This will be a tutorial on how YOU can bring your favorite topic and all of it's existing replies over to this message board!
Whether it's from the old DCMB, the new DCMB, Rob's Boards, Yahoo! groups, etc., you can recreate the topic in it's entirety here, using Notepad, Wordpad, Noted (like I do), or any other text applications.
Let's use Dannell's post at eGroups/Yahoo! and now here at Legion World as our example.
First, let me explain that each topic is a text file with the extention .cgi located in a folder associated with the forum in which it rests. Each of these files names are the numbered order in which they are created for our example it is 000001.cgi in Forum #14.
The first line of data of the file appears like this:
"A" doesn't mean anything, but still needs to be there. The letter does change but "A" always works.
"0" signifies that this is the subject of the post.
"DannellLites" is the users log in name, which is different than her public displayed name. It's what you type to log in and it's how the program identifies the user.
"Moi's favorite Legionnaire!" is the subject title.
"1" signifies that the subject is done.
"Dannell Lites" is the user's public displayed name, not her log in name.
"00000000" is the user's member number. I use all zeroes for those who haven't registered with us.
The body of the message looks like this [I edited most of it so that this will hopefully seem less confusing]:
"Z" like the A above it always works. And it just signifies the begining of a new line.
"000000" is the user's member number.
"DannellLites" is the log in name.
"07-26-2000" is the date of the original post and it needs to be in this format: Two digit Month-Two digit Day-Four digit year.
"04:23PM" is the original time of the post. It also needs to be in this format: Two digit hour-Two digit minute-AM or PM.
"[Dannell's intitial post]" is the body of the post in question. All of the text rests here and since it requires some formating to appear right, I'll discuss the detail of it in my next post.
"0.0.0.0" is the IP address of the poster at the time of the post. Using 0's works fine. You don't need to have the original IP address.
"reg" needs to be there. It tells the MB what form to present the message as.
"4" is the message icon number of the post.
"Dannell Lites" is the public name of the user.
"000000" is the member number again.
"yes" frankly, I dunno. Sometimes it's no and I don't know why. "yes" always works for me and seems more positive dontcha think.
I should point out that the lines are essential in seperating each bit of information. || puts the two parts directly together. |||| is for when the program adds details such as the profile, homepage, e-mail address, etc. of the user.
More soon...
[ August 12, 2003, 04:45 AM: Message edited by: Nightcrawler ]
Posted by Nightcrawler on :
Let's discuss the body of a post now.
This requires code to be translated by the program into the final product.
In our example Dannell's post appears like this:
quote:Here is a grand pic of moi;s favorite Legionnaire Mon-El!
This is what that same quote looks like in the cgi file:
quote:Here is a grand pic of moi;s favorite Legionnaire Mon-El!<br /><br />Dannell!<br /><br />--<br />Dannell's Magneto Page!<br /><a href="http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Keep/4026/Index.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Keep/4026/Index.html</a><br /><br />Dannell's Batman Page!<br /><a href="http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shuttle/4853/Index.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shuttle/4853/Index.html</a><br /><br />Legion Of Super-Heroes FanFic Archive!<br /><a href="http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shuttle/8110/Fiction.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shuttle/8110/Fiction.html</a><br /><br />Subscribe to my very own Fanfic Mailing List!<br /><a href="http://www.egroups.com/group/DannFic" target="_blank">http://www.egroups.com/group/DannFic</a><br /><br /><img src="http://legionpics.net/images/LP00002 - MonEl4.gif" alt=" - " />
The above is one long line of text. <br /> is for every line break. The hyperlinks in the message begin with <a href=, and then in quotes is the actual link usually starting with http:, followed by target="_blank">, then the text to be highlighted as a link (without quotes), ending with </a>. Images are imbedded by starting with <img src=", followed by a link to the picture, and ending with " alt=" - " />. No spaces should be added between the codes.