Any BBCode experts?

[Wain]

I was hoping for some advice from someone who has advanced BBCode experience.

To my untameables lists I'm trying to add thumbnail pics and url links to a full-sized pic. Both full and thumbnail pics are stored on this site. To do this I've been doing something like:

Code: Select all

[url=http://forums.wow-petopia.com/hugeUrlStringForFullPicFileblahblahblah][img]http://forums.wow-petopia.com/hugeUrlStringForThumbnailPicFileblahblahblah[/img]Text for the skin name[/url]

But this adds up VERY fast. I very soon reach my post character limit and I simply can't fit many skins per post. It would take pages to get it all in, even though the finished product doesn't appear to have much text at all.

I was wondering if any experts know any shortcuts to this to get my actual text per post down and fit more appearances into one post. Is there any way I can refer to the site url with some sort of shorthand? Or any way I could define a few text strings for the file paths so I could use them over and over, kind of like a #define in C? Or anything else you can think of?

Thanks for your help

[Acherontia]

I don't personally, but one piece of advice just to cut down on the path size is, have you tried TinyURLing it, or just uploading them straight to Tinypic? It won't be a HUGE help (hopefully someone here does know code) but it should cut all of the path lengths at least in half.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Saturo's pretty good with BBCode, but she can't post here.

[Wain]

I don't personally, but one piece of advice just to cut down on the path size is, have you tried TinyURLing it, or just uploading them straight to Tinypic? It won't be a HUGE help (hopefully someone here does know code) but it should cut all of the path lengths at least in half.

I would have to tunyURL hundreds of pics. I hope not

[Acherontia]

I would have to tunyURL hundreds of pics. I hope not

On the offchance it does come down to that, try this. It's still be time-consuming, but--it's a Firefox addon that allows you to shorten URLs by right-clicking a link and picking Shorten URL. Then you just paste it elsewhere.

I'm sure there's a far easier way to shorten the links though, lol : /

[Aeladrine]

If you're just linking to the pictures, you shouldn't need the [img] tags. However, if you're doing pictures that link somewhere, you do. So far as I know, there's no shorter way to do that. I've been screwing around in BBCode for years, but I am by no means an expert. I can make posts pretty, that's about it.

[Xella]

Do you have access to the Admin Control Panel, Wain? If so, you can set up your own BBcode tag to work (in ACP -> Posting -> BBCodes -> Add New). I think the easiest thing would be something like:
[petopia={SIMPLETEXT1}]{SIMPLETEXT2}[/petopia]
with the HTML replacement box something like:

Code: Select all

<a href="http://www.wow-petopia.com/look/{SIMPLETEXT1}.html"><img src="http://www.wow-petopia.com/images/skin_thumbs/{SIMPLETEXT2}t.jpg" /></a>

I tried that on the DS forums just to make sure I wasn't barking up the wrong tree, and it seems to work: "[petopia=bluesporebat]sporebatblue[/petopia]" results in [imghttp://www.wow-petopia.com/images/skin_thumbs/sporebatbluet.jpg[/img] as expected. SIMPLETEXT1 is the unique part of the URL of the pet's page, and SIMPLETEXT2 is the unique part of the thumbnail. All pets' thumbnails and detail pages seem to have the same basic url, but not all pets' images & detail pages are named identically ("owlblack" works for both the thumbnail and the link, but "bluesporebat" only works for the link, not the thumbnail). If you were willing to go through the pets and fix the naming discrepancies, you could get away with something like "[pet=sporebatblue]" which would save you additional space... but it'd be more intense short-term work for an unknown amount of future payoff.

Edit: Obviously I am blind, you're using a different URL for a different purpose than I originally thought I read, but I think the same method should still work... just put in the appropriate URLs in the HTML replacement box, heh.

[Wain]

Thanks for your advice guys! To be honest I'd stopped checking this thread and hadn't noticed there were more messages till now. Sorry!

Mania's been busy and I haven't gotten any feedback from her yet but the Moderator was nice enough to increase my post size limit to the point where I could fit all the pics on the thread very comfortably (here and here).

So while it'd be nice to cut down on text it's no longer strictly necessary for me. If I hear back I'll still try to see what I can do though. And unfortunately I don't have access to the admin control panel, but thanks Xella

[Xella]

Well, as long as you've gotten some sort of solution!