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**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [February 29, 2000, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/posting-links-w-out-html/910 "2000-02-29T23:31:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2
**Author:**  [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2000, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/posting-links-w-out-html/910/21 "2000-03-03T23:13:00Z")
Ha! That one fucked their page, too - right after they told me,
> [@](#):
>
> The best thing to do though is to use the UBB code [url] (space added for display
> purposes).
> With the use of the right UBB code you can make a 6 mile long URL and it would appear only as long as what you insert between the tags.
Yeah, suuure.
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**Author:**  [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2000, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/posting-links-w-out-html/910/22 "2000-03-03T23:15:00Z")
Yes, I’ve asked how the ‘right’ UBB code differs from what I did, now that they can see exactly what I typed.
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**Author:**  [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2000, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/posting-links-w-out-html/910/23 "2000-03-04T12:49:00Z")
The final word from the two guys on the UBB board who tried to answer my question is:
1. There’s a pre-set limit, in the UBB software, on the number of characters
you can put in a URL before it chops it up.
2. That limit, based on personal experimentation, seems to be
enough characters to fill up four lines of the ‘your reply’ box, including the ‘[url=’ itself.
3. There’s a way to go in and find the limit in the UBB software, and change it.
That’s the only way to fix it.
4. It sounds a bit beyond my ken, but they imply that it’s not too difficult
for more technically savvy types.
At this point, it seems like it’s time for me to punt this one back to the Straight Dope admins.
They’re the ones who have to decide if this is worth dealing with, after all.
And they’ll need to talk with the techs, who would hopefully have some idea
about whether this would be easy or hard for them to do. If they think it’s do-able,
then the techs can get further advice, if they need it, from the people
who advised me on the UBB board.
But I’m in over my head at this point, and the admins have to balance this against
their need to get the residual problems with the board, left over from the Great Hack,
fixed. It would be really good to up the limit on URL length by about 50%,
but I’m not an admin; I don’t know what other problems and needs come ahead of this.
Manny, thanks again for pointing me to the UBB board.
TubaDiva, I’ll shut up about this now, and leave it in your lap. 🙂
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**Author:**  [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2000, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/posting-links-w-out-html/910/24 "2000-03-06T01:11:00Z")
Charles Capps of the UBB board just posted the following:
> [@](#):
>
> It’s sub Truncate in ubb\_library.pl…
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**Author:**  [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2000, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/posting-links-w-out-html/910/25 "2000-03-06T21:51:00Z")
Thanks for the good work, folks, we appreciate it.
I’ll forward this on to the techs.
## your humble TubaDiva Adminstrator The Straight Dope
“Life isn’t what should be, it’s what is.”-- Lenny Bruce
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