Embedding HTML in signature

[rwillett]

Hi

 

I'm trying to embed a countdown timer to the NW and Scotland Bass Bash 2024 into my signature.

 

Two questions please:

 

1. Am I allowed to?
2. If so, how do you do it? https://countingdownto.com/?c=549883 is the web page. The website has generated an iframe and I thought that putting it in the signature would automatically call it as I see other people having links to websites. I suspect the ones I have seen are basschat links and not 'external' sites and so what I am trying to do is not possible.

Thanks

Rob

[BigRedX]

The simple answer is that you can't.

 

AFAIK the Basschat forum software has never supported HTML within posts or signatures, just BBCode.

 

Plus, in order to improve security, all that is currently supported in the forum is a cut-down set of BBCode which means that you can no longer add the tags manually by typing them in, but have to use the forum interface (the line of icons at the top of the "post" dialog box) to do this.

 

Additionally there are limits to what can be placed in signatures as for some reason a lot of members were using multiple huge images.

[ped]

It may be only admin who have this code option on the editor. If you put the code in a post I'll see if I can get it to work in your signature

 

 

[rwillett]

@BigRedX @ped

 

Don't worry. The code button is for formatting code as far as I can see. As an example here's the iframe code wrapped in the <> button

 

<iframe width="300" height="154" src="https://w2.countingdownto.com/5498838" frameborder="0"></iframe>

 

I can see that on the bottom right of the popup is a list of different styles to apply and Perl is one of them My second favourite language after C

 

#!/usr/bin/perl

# INSERT INTO "main".sqlite_sequence (name, seq) VALUES ("Category", '558');

while (<>)
{
    chomp;
    if (/^INSERT INTO \"([^\"]+)".sqlite_sequence \(name, seq\) VALUES \(\"([^\"]+)\", '.+'\);$/)
    {
        print "INSERT INTO \"$1\".sqlite_sequence (name, seq) VALUES (\"$2\" , '0');\n";
    } else
    {
        print "$_\n";
    }
}

 

All I was trying to do was put a countdown time to the North West and Scotland Bass Bash, it's not worth the time and effort TBH beyond 2-3 mins

Rob

[Dad3353]

36 minutes ago, rwillett said:

...

 

Well, the link in your signature works; maybe if you put a (smallish..!) image above that link, with a downward-pointing arrow, that might draw enough attention to it..? Just a thought, as a 'work-around'. 

[rwillett]

40 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Well, the link in your signature works; maybe if you put a (smallish..!) image above that link, with a downward-pointing arrow, that might draw enough attention to it..? Just a thought, as a 'work-around'. 

Thats a good idea, wonder if I can automate that image each day?

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, rwillett said:

Thats a good idea, wonder if I can automate that image each day?

 

Have you an alarm clock..? 

 

...

 

[rwillett]

That might be the only solution

[BigRedX]

There used to be a neat BBCode trick you could do where you could fool the forum software into thinking that a script was a PNG image file. I saw it in action on another forum where one of the members used it to show a different image at random as his avatar every time you loaded a thread in which he had posted. However it also required you to have your own web server to host the back-end code and image files for it to work. I also suspect that the recent versions of forum software will have clamped down on this as it could potentially be used to inject something more nasty into the page code.

[BigRedX]

4 hours ago, ped said:

It may be only admin who have this code option on the editor. If you put the code in a post I'll see if I can get it to work in your signature

 

 

 

The code button only allows you to display code in your post. In the past it could be used to explain to other forum users how to do things like link to images etc, as it would display the code rather than execute it. Since all coding is done automatically from the formatting bar in the current versions and nothing else is permitted, it has little relevance these days.

[rwillett]

7 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

There used to be a neat BBCode trick you could do where you could fool the forum software into thinking that a script was a PNG image file. I saw it in action on another forum where one of the members used it to show a different image at random as his avatar every time you loaded a thread in which he had posted. However it also required you to have your own web server to host the back-end code and image files for it to work. I also suspect that the recent versions of forum software will have clamped down on this as it could potentially be used to inject something more nasty into the page code.

 

I do have a number of full fat web servers that I could use here, but I really don't want anybody, including myself, to spend too much time here. The above idea sounds like each time the thread is read, it goes out and pulls whatever is at the end of the URL link in the signature, It would be easy to randomise a series of images on an external webserver to do that. Thats no different to what I am trying to do here. I can see that if I embed a basschat link, that is quite often expanded out, hinting that the functionality is there.

 

However if it was up to me, I would pull out all this type of functionality from the board as the potential for abuse is simply too much. Whilst me adding in a countdown timer to a fairly sensible website is OK in principle, whats to stop me linking to a very dodgy website dealing up all sorts of undesirable and extreme images and videos. I could for instance hide https://www.conservatives.com inside a nice family friendly LGBQT+ site for instance. Having young children exposed to Rishi Sunak or Michael Gove at such an early age could stunt their development and could lead the site to accusations of storing extremist materials and supporting terrorism.

 

I think we close this thread off now

 

Thanks

Rob