Sure, signman.

The easiest way to start is to look at the "format" icons above the message box (not in the "Quick Reply" area, but in the initial entry or the longer "Reply to Topic" choice). There is one the is a little globe with glasses; that starts the protocol to make a link by giving you "url" and "/url" in the brackets. A URL is what that stuff is in your address bar; http://www.roadfood.com is the url for the main page of Roadfood, and http://www.roadfood.com/forums is the url for the forum main page.

To shorten any link and give it a text name, make the first into url="address from the browser toolbar", enclosed in brackets. Make certain that you use the equal sign and the quotes, and close it with the closing bracket. Then you type what you want to appear in your post, and finish with /url enclosed in brackets.

If you want to know how to do other message formatting, look to the left of the message entry box, and click on the words "Forum Code". That will show you how to change colors, sizes, etc, and how to embed pictures in your post. To embed a picture, first upload it to a picture sharing site likePhotobucket. Then open the picture and right click on it. In Internet Explorer, choose "properties" then "address". Copy that to the clipboard. Then, when entering a message, click on the icon that looks like a little yellow postcard in the Format icons (above the message entry box), and paste the address that you copied inbetween the bracketed img and /img. I picked this image at random from the internet and included it in this post by following those instructions:

Let’s say you want to link to the Roadfood main page.

You would normally put http://www.roadfood.com and">. Then follow it with http://www.roadfood.com and .

To make it appear as just the word Roadfood, you do it this way:

Start withRoadfood.

The key is getting the url="address" inside the first set of brackets.

In the post it will appear as

Roadfood