts column started to get annoying because often these were Forum Thread worthy discussions that the members could have created, adding to the variety of topics to discuss.

    When hardly anyone creates new threads, it kinda makes it look like the forum isn't active. While we clearly aren't a huge community like Lipstick Alley or even the message board that inspired our forums, The Coli, we clearly don't have a dead community. We just have tons of Lurkers who want to read our dope discussions.

    So we cut it down to 200 characters, similar to Twitter, to encourage more Thread creating.

    The downside to having the Profile Post character count too low is that every letter of that gif link you want to add to your reply gets counted to the overall count length. So if it was a long link and your reply is a bit on the longer side, you will likely get the error message and have to cut something out (much like on Twitter).

    So we increased the Original Profile Post to 300 characters from 200.

    We (the admins) have the ability to change how many characters are allowed for the Profile Posts. The rationale is that if we keep it to a low number, people will be more encouraged to post longer thoughts as Threads instead, where its easier for everyone to add photos, gifs and leave replies.

    If everyone could post deep discussions in the Profile Posts, we figured we would have a drop in threads created. But we're seeing that even when we drop the length to the bare minimum, many active members STILL refuse to create new threads (for some odd reason). Often, I have to manually move great discussions in the profile posts to forum threads.

    I do understand that sometimes you get a random thought and want to share it, not give the the grand attention of an entire Forum Thread. I've said and done this many times myself. Everyone uses and enjoys the site differently.

    I'm open to having a discussion about this. Should we keep the length low (where it is now) or open the flood gates? What number of characters do you think works better? Please leave a comment and select an option in the poll.
     
    Winston Smith and SB3 dapped this.
  2. mojoreece

    Bae Material The 1000 Daps Club Supporter

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    the only reasons why I post long profile post is cause I get quicker response to my profile post than my forum posts:weak:.

    If I want to include, pics, gifs, links, etcs in my profile post; I usually just type what I want in an empty forum and copy the BB code.

    But keep the profile post shorter. The forums should be for more lengthy post and multiple media attachments (gifs, pics, vids, etc).
     
    Winston Smith and Nick Delmacy dapped this.
  3. Winston Smith

    Best Site Comments The 1000 Daps Club Supporter

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    I don’t do a lot of threads because there are enough squad who cover anything I would have to bring up; plus I’m such an idiosyncratic thinker they usually get a WTF response when I do post one lol. So I’m cool with the word limit.
     
  4. Sean P

    Squad Leader The 100 Daps Club Supporter

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    Excuse the ignorance. I'm trying to get educated. If I use the BBCode to insert gifs, does that mean I can ignore the BBCode? That's the code I have been trying to use for gifs. For my own pics that may be on my desktop or in a folder, how do I insert them in a profile post response? I'm good on inserting pics from the web. I'm only challenged with my own pics.

    OK. This pisses me off. That [media=] BBCode shit works when I'm trying to make a point. Couldn't get it to work any other time... I should note that I have been using the site name that I wanted to pull the gif from after the = (e.g giphy).
     
    #4 Sean P, Feb 20, 2019
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2019
  5. Nick Delmacy

    Nick Delmacy is a Verified MemberNick Delmacy Da Architect
    Site Founder The 10000 Daps Club

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    Only way to import your own pics to Profile Post replies is to first upload it to your gallery here:

    https://cypheravenue.com/boards/media/add

    Or, you could use another image hosting site.

    Then, right-click the image and select the "Copy Image Address" option.

    That link you copy, will be the link you use with the IMG bbcode.
     
  6. Aejae

    Aejae Socially Awkward Aejae
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    So basically our opinions are getting shorter :yeshrug:?
     
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