Hello to FurAffinity newcomers and veterans alike!
Throughout the stories that I have posted the last few years I've come to learn a lot about the idiosyncrasies of FurAffinity. Beyond just the basic markup techniques, there's a lot that many members are not aware of. On top of that, sometimes, things don't quite work the way you would expect.
I'm going to do my best to share everything I've learned for the sake of writers and artists both. Unfortunately, there's no #hash page marker feature available, so I can't give an easy one-click Table of Contents, but I'll be dividing the information into the following easily-spotted sections.
• Basic Markup
• Tips for Everyone
• Tips for Writers
• Other Miscellaneous Tips
Basic Markup
For the sake of brevity, almost all basic instructions on using markup can be found in the FA help pages.
Take some time to browse through it and take a look at what all is possible. Within, you'll find instructions on text styling, hyperlinking, and FA specific features like user links.
In my writing uploads, I take advantage of most of these features. Taking that time to add bolded and italicized words can impart additional meaning to your words, and while it's non-standard, I enjoy adding a splash of color into my works for those who may not be frequent readers.
One thing missing from the help page is the horizontal rule. To make one, type five or more consecutive -'s.
This > ----- < becomes...
Multiple horizontal rules can also be used in succession. Just add a space after five hyphens and then add another five.
Something to be aware of: They include a natural linebreak after each use.
To expand on the last point, and this comes up a lot with my writing: If you include two extra lines after adding one, you'll actually end up with three extra lines. This formatting oddity applies to horizontal rules, quotes, and alignments. It does not apply after [h#] tags, provided you do not have any other text afterwards.
Compare the following:
Example
----- [i]Example[/i] ----- • This example uses two horizontal rules with only a space between them. The same spacing is used for the quote.
Example
-----
[i]Example[/i]
-----
• This example uses two horizontal rules with a line break between them instead. The same spacing is used for the quote.
You can see how this can quickly become confusing when dealing with more complicated configurations of markup. Just keep in mind that horizontal rules, quotes, and alignment text all insert an extra line break afterwards, and adjust accordingly.
There's a few other known idiosyncrasies when using markup tags to watch out for.
• Spaces at the end of markup: Any spaces at the end of a section of marked up text will be removed. If you're swapping from one type of markup to another, make sure that you place your end[/here] and not [/here]. This is important when you're using multiple different tags.
• Hyperlinks and Existing Markup: Hyperlinks will default to a basic style with a specific color that's dependent on user theme unless you take special measures. If you want to have a hyperlink with a custom color or bold/italic markup, first end any other markup, then begin the [url] tag, then add any other markup that you want for the hyperlink.
• Spoilers and Color Text: Spoilers and colored text can be incompatible. If you're only using one color, you can put the [color] on the outside of the spoiler tag and it won't be an issue. Example: Krystal is blue. If you're wanting to have multiple colors inside a single spoiler, or if you want to use this effect deliberately, put the [color] on the inside of the spoiler tag. Example: You've got some red on you. Get it? Red? Like that movie quote? See the difference?
• Size Tags first!: Make sure that your [h#] tags are the outermost tag. Then alignment tags. Then other tags. FurAffinity is fairly flexible with where color and markup are placed, but if the output looks weird, chances are that it's a matter of order.
• Size Tags use different CSS: A minor one, but content inside [h#] tags behave the same as hyperlinks with regard to markup. If you have existing color tags, they will be overwritten when activating a size tag, so be sure to follow the above advice alongside this knowledge.
• Quotes can contain alignment markup: In case you need both at once, it's possible. Say if you're making a poem or something. It does force italics, however.
• User links use your capitalization: ZoomXof vs zoomxof vs ZooMXoF etc.
The last bit of advice I have for this section also involves the above icons - the three methods to create them are also within the help page linked above. But beyond just linking to different users for artist or owner credit, many people use it to create special decorations or decorative links. Example:
♥ Tip me at my Ko-Fi Page ♥
The above used a size tag, a center tag, :ko-fiicon:'s, and a custom url.
Oh, and there's a maximum amount of such icons allowed within a single submission, journal, or profile. Somewhere between 20 and 36.
Tips for Everyone
• Enlarge that tiny text entry box when uploading.
One really important tip to share, one that everyone should be making use of, is the trick to resize the text box(es) when uploading.
By default they are locked to 8 rows. Unlike the comment reply box, it cannot be resized with the corner. This is absolutely frustrating, and for writers especially it is a terrible unpleasant thing. Can you tell I don't like this?
Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround. Right click the text entry box. Click inspect. Within the code is rows="8". Change the number to something large, 40 or even 80 if you want, and press enter. Now you can actually see what it is that you're editing.
• Customize your "COMIC" links.
The default way to chain comics or stories together is with [#, #, #]. This produces a basic <<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>> set of hyperlinks. These are simple, but adequate for most people. However, you can do even more.
If you want it bigger, the [h#] text resize options work for them. Center it, put it on its own line, and wrap it in size tags or even icons. You can also add color, but the parts that are actually links will have their color removed, which means on a fully populated set, only the middle bars ( | ) will show color.
That's why I make my own, instead. It's a lot of work, but this allows you to replace the text with whatever you want. Really, it's just a trio of custom hyperlinks meant to replicate the functionality, but my point is, you aren't restricted to only what the system provides. Get creative!
Tips for Writers
Being a writer in a website built for artists is difficult. Getting attention towards our works is a much bigger battle. But we do have some tools we can utilize. I'm going to share my thoughts on how to best do this.
• Thumbnails are the gateway to your work.
This is what determines if someone clicks into your story or not. Take the time to create a thumbnail that invites people in. Commission art or repurpose public resources (be sure to add credit), and spend the time to typeset to tell people what they're in for.
Beyond the basics, there's a second trick that I take advantage of with thumbnails. Normally, FurAffinity guides you to post .txt, .rtf, .pdf and other such text files when adding "writing" to the website. This is, in my opinion, the least effective way of capturing an audience. Non-image uploads are only allowed a 50x50px thumbnail, and on top of that they aren't even parsed for searches!
This can be circumvented by choosing to upload artwork, and then selecting "Story" in the category choice.
By doing this, you will be able to upload a piece of fullsize artwork as a header for your story. This will also increase the size of your thumbnail throughout the website! As a secondary tip, if you give your image a 2:1 ratio, its thumbnail will stand out even more. Note: If you need to edit the image afterwards, you will need to change the upload back to being Artwork before editing the image, then back to Story when you're done.
• Capitalize on search terms.
No, not literal capitalization, though that's a good habit to have. Specifically, be aware of how people search for things. FurAffinity search is not like Google Search, etc. It doesn't take into account other variants of the same word. For example, if your piece only uses the word foxes, it won't come up in a search for fox.
The basic dropdown tags also don't factor into searches, and not too many people even know where to browse through those tags. It is still a good idea to use them, but the real money is in providing search terms.
What I've taken to doing, rather than spam words in the keywords area which can make deciphering the main themes of your story difficult - seriously, keywords should be the key words, the biggest components of your piece - I instead include a section at the end of my upload. To avoid taking away from the content of the upload, I also wrap it in spoiler tags.
I try to include as many words as I can think of that apply to the story, and in as many forms as possible. My Loona story - Sense-Feather - has around 100 different words added at the end. Some are common words, some are niche words. By comparison, the story only has seven keywords.
Between that and choosing to not upload as a text file or non-image file, you're well on your way to being conveniently located by those searching on FA.
• Consider good formatting and ease of reading!
Colored text isn't for everyone, but there's more that you can do to improve the readability of your stories. Utilizing bold and italic markup, for one. Another is chapter divisions. Yet another is proper spacing between paragraphs.
There's one extra-important trick I have to offer, and it needs to be emphasized as FurAffinity makes it impossible to do unless you know the trick. That is the leading space. [ ] <-- Do you see the empty space here? That's not a normal spacebar keystroke. It's actually a null character. It looks like a space, but it isn't actually one. As such, it won't be stripped away like a normal space will be.
I've been using it all throughout this guide, but it's a little bit complicated. To use it yourself, visit this page and copy the character found here. There's other versions with a similar function but different lengths. This one is the one that matches the same width as a normal space. You cannot simply copy one from a post where it is used. Sadly. However, if you edit a submission where you have used it, you can copy it from there.
With indented paragraphs, you'll be well on your way to looking clean and professional in your posts. Hopefully one day it will be fixed to allow for it naturally but until then, special characters for the win. It can also cause issues with some markup tags, so be aware of that point of failure.
In any case... If you're converting from a previously formatted source such as .rtf, I believe there are options out there that will generate BBCode automatically with pasted markup text. If you have a recommendation of such a site, share it below and I'll add it here. Don't forget to make use of the replace function for things like these artificial spaces.
• Have a staging grounds.
Another trick that I personally make use of is having a submission in my gallery somewhere that I can edit to test out my markup. Even with the experience that I have, I can never get it perfect the first time around. A missed slash here, a broken link there. Plus I try to test with both light theme and dark theme to make sure the colored text in my stories can be read by everyone.
So I go to a scrap submission, hit edit, and load in my markup-version of my upcoming upload. This ensures that when it's time to upload my story, it looks exactly how I intend for it to look. Just be sure to remove the test when you're done.
• The maximum character limit is 65,535.
One last little thing to note for writers, there's a limit with how much text can be included in a single upload. That limit is 65,535 characters, but that is after markup. Not just after markup, but after that markup has been converted into html, which tends to be a lot more character-intensive. This means that you should target 60,000-62,000 characters as your breakpoint if exceeding that number. Some of you novelists will need to split your uploads into two or more parts.
Miscellaneous Other Tips
• Gradient Text Generation Website
Many people enjoy including gradient text. It can be really eye-catching, and it goes great in profiles. I personally found a nice use for it when having Loona recall something Stolas had told her, with his words melding into her own thoughts. The linked website has a handful of good options.
• Sample FurAffinity Page for BBCode Colors
While you can choose your own exact color with [color=#hex], FA supports the standard set of BBCode color names. This journal is useful if you want to test out a wide variety of colors using the various themes of FA in order to see which one looks the best. Convenience! (They also recommend the same gradient maker as me. Nice.)
• Feature-Rich WYSIWYG BBCode Editor (Added 3/22/24)
This site has a great What You See Is What You Get text editor. Currently, FurAffinity's is very lacking and cannot provide a live preview. Instead, if you add your text on that site, add all the markup, and then click [BBCode] in the top right, you can end up with a chunk of text that's already set to post with. Do note that you'll still have to manually add horizontal rules, h# size tags, and any other FA specific BBCode. You also don't have full flexibility with the color choices. Still, it's better than what we currently have!
• Dimension Guide for the Profile Banner
Credit to ArcaneTheWoof , his image here will help you to understand the idiosyncrasies of the new profile banners. I'm not 100% sure on its current accuracy but it's something to keep in mind when designing your banner to ensure it looks good on all devices. Another source I found says the navbar at the top covers 50 pixels.
• Sample Special Font Website
𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖙𝖔 𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖆 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖎𝖆𝖑 𝖋𝖔𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝕱𝖚𝖗𝕬𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖙𝖞? 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕜𝕖𝕕 𝕨𝕖𝕓𝕤𝕚𝕥𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕙𝕖𝕝𝕡 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥. 𝓘𝓽 𝓭𝓸𝓮𝓼 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓪𝓭𝓿𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓮. 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒖𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒔. Fᴏɴᴛ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴇᴅ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜɪs ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇ ᴛʀᴀɴsʟᴀᴛᴇᴅ.
U̷̺̩̯̦͓͈̥̜̽̅s̸͎̫̊͒̆̚ę̷̛̘͖̮͊͌̐͘͝ ̷̬̱̮͖͎͑͊̋̆͒̾̋̔w̵͕͔͊̉̈́̈́̍i̴̠̳̞̪̠̝͖̐̈́̅̈́͗̔̉͌ͅt̷̫̙̝͖̰̾͗̃͐́͊ḥ̷͉͊ ̴̣̆c̴̪̥̪͚̹̏͒̋̍̕ȃ̸̻̽͘u̷̼̳͖̖̘̹̜̳̓͘ț̴̨̗̗̓̇̊̄͐i̸̤͚̩͈̰̻̱͑͑͑͊̇̄͠ö̷̧̙̝͖́̉͂͝n̷̘̻̙̠͙̭̏ͅͅ.̴̡̹̟̜̔̿.̴̨̗̙̤̞̏̊̓͋͛̍̋͊.̵͙͕̥̲̰͒́͜
That's all I've got for now. I'll edit this if site updates change the behavior of anything, if I discover anything else cool, or if I receive new tips from others. Feel free to test anything out in the comments below, as is customary on help pages like this.
Special thanks to Uluri and the helpfulness he shared on his journal.
Fun fact, testing and tweaking the formatting on this took over an hour for that part alone! That's how it goes sometimes.
Search Tags: FurAffinity FA Fur-Affinity Markup Text-Styling BBCode Guide Tutorial Help Tips Advice Newcomer Newbie New-User Writers Writing Story Stories Thumbnail Thumbnails Eye-Catching Stand-Out Perfect Perfection Font Bold Italic Underline Strikethrough Line Lines Indent Link Hyperlink Color Gradient Blendy-Text Bigger Smaller Hidden Bugs Buggy Fender
Category Story / Tutorials
Species Unspecified / Any
Gender Other / Not Specified
Size 1200 x 600px
I've been using this for years: FA's text parsing macros.
That was my first instance of these guides, too. 15 years ago. How time flies, right? Thankfully, FA finally got their own guide section that communicates the majority of that, but even equipped with all of that knowledge, I found myself running into random weirdness when making complex content like my TUNIC Narrative Guide.
Additionally, I think the way the site handles stories leaves a lot to be desired. That's why I wanted to make this despite these other guides existing. Helping other writers succeed is the least I can give back to the community.
Additionally, I think the way the site handles stories leaves a lot to be desired. That's why I wanted to make this despite these other guides existing. Helping other writers succeed is the least I can give back to the community.
looks like a no
I could swear I saw one with a gradient somewhere...
________[color=#7FFF00]_[/color]________ _______________
...guess it was just underscores the entire time? ah well, at least it works
I could swear I saw one with a gradient somewhere...
________[color=#
...guess it was just underscores the entire time? ah well, at least it works
The default horizontal line cannot be colored, but you can try a trick like this:
[/color][color=#FF0000]
It's a line of the nullspaces, underlined. If you just use the underscore, there will be a tiny gap between each character.
Well that was a disaster. It appears that the nullspace throws markup into chaos somehow? I'll have to do more research. Still, colored linebreaks are possible with trickery, but they are artificial meaning you have to get clever.
[/color][color=#FF0000]
Well that was a disaster. It appears that the nullspace throws markup into chaos somehow? I'll have to do more research. Still, colored linebreaks are possible with trickery, but they are artificial meaning you have to get clever.
Tips like this are something a lot of people never realize exists on this website. Something I notice that you do is you voice your thoughts. A lot of writers I know only post what they create and don't give any kind of additional feedback until someone else says something.
What you do is welcoming and honestly gives a friendly and professional vibe. You care a lot about what you create, and reading the thoughts you have is both helpful and fun.
Thank you for taking time doing this =)
What you do is welcoming and honestly gives a friendly and professional vibe. You care a lot about what you create, and reading the thoughts you have is both helpful and fun.
Thank you for taking time doing this =)
Appreciated as always and I hope you learned something! If you ever post your stories here on FurAffinity, I hope my tips can help.
i appreciate this guide cause i love when you can do cool text stuff like this and play with it!! usually i just abuse the url naming feature and invisible subscripts but this is a great bit of bonus info
the one thing i cant get working is the leading space in a quote box, because it compresses it no matter what if i just copy it from the guide, but the unicode Six-Per-Em Space seems to work fine
for now at least i hope where am i
the one thing i cant get working is the leading space in a quote box, because it compresses it no matter what if i just copy it from the guide, but the unicode Six-Per-Em Space seems to work fine
for now at least i hope where am i
Test A.
Test B.
Test C.
Okay, for Test A, I used your suggestion. For Test B I edited my upload and copied it from there. For Test C I copied it like you did from the guide. Test C failed, so I need to figure out where I got that particular character / what that character is, and how it differs from what you posted since the character lengths are different. From there, having it available on an external page like what you shared will be edited into the guide. Thank you for testing and letting others know!
Test B for comparison.
Test D - 2002
Test E - 2003
Test F - 2004
Test G - 2005
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2005 Seems to be the one I've been using, most likely. TYSM!
Test B.
Test C.
Okay, for Test A, I used your suggestion. For Test B I edited my upload and copied it from there. For Test C I copied it like you did from the guide. Test C failed, so I need to figure out where I got that particular character / what that character is, and how it differs from what you posted since the character lengths are different. From there, having it available on an external page like what you shared will be edited into the guide. Thank you for testing and letting others know!
Test B for comparison.
Test D - 2002
Test E - 2003
Test F - 2004
Test G - 2005
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2005 Seems to be the one I've been using, most likely. TYSM!
By the way, what do you mean by invisible subscripts?
...
...
...
...Works in quotes, by the way.
Be sure to give it a share out there! I'm happy to help the community!
...
...
...
...Works in quotes, by the way.
Be sure to give it a share out there! I'm happy to help the community!
im probably gonna sleep soon, but sometimes i just combine subscripts and the color tags to make text blend into the background usually when i need to snark or joke about something
but thank you so much for this, and i'll be sure to share it around and i love the stuff you write!!
and yeah, i sorta had to experiment with the different space symbols and i don't know if some get automatically converted or patched out when put into a submission, but you're welcome!!
but thank you so much for this, and i'll be sure to share it around and i love the stuff you write!!
and yeah, i sorta had to experiment with the different space symbols and i don't know if some get automatically converted or patched out when put into a submission, but you're welcome!!
Aha! Just a heads up, the results are style-dependent. For example, that won't hide for a single second when someone's using the light theme. Be careful~.
So, going by the test above, everything from U+2002 to U+2006 definitely works, and is just different lengths per character. For example, you could pick U+2003 and only use one of them to open your line for the equivalent of at least four spaces, U+2002 is maybe half of that. I'd say they're all valid but I recommend either U+2005 to mimic a space, or U+2003 to go the whole distance with one character.
That was definitely an important thing to notice and inform me of. Thanks. I think online reading works much better on larger paragraphs with that extra indent, so I want to make sure people know of it and can use it. Though I'm generally too lazy to use it for comments, despite their wordiness, heh.
Oh and glad to hear that my stories are getting noticed, too! I get so few comments and interactions in general that I sometimes worry I'm spinning my wheels and going nowhere. I know I get decent views but knowing what stands out most in my writing to others, that's still tough to figure out.
Thanks again!
So, going by the test above, everything from U+2002 to U+2006 definitely works, and is just different lengths per character. For example, you could pick U+2003 and only use one of them to open your line for the equivalent of at least four spaces, U+2002 is maybe half of that. I'd say they're all valid but I recommend either U+2005 to mimic a space, or U+2003 to go the whole distance with one character.
That was definitely an important thing to notice and inform me of. Thanks. I think online reading works much better on larger paragraphs with that extra indent, so I want to make sure people know of it and can use it. Though I'm generally too lazy to use it for comments, despite their wordiness, heh.
Oh and glad to hear that my stories are getting noticed, too! I get so few comments and interactions in general that I sometimes worry I'm spinning my wheels and going nowhere. I know I get decent views but knowing what stands out most in my writing to others, that's still tough to figure out.
Thanks again!
[pre] Is preformatted text a thing?[/pre]
Don't mind me, just testing. If preformatted text was a thing I guess we wouldn't need to use a null character for spacing lol. I wish there was an [indent] or something.
Don't mind me, just testing. If preformatted text was a thing I guess we wouldn't need to use a null character for spacing lol. I wish there was an [indent] or something.
My heavens, you have no idea how helpful this is for me! I have struggled for a long while to find out how to make my writing look somewhat decent on this site. It just seems so hard to do! This will help immensely! Thank you!
You're welcome! I've been on the site for a long time now and any time someone does something strange, I try to figure out how they managed. This was a compilation of all of the neat tricks I've seen and some I found myself.
Like the way to extend the text entry box when submitting. Augh! That one's such a pain! Comments can be extended well enough but why can't submissions.
Enjoy the tricks!
Like the way to extend the text entry box when submitting. Augh! That one's such a pain! Comments can be extended well enough but why can't submissions.
Enjoy the tricks!
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