The formatting bar is the row of buttons at the top of the box when you are in post mode. It has the following buttons in it:
<b> <i> <u> <img> quote code @ <a> Close Tags
Use these buttons by clicking on them. Then tags appear.
For example, the “b” above is the “bold” tag. It is made of two parts, the opening and closing tag:
[b] and
[/b]
You then type between the tags. You can also type some text, highlight the text, and THEN press the tag buttons.
Alternatively, if you know the code, you can type in the tags directly, that just takes more time.
For example, if you want to make some words bold, you type and hit the
<b>
button and here’s how it will look in your posting work page:
[b]if you want to make some words bold[/b]
I’m going to place a link to a favorite website here - ajabanzaban.org. I did that by clicking on the “a” tag in the formatting bar. The @ symbol adds an email link.
And say I want to add a picture. 
That was easy. Or put something in italics. Well, there, I just double clicked the word, and then clicked on the little i thing above.
Some tags don’t appear in the formatting bars.
For example, I’m going to note, yet again, that the way to write Persian here is to put it between the farsi style tags like so:
[style=farsi][/style]
همچون
And some forms of html you can use directly, like making a link the old fashioned a href way: A link to my favorite language site
One way to figure out how to format your posts on the forums is by looking at another person’s post.
If you like it, log in, then click the “quote” button underneath their post. It will place their post within quotes in a fresh posting window for you. It will also reveal the code they used to create their post. By studying this, you can see what tags they used.
Does that make sense?
Enjoy.
