****Coding Tutorial for Proboards v5 (READ ME FIRST!!!)****

[Xion Zeros]

After the mess we had after the last show's set of results and skits being sent in, I really don't want to go through that mess of literally spending days decoding and decrypting you guys' skits and segments like it was Klingon written in kanji. So, to help everyone out, I'm going to give you all a few pointers on the new coding layout. I'm not going to attempt to teach you guys a semester's worth of college-level understanding of HTML/Java mark-up programming via this PM but give you enough understanding to not make a mess of this new system. 

Note: If you MUST copy and paste from Microsoft Word or any other word processor program, you can do the following if you are using Google Chrome as your Web browser. Copy from that source then right-click onto this forum's posting area(s) and select to "Paste as Plain Text". This removes all of pre-formatting from outside programs and browsers.

First of all, you should notice two tabs at the bottom of each window above the option to Create/Send Message/Thread, Visual and BBCode.

Note: For those of you who are still whining about losing work when your browser randomly crashes, Proboards v5 has a fix for that. I'm sure you guys are a going to feel REALLY stupid after over seeing this feature. Edit your Profile and select the Settings tab. Here, you should be able to see several Forum Preferences. 

• Show Participated - At the top of the main page of the forum there's an option marked "Participated" that shows all of the threads that you have contributed to on the forum recently. You can enable/disable this feature.
• Show Signatures - Don't like seeing your fellow members' distracting and oversized signatures? Disable seeing them at all on the forum with this option. 
• Forum Theme - There's only one by default, unlike the last build I designed at least 2-3 themes for this forum so there's nothing to tamper with here.
• Enable Drafts - Yes, Proboards v5 can save DRAFTS of your posts while you're still working on them. So stop whining about losing your work, folks. Either work in that or use Google Docs like I do. 
• Posting Default - I suggest, no DEMAND you switch this to BBCode by default. That way you're not confusing yourself by coding in Visual by default. 

Visual is active by default and allows you to see the fruits of your coding in real-time. This is also your PREVIEW screen. I highly suggest that you do NOT code in this tab. Also, do NOT copy and paste from any outside document creator, such as Notepad or Microsoft Office. That adds a ton of extra coding (due to spacing and margin parameter differences from documents to a webpage) from those programs that you will not see until after you have posted/sent the message. If you are sending in skits from here on out, DO NOT put in center/justify tags. I cannot stress this more enough. You're making my work coding the results for the show(s) as a whole a LOT more difficult when I have to skim through the show for hours end to figure out where the coding went wrong and why it's clashing with my own preset coding for the show. 

Instead start every post/thread by selecting the BBCode tab first. That way you can see your coding in detail and see how much different it is from the previous Proboards v4 coding was in comparison of this current Proboards v5. Please note that there are no more list, color, nor IMG tags. List tags are replaced by both ul (unordered list) and ol (ordered list) tags, color tags are part the font tag family but are embedded by hexcodes (internet markup code numbers for every known color on the color spectrum), and IMG tags are replaced by img src tags. 

Proboards v5 is more like HTML or XHTML. Sure, it sounds easy for me because I have been coding HTML for fun and for coursework over the last decade, but at it's core it's not that difficult. What does that mean? First of all, that means it's a LOT easier to interpret via multiple browsers without much issue. Surprisingly enough, Proboards v5 adds ending tags to your coding automatically if you happen to forget to add them. At the same time, this can create problems for your coding and formatting in the long run if you are not aware of what it is doing. If you look at a LOT of your coding for text like you will be for your roleplays and promos in the future, take note that a lot of the tags are under font now. 

Let's look at an example below:

John Cena will face The Rock for the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania 29. 

Let's view the coding for this shall we?

[font face="comic sans ms"][font color="#f7db0a" size="4"]John Cena[/font] [u]will[/u] face [font color="#f70a1d" size="4"]The Rock[/font] for the [i]WWE Championship[/i] at [b][font size="5"]Wrestlemania 29[/font][/b].[/font]

The bold, italics, and underline codes are still roughly the same, as well as the font style has changed to font face, but font color has changed to stress what color is used precisely via the hexacode system. For those of you who miss our preset colors from the last version, don't fret. Proboards v5 remembers your favorite colors at the bottom of the color window, allowing you to select them again with ease. 

Now for images. 

[img alt="Mega Man gif from Mega Man 8" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/463d3eb4d7435f3ab50772b457fc58fb/tumblr_mhpe05jXTq1s0u4w0o1_500.gif"]

For images a dialog box opens after hitting the image button, allowing for easy access for adding the link of your choice. What's new to Proboards v5 (well for you guys anyway...) is that you can add an img alt, which describes your images to anyone who might have them disabled on their browser/forum settings. Previously, you would have to code that in manually. I'm positive that the majority of you were not aware of that feature as I never noticed it in anyone's coding. 

Now see, that wasn't SOO scary wasn't it? Feel free to replay to this PM with any questions/concerns you may have with coding in this new system.