BBS
Help
and
Hints

Welcome to the Space Frontier Foundation's BBS System!

Hopefully, you will find this system easy and straightforward to use. Following are a few bits of information that might be handy or interesting; feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions for additional tips.

• Use the Preview button to take a look at your article before you submit it. Once you get it looking right, use Submit to send it off. Once it's sent, it's sent, so do check it out first.

• Try and keep threads on topic. If you want to go off on a tangent, use the Start a New Thread link at the top of each page.

• The Index Page is updated whenever a new article is posted, but that doesn't mean that it will automatically be updated on your screen. If you POST an article, then use the BACK feature of your browser to get back to the Index page, you'll need to use the RELOAD feature to display the updated Index Page and see your post in the list.

• Text wraps automatically in the text entry boxes; you don't need to hit return when you get near the edge of the box. In fact, you want to AVOID hitting return, because the BBS will take this as an indication that you WANT a return there. Since paragraphs are formatted automatically, wrapping as needed for the width of the screen, you usually don't need returns, except to separate paragraphs.

• You cannot easily control indent. In HTML, multiple blanks or tabs are compressed into a single space. Without resorting to jumping through hoops (see below), you should not count on anything indenting and lining up nicely.

• Once you submit an item, it's gone. Use the Preview button and check your posting carefully before hitting the Submit button and sending your article off.

• If you're a die-hard html writer, you can embed html in your posting. But you have to be sneaky about it. Normally, html "special" characters ('"', '&', '<', and '>') are translated to '&amp;', etc. HOWEVER, if you preceed these characters with a backslash ('\'), they will not be translated. Use a double-backslash ('\\') to put a backslash in your text. You can even suppress the placement of <br> tags where returns were pressed by preceeding returns with a '\'. You will DEFINITELY want to preview your posts if you try this - and if you embed any URLs, test them before you finally hit Submit.

  Example: to add a link "THIS IS A LINK" pointing to i http://www.host.com/file.html, you'd usually code it as
  <a href=http://www.host.com/file.html>THIS IS A LINK</a>
  In a BBS posting, you'd add backslashes:
  \<a href=http://www.host.com/file.html\>THIS IS A LINK\</a\>

  If you're not sure what this all means, don't worry about it - it's a feature intended for the hard-core html writers.

Software ©1997-2007 Michael K. Heney and Mach 25 Technologies