Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "I wanna write like that, too!" Well today is your lucky day, because I'm here to show you how its done, step by step.
I'm here to help you learn BBCode *the coding used in the forums and guilds here.

And make your words and thoughts come to life! And I'll also give you the ability to use fancy fonts colors and whatnot. A quick note before i begin:

If you'll notice, a lot of the instructions you see here will look like this:

[*insert instruction here*]I'm the man![/*insert instructions here]
*used in the bold(b)(/b), italics(i)(/i), underline (u)(/u)and code (code)(/code) tags

or this:

[*insert instructions here=""]Whats your problem, bud?[/*insert instructions here*]
*used in the Quote(quote)(/quote) tag

or this:

[*insert instructions here=*][*/insert instructions here]
*used in the Code(code)(/code)URL(url)(/url) and Image(img)(/img)(imgleft)(/imgleft)(imgright)(/imgright)(imgmap)(/imgmap) tags

If you understood all that, congratulations, you don't need me teachin' ya this.

If you could figure out that you could substitute these()(/) for these [][/] and just type in the words to get what you want, good job and good eye.

If you feel still feel lost and confused, don't worry, you're not alone, and I'll be here to show you the ropes. I'm also here to answer any questions you may have about my teachings.

How to change the text color or size
To alter the color or size of your text the following tags can be used. Keep in mind that how the output appears will depend on the viewers browser and system:
Changing the colour of text is achieved by wrapping it in . You can specify either a recognised color name (eg. red, blue, yellow, etc.) or the hexadecimal triplet alternative, eg. #FFFFFF, #000000. For example, to create red text you could use: the name or number in the instructions. either way, they come out the same.


or



they both give you Hello!


*Side note: you can also do this to underlines and strike-throughs, like so:

done



Changing the text size is achieved in a similar way using the size tag. This tag is dependent on the template you are using but the recommended format is a numerical value representing the text size in pixels, starting at 1 (so tiny you will not see it) through to 29 (very large). For example:



will generally be SMALL

whereas:



will be HUGE!

you can also combine forming tags*that'd be the things I'm showing you* to get someones attention. For example, you may write:



this would output You friggin' moron!

I don't recommend you output lots of text that looks like this, though! *unless you feel like getting your point across wink * And you can also use this to put multiple colors in your post.

Of course, these kinds of sentences take a little while to make, so only use when absolutely necessary.


And also, there are a lot more to choose from than the ones in the color list, so just use your imagination and let your creativity run free and experiment with all the different color names to see what suits you.

(in case you were wondering, the colors i used *in order* were

Dodger Blue
Dark Violet
Teal
Gold
Sky Blue
Pink
Dark Orange
Dark Green
Midnight Blue
Orange Red
Royal Blue
Crimson
And my personal favorite, Silver
A full list of available colors can be found here
*the two worded colors are typed together as one, if you want to use one of those, and they don't need to be capitalized, or any of that*

Remember that it is up to you, to make sure that tags are closed the right way. For example, the following would be wrong:

Creating an Un-ordered and ordered list
BBCode supports two types of lists, unordered and ordered. They are essentially the same as their HTML equivalents. An unordered list ouputs each item in your list sequentially one after the other indenting each with a bullet character. To create an unordered list you use and define each item within the list using

. For example, to list reasons why you wouldn't and shouldn't be called a nOOb you could use:

[list]
[*]I'm considerate
[*]Literate
[*]And i don't use chatspeak
[/list]

This would generate the following list:

• I'm considerate
  
• Literate
  
• And I don't use chatspeak
  

for an ordered one, just add a 1 or a in the first list instruction

[list=1]
[*]I'm considerate
[*]Literate
[*]And i don't use chatspeak
[/list]

These would be the results

[list=a]
[*]I'm considerate
[*]Literate
[*]And i occasionally use chatspeak
[/list]

You can also substitute emoticons or any other pictures for the bullet points, if you're feeling creative.

Adding an image.

A simple act of the IMG boxes and adding the URL for the image.



After


To link an image to a URL, add the url image to the IMG boxes



After



This also works in your sigs if you want to link it back to somewhere.

An Image map works much the same way, expect that you'll have many links contained in one image. Unfortunately, I have no idea how the process works confused Ask someone that does make this stuff, like this guy or this guy(the second guy's being a bit simpler than the first) When do you get one(or make one yourself *points to links*), however, you use the Imagemap command to place one in your sig.


And another thing, if you want a lot of things in your sig at once, get the URL for what you want, go to tinyurl.com and paste it there. *don't do this for your Imagemaps, however, as it'll take you to...someplace other than the desired link xd * Once you shrink it, paste in back in your sig. You'll be amazed at how much space you'll have in your sig for...other things... ninja

Hosting an image
If you haven't figured out HOW to yet, don't worry, thats what I'm here for ^_^
Go to Photobucket or Imageshack and make an account.

When you make one, click on Browse and look for the folder that has your desired image on it. Double click on the file, then click submit on the website page. In a few moments, you should have the image loaded and 3 different addresses for it (the raw URL, the HTTP upload for it and the BBCode for it) Click on the BBCode address *that'd be the bottom one of the 3* and right click and choose paste. then paste it into your sig. And remember to shrink the URL so you have more space. ^_^