Posting links w/out HTML

About This Message Board
21

Ha! That one fucked their page, too - right after they told me,

Yeah, suuure.

22

Yes, I’ve asked how the ‘right’ UBB code differs from what I did, now that they can see exactly what I typed.

23

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. :slight_smile:

24

Charles Capps of the UBB board just posted the following:

25

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