How to Quote Messages of Other Posters - bbCode Basics

Note: If this lesson seems a bit unclear to you, you may want to check basic bbCode lessons: How Does bbCode Work? & How to Correctly Insert Tags.

The quote feature allows you to display in your post, a previous post, a part of it or any block of text, the quoted text will usually be shown in a frame in your final post to differentiate it from your own words.

The tag for quoting is [quote]. Now in the popular forums, you just need to click on a button to quote a previous post, or to copy then paste the quoted message or paragraph to he field in which you type your post, to select that text, then to click a button to make it between the starting tag [quote] & the end tag [/quote].

However, my aim here is to let you know how exactly tag work so that you can manually insert them without editors & also to customize them for your needs, as the automated systems have only basic plain usability.

Let's first do a simple quote, then use an option for more advanced quoting:

1. Example on a simple quote:

Nothing we don't already know about correct tags insertion:

[quote]This part is a quoted text.[/quote]
This part is not.

Will most likely look in your final post:

Quote:

This part is a quoted text.

This part is not.

2. Advanced quoting using options:

There are some options available in some forums scripts & not in others, but there's one common option, the one that let you specify the poster / author of the quoted text. This option is added as we add other options we already saw, i.e in the starting tag after the tag code & an "=" sign, the option itself will be the name of the poster / author of the quoted text (in fact you can type anything as the option).

Example:

[quote=Sandy]This is what wrote Sandy.[/quote]
This is my reply to it.

Will look in your final post depending on the forum you participate in:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sandy This is what wrote Sandy.

This is my reply to it.

or:

QUOTE(Sandy)

This is what wrote Sandy.

This is my reply to it.

or:

Quote from: Sandy

This is what wrote Sandy.

This is my reply to it.

etc.

Note: Since I stated this blog, phpBB based forums are making me some troubles as they don't include some useful features in bbCode, or have some special codings.

If the advanced tutorial above doesn't work, maybe the forum in which you tried it on is a phpBB based forum (to be sure see: What Kind of Forum are You Using?), in this case, you have to wrap the option with quotation marks "".

Example:

[quote="Sandy"]This is what wrote Sandy.[/quote]
This is my reply to it.

Result:

Sandy wrote:

This is what wrote Sandy.

Any questions? drop a comment! :)