Hi Mark,
First, I moved your post to the appropriate form. Stuff like this should not be a featured post on the home page.
Second, nothing on the forum posting process has changed. (Regular posts and page creation has seen significant changes with version 5 of WordPress. Learn more here. But nothing has changed with the forums)
A note on square brackets. “[” and “]” when placed around a word are interpreted as a BBCode or a ShortCode. They are used for formatting, inserting links, etc… and can also behave like a formatting macro, depending on how they are defined. I have considered disabling that functionality, and given that just about everyone uses a rich editor these days I probably will in the near future. I need to check on how much they have been used in existing posts first.
There have been three ways to insert an image into a post. The process roughly mirrors that which you may encounter on a PHPBB board such as Slotcar Illustrated, or many other online forums. Where it differs, and is more rich, is with the capabilities the Add Media button and the Attachment feature presents.
Regarding images: I’m not going to go into a detailed instruction here, but you have several options for working with images.
Attach Image: When you attach an image you have the option of inserting inline with your text. You have several options after doing that, such as what type of wrapping you want, and the ability to drag-and-drop your image within your text. (You don’t have to upload again, just click and drag the image to the location you desire within your text.)
Add Media button: If you use the Add Media feature you have similar options. The only primary difference is the experience you are presented to upload an image. (The Attachment experience that is part of our extended forum functions is a bit simpler than the Insert Media experience, which offers more options, but is also more complex in the options it offers.)
Insert/Edit Image button: This is the one on the toolbar with the mountain icon. This has been the least friendly way of inserting an image into posts since forums were invented. (It was also the only way to do this for years.) The history behind its bare bone functionality is rooted in the fact that disk storage was so expensive. During the early days of forums organizations couldn’t afford to host everyone’s images so they forced their users to link to them wherever they were hosted. It has been activated here because many folks who have used forums in the past will recognize it. Going forward, I have added a new plugin that will allow you upload an image from your local machine when you chose the image icon in the forum text editing toolbar. This should simplify things for everyone.
B