Hello,

I'm here to touch on the touchy subject of BBCode that has been discussed many times before, yet the importance of it seems to be dismissed.

BBCode is STILL the main way of styling forum posts in many communities. In a community I moderate, many users either post broken topics (styled with BBCode that works on (all) other forum software) or complain that the BBCode that does work gets converted to HTML when they save their post.

To claim that BBCode is deprecated and an old technology is fine, but forums are right up the same alley. People who still use forums, are people who also still use BBCode. BBCode is simple, it's like writing Markdown and everyone loves that. Suddenly taking that away from everyone, in the spirit of being innovative because everyone else "still" uses BBCode is a bad move. BBCode still exists because it works great. It can't be that hard to maintain from a technical perspective. I believe your decision to drop it was more of a "crap we fudged ourselves and now it's hard" rather than a "this is what the users want" decision.

In previous discussions it was mentioned that it's technically challenging to bring back proper BBCode (into the current CKEditor?/parser). Back then a user proposed a separate editor for those who wish to write in BBCode (AND KEEP IT IN BBCode). This could be a solution to the technical dept you've created by removing it, should you wish to avoid fixing it. Otherwise, I think "a lot of work" is just the way it is. I don't think anybody requested the removal of BBCode, and I believe the demand for it is large, but not very apparent towards you guys.

Now,

If there is a way to:

• Add BBCode extensions (through plugins or a UI)
• Permanently stay in BBCode source mode (and also persist the posts in the original source format, be it HTML or BBCode)
• Support all the previously supported BBCode elements in the same format as other forum software

then please point me to that solution, and forget this post, but the last time I checked there was no proper solution. I know there is a BBCode plugin for CKEditor but that doesn't really do much besides convert (some) BBCode into HTML when writing the initial post, but this is not what is required. To my community (and probably many others), BBCode is MUCH more important than HTML. Not a single user of my community writes HTML posts and many don't want to take the time to use the WYSIWYG editor to mark up their post. Many of the users post BBCode posts from other forums as well and these often don't get marked up at all.

Anyway, thank you for considering my post and I'm sorry if it sounds rude but I'd like to stress the importance of BBCode.

 

Edited July 30, 20195 yr by Brent C

I too get complaints from some of my community members about the removal of the View Source (since it exposes the HTML vs BBCode) - I was surprised to find that many people mark up their posts prior to posting.

I get that, but with this version of the CKEditor, using keyboard shortcuts is a HUGE time saver, and much easier to mark up than manually writing BBCode, much less HTML.

Since I upgraded my forum to 4.x I have been loving the ease at which I can CTRL+B to bold, CTRL+I for italics, etc. - not to mention the paste and upload image capabilities.

Your forum may be geared towards more complex markup and hence why BBCode is important to you/your community, which I can understand.

IPS seems to be taking the "greater good" approach in abandoning BBCode (presumably to make the software easier to maintain and improve upon), but if it's feasible there should at least be BBCode support for those who want it (or if possible encapsulate it into an addon/application) as you suggested.

BBCode still works - so you can type stuff like:

[b]Bold[/b], [i]italic[/i] and so on.

To add your own replacement style buttons, check out this guide:
 

 

 

@opentype All vBulletin forums (and equivalents such as SMF, phpbb) use BBCode, no?

So? It’s like saying to Apple years ago “every PC maker still puts in floppy disc drives and no user asked you to actively remove it so you need to keep it forever”. This kind of argument can be used against any change, and it turn it means nothing. 

 

You're very quick to dismiss …

Dismiss what? I already asked you to substantiate your claims, even giving examples of how that could look like. You didn’t provide anything other than saying “other platforms still have it“. A poor argument, which I addressed. 

  2 minutes ago, Brent C said:

… nobody asked for it. 

Just like nobody asked Apple to remove the floppy but it still happened and eventually became the norm. Again, I already addressed that. 

 

 What's the point in discussing with you if you dismiss everything?

I accept logic, reason and facts. I do not accept flawed arguments or untrue or unsubstantiated statements. If you tell me 1+2 = 2 and 1 + 3 is 5, don’t complain that I “dismiss everything you say”. Continuing to point out that people haven’t asked to remove BB code for example, is an objective logical fallacy. It must be dismissed. The suggested conclusion (so it better should be kept or reintroduced) doesn’t logically follow from the premise. 

 

Either way, there's no point in continuing this useless discussion as IP will not reintroduce BBCode.

There’s the disconnect: I was only trying to help you to see the flaws in your argumentation so you can maybe avoid that in the future. Some people would not consider this kind of advise “useless”. 

It is possible to embed video or audio using these script?