Most formatting options recognized by the forum software are laid out in the pane to the right of the message window (when composing or editing a message).

The software also recognizes a handful of HTML tags:

<b>The text</b> produces bold text
<em>The text</em> produces emphasized (italic) text
<u>The text</u> produces underlined text
<br> produces a newline
<a href> produces a hyperlink

When posting HTML code for others to view, therefore, it's usually necessary to prevent the forum software from interpreting that code. This is accomplished by surrounding the HTML with the bbcode [code] tag, as follows:

[code]Enter the HTML code here.[/code]

This produces the following:

Enter the HTML code here.

Some caution should be used when using the [code] tag, since it prevents long lines from wrapping automatically. This can result in posts that are much too wide for normal viewing. If you have created such a post, please edit it to insert some line breaks in overly-long lines of code.