Table of Contents demonstration
Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 3:09 am
Due to popular request, here are instructions detailing how to create a Table of Contents in the initial post of a thread. This will assist those who want to reference builds within threads, critical plot points in a Play by Post game, art commission portfolios, and so on.
It takes a few minutes to set up a TOC, but once begun it becomes very easy to maintain.
This guide is written with the assumption that you have at least 2 posts in your thread (the initial, plus at least one other). On the top right corner of every post are the Quote and Edit buttons - when you put your mouse over one of these buttons, it will give you a tooltip that says "Quote this post" or "Edit this post" or something similar. While you have the pointer over the button, elsewhere in the browser it will show the URL of that button - for example, in Firefox it is in the lower left portion of the browser frame (along the bottom of the screen when fullsized, for example). You will notice that attached to the end of the URL is the unique Post ID number. For example: http://bashtalk.org/modules.php?name=Fo ... ost&p=1534 means that post has a Unique ID of 1534. What I did at this point was to record the post ID number for each post I linked to in the TOC, plus the initial post so I could link back to it from each post.
Now, you will notice that in the address bar at the top, you should see something like this:
http://bashtalk.org/modules.php?name=Fo ... =1534#1534
The number at the end is what needs to be changed, through trial and error the first instance of the number doesn't seem to affect anything, it's the portion after the # that is important. Still, I modify both numbers just for that sense of completeness
At this point you break out the URL bbcode tag, as follows:
[ url=http://bashtalk.org/modules.php?name=Fo ... =1535#1535 ]Test 1[ /url ] (without spaces beside the brackets)
You can either use the URL tag button to wrap selected text or type it manually, and then paste/modify the URL value itself.
Add as many lines/tags as you have posts you want to link to. What I did in this case was to also add a link in each post back to the top of the thread. If you add a new post to the thread and want to link the TOC to it, simply go back to edit your first post, and add a new line with the number of the new post.
Check it and see.
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
It takes a few minutes to set up a TOC, but once begun it becomes very easy to maintain.
This guide is written with the assumption that you have at least 2 posts in your thread (the initial, plus at least one other). On the top right corner of every post are the Quote and Edit buttons - when you put your mouse over one of these buttons, it will give you a tooltip that says "Quote this post" or "Edit this post" or something similar. While you have the pointer over the button, elsewhere in the browser it will show the URL of that button - for example, in Firefox it is in the lower left portion of the browser frame (along the bottom of the screen when fullsized, for example). You will notice that attached to the end of the URL is the unique Post ID number. For example: http://bashtalk.org/modules.php?name=Fo ... ost&p=1534 means that post has a Unique ID of 1534. What I did at this point was to record the post ID number for each post I linked to in the TOC, plus the initial post so I could link back to it from each post.
Now, you will notice that in the address bar at the top, you should see something like this:
http://bashtalk.org/modules.php?name=Fo ... =1534#1534
The number at the end is what needs to be changed, through trial and error the first instance of the number doesn't seem to affect anything, it's the portion after the # that is important. Still, I modify both numbers just for that sense of completeness
At this point you break out the URL bbcode tag, as follows:[ url=http://bashtalk.org/modules.php?name=Fo ... =1535#1535 ]Test 1[ /url ] (without spaces beside the brackets)
You can either use the URL tag button to wrap selected text or type it manually, and then paste/modify the URL value itself.
Add as many lines/tags as you have posts you want to link to. What I did in this case was to also add a link in each post back to the top of the thread. If you add a new post to the thread and want to link the TOC to it, simply go back to edit your first post, and add a new line with the number of the new post.
Check it and see.
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4