We’ll get back to the funneh in a bit. First, some tech geek stuff.

We’ve had questions and discussions from time to time in comments about how to do certain formatting things. Somebody wants to include an image, or a video, or maybe just format some text.

If you know HTML, then you don’t really have many questions, apart from “Is this tag or that tag supported?” But, we use a thing called BBCode to allow for certain HTML functionality to be implemented, including some HTML tags that aren’t generally supported by WordPress.

Now, you may want to know why tags aren’t allowed. Well, it’s actually a security issue. It’s possible to use tags to include stuff we don’t want, from redirection to other sites, to full-on defacement of the site. Some tags are obvious, such as the <SCRIPT> tag, but what about other tags? Turns out some really smart jackasses have figured out how to do stuff like that in ways you wouldn’t think about.

The solution is to use an alternate tag system. And that’s where BBCode comes in. It’s an alternative tag system that allows comments to include some HTML. It supports some of the same HTML tags supported by WordPress, but it also allows some more.

Bold: [b]bold[/b]
Bold: bold

Italics: [i]italics[/i]
Italics: italics

Underline: [u]underline[/u]
Underline: underline

URL: [url]https://wordpress.org/[/url]
URL: https://wordpress.org/

Image: [img]https://s.w.org/style/images/codeispoetry.png[/img]
Image:

Image: [img=Code is Poetry]https://s.w.org/style/images/codeispoetry.png[/img]
Image:

Quote: [quote]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit,[/quote]
Quote:

Quote: [quote=NAME]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[/quote]
Quote:

Quote: [quote=”NAME”]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[/quote]
Quote:

Quote: [quote author=NAME]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[/quote]
Quote:

Quote: [quote author=”NAME”]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[/quote]
Quote:

Color: [color=”ff0000″]hex red[/color]
Color: hex red

Color: [color=#ff0000]hex red again[/color]
Color: hex red again

Strikeout: [s]striked this out[/s]
Strikeout: striked this out

Center Text: [center]center me[/center]
Center Text:

Computer code: [code]function HelloWorld($greet = ‘World’) { return ‘Hello ‘.$greet } [/code]
Computer code: function HelloWorld($greet = 'World') { return 'Hello '.$greet }

Font size: [size=10]10px font size[/size]
Font size: 10px font size

Ordered lists: [ol][li]Item one[/li][li]Item two[/li][/ol]
Ordered lists:

1. Item one
[li]Item two[/li]

Unordered lists: [ul][li]Item one[/li][li]Item two[/li][/ul]
Unordered lists:

• Item one
[li]Item two[/li]

Named Spoiler: [spoiler=two plus two]four[/spoiler]
Named Spoiler:

Unnamed Spoiler: [spoiler]Boo![/spoiler]
Unnamed Spoiler:

So, if you were wanting to use any of the stuff listed above, now you know that you can. Whether or not you should is a totally different question.

Oh, and there may be some others that work. There’s also something called WordPress Shortcode, which is similar. Maybe I’ll talk about those some day. But these are the BBCode items that work here. And, you can probably use them on other places, not just WordPress blogs.

Okay, that’s all. There’ll be some funny stuff posted soon, I’m sure.