How to Discourse: tips and tricks

LyingDalai · April 10, 2024, 7:23am

(you may unpin this discussion at the bottom of it)

I have edited countless posts so that a bandcamp, soundcloud or youtube thumbnail is correctly displayed for every user to drop an ear…

More generally, a link is not to be trusted / could be not what it seems to be, bringing the user who clicks on it towards a harmful page.
In a one link per line situation, the link is used by Discourse and a preview is displayed for the users to get information on the source.

Please have a read at this thread so that everyone knows how to use Discourse.

_{I’d like this thread to be only tips and tricks, please, without e.g. additional comments of what it should or shouldn’t be.

Thank you for your comprehension, and don’t hesitate to drop your own knowledge.}

First trick : link alone ⇒ better integration in Discourse

When you want to drop a link, do it with no other character (including space or point): Discourse gives a better integration that makes it more likely for other users to pay attention to your link.

The preview also assure other users that your link is not some smart ass pirate link, so I think it’s really a good practice.

LyingDalai · January 13, 2023, 8:15am

Bandcamp links

Just make sure there is nothing else on the line, no other character including space or point.

https://tonyrolando.bandcamp.com/album/shared-system
⇒

while
! https://tonyrolando.bandcamp.com/album/shared-system
⇒
! Shared System | Tony Rolando

LyingDalai · November 6, 2024, 8:14am

YouTube links

Same as above, just drop the link with no other character on the line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I386M2XP6sg
⇒

If there’s at least a character it gives
_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I386M2XP6sg

Time tag

You can make your link point on a particular time of the video by adding a time tag such as &t=60s or t=1m

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3wmHScokrE&t=110s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3wmHScokrE&t=2m

Youtu . be links

They also work:

http://youtu.be/8WL-NNtNE3c
⇒

YouTube shorts

Beware of YT shorts links, their integration in Discourse is still not working very well…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P3_Zs5bo1eo

is displayed like this:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P3_Zs5bo1eo

It’s better IMO to grab the ID part (P3_Zs5bo1eo) and put https://youtu.be/ before
(in other words replace be.com/shorts with .be)

https://youtu.be/P3_Zs5bo1eo
⇒

LyingDalai · November 4, 2024, 8:54am

Soundcloud links

What you want to paste here is a link that starts with https://soundcloud.com

https://soundcloud.com/krypt/fill
⇒

When using the “share” button from the phone soundcloud app, you most likely get a link that doesn’t start with soundcloud.com.
You have to ignore the first “copy link” button, and got to the three dots that open further options, and copy from there.

If you don’t, the link from your phone will most likely be like https://on.soundcloud.com

Those can get very ugly:
https://on.soundcloud.com/RN8K5
⇒

Once you’re there, you can still get the good link by using the “share” button on this vertical thumbnail. Please remove whatever is after the question mark, including the question mark:

_{https://soundcloud.com/wiliwow/i-need-an-answer?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fwiliwow%252Fi-need-an-answer}
⇒
https://soundcloud.com/wiliwow/i-need-an-answer
⇒

Edit: something changed, now you also have to remove the “m.” before “SoundCloud.com” in the clean link.

LyingDalai · January 13, 2023, 8:20am

Elektronauts links

or any other forum link: here again, link alone on a line and it works:
https://www.elektronauts.com/t/cats/36310
⇒

LyingDalai · September 12, 2023, 1:30pm

Markdown formatting

_{Beware: while used lightly it can make text more readable, overuse can get in the way pretty fast…}

Discourse use Markdown (invented by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz ) to let the user quickly format their text.
https://commonmark.org/help/

Bellow, I use backticks to get some Preformatted text
(you can use the button to get such backticks around your text)
You can also use triple backticks before and after a paragraph. It’s usually made to display code though.

want	how
italic	`italic`
bold	`bold`
italic bold	`*italic bold*`
big	`<big>big</big>`
small	`<small>small</small>`
_{small but under the line}	`<sub>small but under the line</sub>`
~~strikethrough~~	`~~strikethrough~~`
underlined	`[u]underlined[/u]`
`key`	`<kbd>key</kbd>`

Discourse keyboard shorcuts

Just adding something I use all the time - keyboard shortcuts
you don’t have to remember them, you can access the full list by pressing [Shift+?]

LyingDalai · February 1, 2023, 10:38am

Online PDF files

If you want to share a link to e.g. a PDF manual, you can add the page number at the end of the link

https://cdn.www.elektron.se/media/downloads/octatrack-mkii/Octatrack-MKII-User-Manual_ENG_OS1.40A_210414.pdf#page=56

https://cdn.www.elektron.se/media/downloads/octatrack-mkii/Octatrack-MKII-User-Manual_ENG_OS1.40A_210414.pdf#page=56

I think it doesn’t always work on the phones though.

LyingDalai · January 9, 2024, 4:38pm

Spotify links

First, and mainly, one can’t use a Spotify link without being registered.

Besides, Spotify is not fair to artists.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek even exposed some controversial opinion on how artists should make music, and stated that “some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough”.
Which, IMO, is both bloody insulting to musicians.
And music as an art form, considered here as a mere perishable “content”.

At last, Daniel Ek used $100M of the benefits he made as Spotify CEO to fund AI-powered military equipment, which this world desperately needs.

So, please, don’t use Spotify links on this forum.
_{And possibly even consider looking for another way to listen to music…}

thermionic · November 9, 2023, 7:33pm

Hello! When embedding fairplay sites and audio player, I’m observing the following error-
https://faircamp.fstateaudio.com/coming-through/embed/all/

I see there was a semi-related fix in Discourse as of August-
@LyingDalai

Any update schedule 'nauts is on, or is it fairly stable beyond intermittent bugfixes?

Thank you!

avantronica · November 9, 2023, 8:20pm

I believe it’s possibly not a simple update that’s required on this site as there are bespoke aspects layered on top … in any case, fwiw, when we frequent the admin pages it pretty much is always out of date, updates are periodic, not regular, so it may just be a waiting game … it’s a developer iirc who maintains this stuff, so i guess it’s new s/w features competing with webby niggles, it’s easy to see how it pans out this way in practice, i guess … just my 2c

chrisb78 · November 10, 2023, 7:52am

To get a proper SoundCloud link on the phone (I’m on Android), simply

(1) get the link from SoundCloud. This will be a link that starts with “on.soundcloud”…, which will result in bad formatting on this forum

(2) paste that link in your phone’s browser – and do not let the phone open your SoundCloud app This will redirect your browser to the proper link, which includes the artist name, album name, and song name.

(3) copy that URL, but also remove everything behind the ?, as OP described

Attention, this doesn’t seem to work for hidden tracks!

thermionic · November 13, 2023, 10:01pm

Thanks @avantronica! Yes, I understand the custom component and other merge reasons why things are not up to the moment

It’s just a nudge for the next time that becomes necessary, security or otherwise.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/810:_Constructive

Looks like it’s not just the Faircamp sites, I’m seeing it on other embeds.

LyingDalai · December 13, 2023, 11:11am

Ryan · December 13, 2023, 8:35pm

A little late to the party, but thanks for this tireless effort

brian3kb · December 14, 2023, 4:20am

This evening I learned about OpenGraph, and added the relevant metadata to DigiChain, thanks for the info here @LyingDalai , as I wouldn’t have known to look for that otherwise!

LyingDalai · December 20, 2023, 6:43am

Saving a search

Say you want to regularly check what kind of deals the Marketplace has to offer for your region.
To filter other regions deals you might want to make an advanced search.

Click the search magnifier

image1022×258 25.1 KB
Click on the “options” link

image1094×742 41.1 KB
In “categorized” type “sell” to quickly find the “Marketplace - Sell” category. Clicking on it adds “#the-lounge:marketplace-sell” in your search.
Activate the option “Matching in title only” for the search to be more relevant (and potentially faster). This adds “in:title” in your search.
As you might only wants ongoing deals, activate the option “where topics” = “are open”. This adds “status:open” to your search.
Type the region you’re in, e.g. “UK”, “EU”, “US”, “FR”, “JP”, etc. and hit “Submit” button.
You might want to bookmark the URL it gives for further use. Example for UK (you might as well take this link and replace the final “UK” part with your own region):
https://www.elektronauts.com/search?q=%23the-lounge%3Amarketplace-sell%20in%3Atitle%20status%3Aopen%20UK

martibs · December 20, 2023, 2:52pm

Is there any way to filter the categories I see when using the Latest view? I would like to see the latest posts about Elektron gear and other gear, but I’m not interested in Marketplace posts, or all the nonsense discussion in The Lounge.

LyingDalai · December 22, 2023, 10:17pm

Yes, you can mute a whole category.

Go to the category page, e.g. #the-lounge:marketplace-buy
You can choose any in the category menu

image738×890 59.1 KB
Click the bell and choose “Muted”

image898×830 82.5 KB

Jeanne · February 15, 2024, 12:50pm

A tip from me In order to correctly share something from Instagram, one has to go to the tree dots top-right and select “copy link”, then also a thumbnail appears on here:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cz9Benuq5no/⇒

Otherwise it just looks like this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2M2fNvi2L7/