Style Your Forum Posts with BBCode for Better Results - Forum Style Primer

Styling your forum posts is a great way to add emphasis and meaning to your posts. Using styles can help your post stand out in sea of posts. Forum styles can also make your post more readable and understandable.

Styling your posts is fairly simple. You can use HTML or BBCode to style your forum posts. HTML is the mark-up language for the Web. It is used to create and design web pages.

BBCode is a mark-up language that is used for forums. It allows you to design and style your forum posts. BBCode is very similar to HTML and uses similar mark-up syntax.

Below is short primer on styling forum posts with BBCode. This primer isn’t all inclusive, but it contains some basic information that can help you get the most from forum marketing.

Before I go any further it is important to note that you shouldn’t overuse forum styling. Plain text is sometimes all you need. Using too many styles in your post can make your forum post look ‘childish’ and hard to read.

So here we go...

Highlight important text with bold, italics, color, size, and strike through. To avoid confusion, don't use underline and blue text because they are the standard style for links.

• bold text [b]your text[/b]
• underline text [u]your text[/u]
• italics text [i]your text[/i]
• color text [color=red]your text[/color]
• size text [size=12]your text[/size]
• strike text [strike]your text[/strike]
• font type text [font=Verdana]your text[/font]
• highlight text [highlight]your text[/highlight]

Images, animation, and multimedia can be used to add value and visual effects to a post.

• insert image [img]your image URL[/img]
• align image left [imgleft]your image URL[/imgleft]
• align image right [imgright]your image URL[/imgright]
• insert flash [flash=400,400]http://your-flash-link.swf[/flash]

Adding links to your post is a great way to build back links and to drive forum traffic to your offer. It is also great to extend the conversation beyond the thread.

• website linking [url=http://www.yourwebsite.com/]your text[/url]
• website linking [url]http://www.yourwebsite.com/[/url]
• email linking [email]you@youremail.com[/email]
• email linking [email=you@ youremail.com]your text[/email]
• thread linking [thread]threadid[/thread]
• thread linking [thread=threadid]your text[/thread]
• post linking [post]postid[/post]
• post linking [post=postid]your text[/post]

Semantic markup of your post can give meaning to your post and help readers further understand your post.

• quote text from another post [quote]your text [/quote]
• insert code [code]your code[/code]
• insert PHP code [php]your PHP code[/php]
• insert HTML code [html]your HTML code[/html]

You can also change the layout of your post. A clean and organized layout can help your make your post more readable and digestible.

• align text left [align=left]your text[/align]
• align text left [left]your text[/left]
• align text center [align=center]your text[/align]
• align text center [center]your text[/center]
• align text right [align=right]your text[/align]
• align text right [right]your text[/right]
• indent text [indent]your text[/indent]
• add bulleted list [list][*]Number 1[*]Number 2[*]Number 3[/list]
• add ordered list [list=1][*]item1[*]item2[*]item3[/list]
• add ordered list [list=a][*]item1[*]item2[*]item3[/list]