How to quote more than one forum post at a time

Quote by Welshdreamer42
Hang on...

Quote by magnificent1rascal
1. Go to the first post you want to quote and press Quote.
2. Select all text in the Compose window and Cut or Copy it, then Cancel.
3. Go to the next post you want to quote and press Quote.
4. Paste the quoted text from the first post into the Compose window, taking care not to overwrite the second quote.

Repeat the process with as many posts as you want to quote.

Update for the new SS 2.0 interface:

1. Find first post and click Quote

2. Find second post and click Quote

3. Rinse and repeat as needed.

4. Add your comments between/below quotes

Basically, each time you click Quote, it adds that post to the Write a Reply box with a space left below for your comments.

Quote by Welshdreamer42
Hang on...

Quote by magnificent1rascal
1. Go to the first post you want to quote and press Quote.
2. Select all text in the Compose window and Cut or Copy it, then Cancel.
3. Go to the next post you want to quote and press Quote.
4. Paste the quoted text from the first post into the Compose window, taking care not to overwrite the second quote.

Repeat the process with as many posts as you want to quote.

Quote by Mendalla
Update for the new SS 2.0 interface

Update on the update. You can partial quote for better focus:

1) find a bit of a post you want to quote.

2) select it.

3) tap Quote beneath that message.

4) the bit you selected will be copied into the Write a Reply box. Type away to reply to that point.

5) rinse and repeat steps 1 to 4. Each time you select stuff and hit Quote, the quoted text and who said it will be appended to the Write a Reply box for you to reply to in context.

Quote by TomEccleston

Update on the update. You can partial quote for better focus:

1) find a bit of a post you want to quote.

2) select it.

3) tap Quote beneath that message.

4) the bit you selected will be copied into the Write a Reply box. Type away to reply to that point.

5) rinse and repeat steps 1 to 4. Each time you select stuff and hit Quote, the quoted text and who said it will be appended to the Write a Reply box for you to reply to in context.

Thanks, Tom. Never got around to adding that. I find it's a bit flaky, though. Sometimes if I partial quote a long post and the selected section scrolls off screen when I scroll down to the Quote button, it will sometimes still quote the whole post. So not as reliable as in some other forum software I use but at least it does it.

Quote by Mendalla
I find it's a bit flaky, though

You and me both. As you say, quote too much and it doesn't work very well. Also trying to quote "By 'eck, it works" from one of the posts upthread failed. Not sure why. Might be because the user is "unknown", or because it contains an emoji, or any number of other factors.

It'll probably get fixed in time.

Quote by TomEccleston
It'll probably get fixed in time.

My lingering concern is precisely this "get fixed in time". Why did they not use something like the Xenforo software I use (and that I proposed to use for a new version of SS when Nic was looking at dumping it instead of upgrading it) that works right out of the box. They are basically building from scratch stuff that software like that (Xenforo, vBulletin, IPS, etc.) has been capable of for years and that's why we keep waiting for stuff to get fixed. I know they wanted to get away from managing the servers and other infrastructure but XF has a cloud offering that was in beta at the time they did the migration and is now live. So does IPS as I understand it.

This software still feels like a forum from about 20 years ago in terms of functionality (I have been using forums for about that long, maybe a bit longer), even if it is modern-looking. I stay because I love the site and community, but if I was someone new here, the software might just put me off.

(PS. This applies to both sites.)

Quote by Mendalla
They are basically building from scratch stuff that software like that (Xenforo, vBulletin, IPS, etc.) has been capable of for years

Not Invented Here, lol.

I've never seen forum software that does the quoting in quite the same way as here (not saying that's good or bad), nor the paste-a-link-over-the-text-to-hyperlink (which is unintuitive, but cool in a way, even though you can't easily edit the link after). But my exposure to forums has mainly been limited to punBB, FluxBB, phpBB and Vanilla. And I'm used to markup-based forums that use BBCode (shudders), Textile or Markdown rather than WYSIWYG style.

I expect (guessing) the sticking point for integrating an off-the-shelf system is licensing. None of the software you cited is open source, and runs proprietary code.

Open source forum software has also traditionally been a pain to customize. They always do something you don't want and you spend ages either searching for a plugin or have to find a way to hack it yourself.

I don't advocate DIY when there's good software already tried and tested, but maybe they have reasons for it.

Quote by TomEccleston
Open source forum software has also traditionally been a pain to customize.

Which is why I use commercial. Xenforo is US$160 upfront and annual maintenance is just US$55 if you self-host. There's an active community of developers, stylists, etc. who can help with add-ons, styling, etc. and a massive library of prebuilt add-ons, including many useful free and cheap ones. Open source is free but you tend to get what you pay for and you can make up for it in hiring developers and such fairly quickly (as happened here when you had it running an OS base and Gav keeping things together). And hosting is required either way so the only difference are the licensing and maintenance fees.

Hosted (ie. in Xenforo's cloud hosting) is a monthly or annual sub of course but for a board the size of (redacted), probably worth the money. You just worry about configuring the board and software, they maintain the servers, databases, backups, etc.

Quote by TomEccleston
And I'm used to markup-based forums that use BBCode (shudders), Textile or Markdown rather than WYSIWYG style.

.

Xenforo kind of split the difference. They license Froala, a third party editor that has pseudo-WYSIWYG but uses BBCode in the background. Hard core BBCode types or admins doing troubleshooting can switch to a mode that turns off the WYSIWYG and lets you edit BBCode directly. I kind of like it because every now and then I hit a formatting glitch that can only be fixed by editing the raw BBCode but my day-to-day users, who are mostly used to email editors, can use it without worrying about that stuff.

I run Wondercafe2 for under US$300 per year and most of that is hosting. The support on XF is only about 1/4 or so of my costs. On a larger board using more expensive hosting, it would be even less on a percentage basis (the support is flat, not tied to site size or anything).

I love this info it makes quoting so much easier. Thank you!