Here are some tips for adding formatting, clickable links and pictures to profile pages or forum posts on swap-bot using Markdown code.  If you make a mistake and have a unmatched asterisks or extra spaces, sometimes a whole paragraph may disappear.  Don't panic!  Click on Edit and check your formatting commands.  If you cannot see an obvious error, remove some of the formatting, save/send and see if that fixed it.  You can check your formatting before posting it to swap-bot by using the Markdown Dingus site.  Put your text into the source section, select Preview only below it and click Convert, and you can see how your text will look.

Bold text

To make text bold, begin and end the text with double asterisks, like this - **bold**.  Don't leave spaces between the asterisks and the text.

Italic text

To make text italic, begin and end the text with a single asterisk, like this - *italic*.  Don't leave spaces between the asterisks and the text.

Clickable text link to another webpage

To insert a link to another page, you need to use the following code, including the [ ] and ( ), but being careful not to insert any extra spaces:

[text you want to appear](URL of the page to which you wish to link)

The URL has to start with http://

Inserting a picture

To display a picture in a forum post, profile or profile comment, you need to use the following code, including the [ ] and ( ), but being careful not to insert any extra spaces:


The URL must be of the picture itself, not of the complete web page.  It must start with http:// and will usually end with .jpg, .gif or .png, but never .htm, .html, .php or .asp.  If you are using Windows, an easy way to get the URL of a picture is to right-click on it and select Properties.  The URL will be in the box which pops up.  The picture must be on the internet, not on your own computer.  There are free photo-hosting sites like flickr and photobucket, so you can upload your own pictures to one of those if you wish.

Making a picture into a clickable link

Read the previous two sections, then use this code, again with no extra spaces:

[](URL of the page to which you wish to link)

Lists

Make text into a bullet list by adding an asterisk and a space before each entry:

* item 1

* item 2

* item 3

will give:

• item 1
• item 2
• item 3

For a numbered list, start each line with a number, a period and a space:

1. item 1

2. item 2

3. item 3

will give:

1. item 1
2. item 2
3. item 3

Note: once it recognises a numbered list, it will number sequentially from 1 regardless of which numbers you actually use.

More formatting

For more information on formatting with Markdown, visit the Markdown site.