How to Change Text Size - bbCode Basics

Note: If this lesson seems a bit unclear to you, you may want to check basic bbCode lessons: How Does bbCode Work? & How to Correctly Insert Tags.

The tag for changing the text size of your message is the following:

[size]

As we saw with the [color] tag & the [font] tag, you need to add an option to [size] tag to choose the size.

Setting options for text size is a bit more complicated, as different forums kinds use different codes for sizes, let's look at the most used communities scripts & the codes used on them:

Note: If you don't know what software is used in the community you're part of, checkout this: What Kind of Forum are You Using?

1. phpBB

Numeral codes are used for sizes, starting from 1 and ending by 29, 12 generally is the default size, then a small text size is a size using an option < 12 and a big size uses > 12 option.

Note: If you use a bigger number than 29 as an option, you'll get an error in your final messages.

Examples:

[size=9]Small Text[/size] - Small Text

[size=12]Normal Text[/size] or Normal Text - Normal Text

[size=18]Bigger Text[/size] - Bigger Text

2. Simple Machines

Similar to phpBB exept these points:

1. To the numeral codes, you have to add "pt" for point, so that instead of [size=9] you type [size=9pt]
2. The default text size would be 10 & not 12 as in phpBB
3. If you specify a bigger code than 29, you won't get an error in your final message but the bigger size available (i.e. 29).

Examples:

[size=9pt]Small Text[/size] - Small Text

[size=10pt]Normal Text[/size] or Normal Text - Normal Text

[size=18pt]Bigger Text[/size] - Bigger Text

3. vBulletin

There are two options:

1. Numeral: Starts from 1 & goes till 7, so if you give the option a bigger value than 7, you get a size "7".
   
   The default value is 2
   
   Examples:
   
   [size=1]Small Text[/size] - Small Text
   
   [size=2]Normal Text[/size] or Normal Text - Normal Text
   
   [size=3]Bigger Text[/size] - Bigger Text


2. + or -: Starts from -2 and goes till +4, bigger value than +4 will get you a +4 size.
   
   Examples:
   
   [size=-2]Small Text[/size] - Small Text
   
   [size=-1]Normal Text[/size] or Normal Text - Normal Text
   
   [size=+1]Bigger Text[/size] - Bigger Text

4. IP.Board:

Only supports the numeral option in vBulletin boards, codes are 1 to 7 (you get same results adding a "+"), a wrong option code results in a size 3 text (?!)

Examples:

[size=1]Small Text[/size] or [size=+1]Small Text[/size] - Small Text

[size=2]Normal Text[/size] or [size=+2]Normal Text[/size] or Normal Text - Normal Text

[size=3]Bigger Text[/size] or [size=+3]Bigger Text[/size] - Bigger Text