Diaspora/Website

You must of course match the number of asterisks/underscores either side of words for the formatting to work. Typing “I want to display this as a **bold* word” won’t display the word in bold.

Inline links

To create an %{inline_link}, use the following code:

[displayed text here](http://link.address.here "alt text")

The “alt text” is optional, and is displayed as a tool-tip when the cursor is moved over the link.

inline link

To add external images to your post, comment or private message, use the same code as for a link, but with an exclamation point at the front:


For this to work, you must provide a direct link to a valid image file, <em>not</em> to a web page with an image or images on it.

The alternative text in the square brackets is displayed if the image cannot be loaded, and the optional title is displayed as a tool-tip when the cursor is moved over the image; both are useful but not essential.

If you want your message to include a character which is also used in Markdown coding, you can prevent it from being read by Markdown as a formatting code by “escaping” it. To do this, place a backslash ( \ ) in front of the character. For example, typing

this \_ is an underscore

prevents Markdown from reading the underscore as a Markdown code and allows diaspora* to display the underscore rather than creating italic text.

You can, however, type “diaspora*” or “D*” without the asterisk being interpreted as a formatting code!

Special characters

You can create the following symbols and other special characters using a combination of characters:

There’s a more detailed description of Markdown’s syntax %{markdown_link}.