Formatting in Discourse is a little different. It relies more heavily on a coding intuition which can be tricky to get down at first.
We’re here to help!
Making a new topic
First, locate the “New Topic” button in the navigation menu on the right hand side.
Tapping on it will pull up a text box which collapsed or re-sized up/down. You’ll also notice, there’s a preview on the right of what you type in. Using the preview is a good way to know if your formatting will show up right, or your .gif will load.
Next, you’ll want to start writing!
Normal text, will show up normally. There’s also emojis that can be inserted, bullet points and number lists, and quoting. The tool bar is a big help for most things you want to do.
Button for quoting the whole post. You can do this is you’re sharing to another post to relate the topics, share feedback and so on.
Here are your standard Bold or italic buttons.
Link button will add a hyperlink to the selected text.
This is the Block Quote and Preformatted Text button. Both will put your text in a grey box and keep the format that you have applied to it.
How to upload images, either from your hard drive or from the web by URL.
Bullet point and number list buttons.
Your emoji button. There’s a large, searchable list of them!
Lastly, there’s the settings button. This is for everything else, including building a poll.
Seeing the tools in action!
Quoting
Quoting a whole post can be a very good tool for sharing information that others weren’t able to find. All you need to do is get to the post you would like to quote, open your New Post menu and tap on the Quote Whole Post icon.
Or, you can quote a specific section, by highlighting it with your cursor and tapping “Quote” underneath it.
Bold & Italics
These work as usual: you can highlight and press ctrl/cmd + B or I, or tap the buttons for Bold or Italics. You can also manually place the “**” or “_” around the text you want to bold or italicize.
Linking
When inserting a hyperlink, highlight the text you want to add a link to, and tap the “Link” button.
Block Quote & Preformatted Text
Block Quoting uses the greater than (>) to indent the text into a grey box. If you want to block quote a large amount of text, you can highlight and tap the “” button or add them manually for each new line. To make sure the following text does not get included, press enter twice and check your preview.
For Preformatted Text you’ll want to hit the spacebar 4 (or more) times to format it, or highlight and tap the “</>” button. Preformatted Text is usually used when sharing code, like Donacode, to help keep the correct format for the text.
Inserting Images
Tapping the insert image button will bring up a menu where you can choose to use a web link or choose from a file from your device (computer, phone, tablet, etc) or drag and drop directly into the New Post menu.
Important note: Please keep in mind the max file size is 2 MB (2000 KB).
Sometimes you’ll find a gif doesn’t load because it’s too large to be loaded from the URL. A workaround is to save it directly as a .gif, and upload as a file!
Bullet Points & Number Lists
This is where things get tricky. As before, you can highlight the text you want to be a list, and then tap on numbers or bullet points. But what if you want to make an outline? Indent the list items?
Here’s how!
First you’ll want to begin your list: highlight and tap the type of list you want or manually place. Note the asterisks (*) used for the bullet points.
Choose the line you want to indent, then add two (2) spaces before the asterisk or number. Note the numbers are still numbers after indenting. To combine the list types, replace the number with an asterisk, and tap out two spaces. This will align the format together. If you want to indent further, keep adding on two spaces.
Emojis
There’s a large array of emojis can be inserted into your text box. There’s two ways of doing it! First, tap on the emoji icon, and search for the suitable emoji you want to use.
Or, tap in your text box, and type a colon :, followed by the emoji’s name.
Text Post Settings
Here you can make your post “hidden” (in cases like Trigger Warnings, or sensitive posts for example), blur spoilers if you’re talking about stories, or build a poll.
Hiding Details
Blurring Spoilers
Building a Poll
This option is the only one that requires a couple extra steps. First choose the type of selection you want for the choices in your poll.
Check whether you want to show the people who voted for the poll (this will show who casted their votes so you can see all the members who participated) or keep it anonymous.
And lastly, you’ll want to input your choices. Make sure to format it so that there’s only one (1) choice per line. Make sure you have the purpose of the poll in your text box too or people won’t know what they’re voting on!
Which turns into:
One last tip!
If you ever do something horrible to your formatting and can’t figure out how to make it go away, the undo hotkey works in most cases! Press ctrl/cmd + z to undo. Continue to tap it to go all the way back to the beginning if you want to!
Hope this helps! Please let us know if there’s anything else you want us to cover!
Love,
The Episode Team
! I guess the only thing I miss is centering and justifying my text, but I think I can live without that. Thanks so much!
. I hope this helps 
