Help for general editing

G'day all, I need to understand the quirks of this forum's software, as putting in links and stuff doesn't seem to accept any of the usual syntax for forum software. For example, BBCode doesn't work the way I'm used to, etc, etc. I realise this is being kept simple for a reason, but I'd like to understand what I can and can't expect to be able to do in a forum post.

There's nothing I can see that helps a newbie to this site, which is REALLY frustrating :0. The Help link at the top right goes to an essentially blank page, and trying to solve my questions (without asking what seems to be a very silly question) doesn't work either.

In fact, the search tool can't even find the word "url"! Nor does the search tool work as expected with quotes, etc, and the advanced search tool doesn't actually search the Due forum at all!

So any advice on where to find the "User Manual" for the forum software would be very much appreciated! And of course, if this information is clearly available, please accept my apologies... and please tell me where it is! I must be going blind! :%

Thanks everyone!

-Pete

P.S. I'm not just whinging, I'd like to help get this kind of info posted in one place so people without any knowledge at all can at least do a search or see a sticky. Depending on the results of my questions, this could be the first step! Woo Hoo!

while the search has always sucked over 2 forum softwares This place is currently running Simple Machines Forums, and yea it supports BBCode with no problems

google

[url=http://www.google.com]google.com[/url]

though maybe what your used to is not exactly bbcode (i know powerboard likes to have it their own way for instance)

course I am lazy, I just highlight what I want and click the icon in tinymce (which is the editor)

WTF? I just did exactly that, but instead of a hyperlink, I got the whole tag as plain text! Now, when I tried it again, it works! (No, there was no missing brackets, etc...) Hmm. I'm using Chrome on OSX, I might try updating to see if that might help.

As long as it's made clear somewhere that BBCode works, that should be helpful... though not as helpful as having the usual "BBCode Help" link visible.

Admins, would you care to comment? Is this feasible? (Having some editing help link visible somewhere onscreen?) Or are you trying to keep the interface as uncluttered as possible so new users aren't intimidated?

Thanks for the response anyway, Osgeld, it's much appreciated, even if only to confirm the PHBbb/BBCode stuff should work!

Cheers mate!
-Pete