Quoting is more easy than it looks like. It's very easy if you just use the quote-button and stay in the same thread, you don't need to do much more than adding your own message and maybe shorten the quoted message to the needful things.
But if you want to use a quote "by hand", it can be tricky, but it's not that hard if you once have understood how it works.
If you use the Quote-tag, just make sure you have the same amount of ending tags - and if you use quotes inside a quote, you have to take care on the correct nesting to receive the result you want. And don't forget to add your own message outside a quote - the software doesn't accept quote-only posts.
examples:
single quote:
result:
quote in quote
<-- end quote message 1
result:
2 quotes in quote
<-- end quote message 1
result:
quote in quote in quote (...)
<-- end quote message 1
result:
(....)
more options with quote:
1. adding the username (instead "UserName", use the name of the member you want to quote :
result:
2. adding username and post id. standard usage is the post id of the post you want to quote. this manual way is exactly the same you would receive if you click the quote button:
result:
you will find the PostID in every link behind the post number (top right corner of each post). you only need the number which is placed next to "...showpost.php?
p=". Adding the post ID adds a button (
) to a quote which can be used to jump to the original post (quote-link).
Helper Function:
in post/edit mode, you will find several buttons on top of the edit-box. you can use the icon
to envelope any message part you want to display as quote. just make sure that you first select the desired part of a message and then click this icon. if you click this icon without having a selection (inside the post you're writing/editing !) you gain just the start- and ending tag of the quote function.
Finally..
quoted message can be replaced by anything which could be used for a standard post. hyperlinks, images, more quotes... all what's needed. the main problem is to stay on track with the necessary ending tag of a quote the bigger a quoted message gets.
most (technical) quote-errors are either the result of the missing ending tag [/quote]. or a missing bracket ( [ or ] ) to envelope the word "quote"
and never forget :
do not quote entire galleries or (working) filesharing-links. don't make foreign content part of your own post, instead keep the quote-link to the original post ( so that members can give credit to the original poster for the received content ) and use only a small part of the original post for your quote to have a referring context. this issue is very important in posts which contain images or movie-files. if it's only about text, a longer quote is sometimes senseful.