How Publishing Codes Work

Publishing codes, or just 'codes' are fundamental to using Tuzulo.

Codes are the glue between the site you're posting on and where your media is hosted. These instructions tell a visitor's browser where the content is located.

There are two ways of publishing:

  1. Static – cut and paste direct references, via codes, to Tuzulo hosted images or files.
  2. Dynamic – a program queries to learn the references to matching Tuzulo hosted media.

The difference is the variable set of images that could be produced with dynamic publishing.

Codes are copied and pasted into whatever blog, forum or listing you're creating. Each is different in what it can accept.

HTML Codes

HTML codes will link a preview or thumbnail image to a Tuzulo page containing a larger image or to a page containing a link to the uploaded file (a PDF document, for example). The preview image can vary in size and quality – pick an appropriate layout.

HTML is the most flexible code type but HTML cannot be applied everywhere, especially on simple Bulletin Boards.

The codes generated will always look like:

<a href="http://www.tuzulo.com/<type>/<hash>">
 <img src="http://tuzulo.com/<type>/<hash>/<path>" alt="Hosted on Tuzulo" />
</a>

where, as usual, <hash> is some random 8-character code and <path> is the path to an image file. <type> is either image or file depending on what the item is. Note that the two <hash> codes, one for the page containing the image at full size (the target of the link) and the other for the actual image at the preview size (the target of the image src link) will be different.

The /upload page context tools for HTML Codes allow you to modify the title attribute, the alt attribute as well as encapsulating everything within div tags with user-defined classes or li line items. We also have a button for dropping the target attribute since it's not XHTML 1.0 Strict.

BBCode

BBCode is a simplified version of HTML but works almost the same. BBCode is used mostly for forums and bulletin boards. A limitation of BBCode, due to its simplicity, is that it cannot be used to embed Flash content without modification to include a special tag.

Some forums modify their BBCode engine to allow for elements such as [youtube]…[/youtube] or [myspace]…[/myspace] which generates embedding codes for the respective services. This model doesn't work if you need to control the code generation. Instead, these modifications are geared towards publishing specific service Flash content (YouTube, MySpace, etc.) for that particular forum hiding attributes such as background color, and other changeable Flash parameters away from forum users.

Since BBCode treats line breaks literally, we have a context tool for removal.

Markdown

Registered Users Only

Markdown is a "writer friendly" syntax which is used in blogs, etc. It is intended to be easily read, with a minimum of markup for the most basic textual elements. Markdown cooperates well with raw HTML – you can embed Flash within Markdown as it's passed through.

Tuzulo generates full Markdown linkage which can be tested out in the sandbox.

Subscribers Only

HTML Lightbox codes will link a preview or thumbnail image to a Tuzulo hosted larger image directly. A Lightbox code acts just like HTML codes except the outer wrapping link changes. We also reposition the title attribute to be inside the wrapping link, rather than the underlying image.

The codes generated will always look like:

<a href="http://tuzulo.com/image/<hash>/<path>" rel="gallery" title="...">
 <img src="http://tuzulo.com/<hash>/<path>" alt="Hosted on Tuzulo" />
</a>

By changing the Lightbox setting in your profile you can alter the zoom setting for Lightbox targets.

The difference between Lightbox and regular HTML codes is Lightbox codes link directly to a larger image size, called the zoom image. This bypasses all forms of advertisement back to Tuzulo.

Original Upload URLs

Subscribers Only

We deliver the original uploaded file URLs for the images as well as normal files. These images will be completely untouched by the JIT engine – they are exactly what was uploaded. The path might be cleaned and the mime type corrected but the data will not be modified with these URLs.

If you have an account the raw upload URL for any image will be displayed in the /image page but with a subscription these are all in one place on the /upload management page.

A direct link code is the raw URL to Tuzulo's page containing a single image, file or entire upload. These are echoed repeatedly throughout the public facing pages for sharing, though you can also use the sharing tools or browser hot keys/email to do the same job.

The Direct Link code is always the same as the URL in your browser.

Flash Galleries

Tuzulo gives you both the standard object tags as well as swfobject Javascript to embed the Flash object inside HTML content. Flash is dynamic publishing in that the pasted codes do not contain a reference to the backing items but instead a player which accesses a specific Tuzulo URL to learn the contents of the upload which reference the necessary images.

Custom players as well as custom rules to be used by Flash players are all available.

Code Regeneration

Tuzulo regenerates these code blocks after anything changes but we also include a regenerator button to reset the codes. Your best option is to copy the code list, then paste into the sandbox to test them out.

Codes are always generated with UTF-8 encoding if there are titles present. If not, the codes are universal (ASCII) and can be pasted into any encoding. If you're having problems with your titles not appearing or appearing with altered characters check the encoding. There must be at least the following in an HTML document's header:

<head>
 ...
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
 ...
</head>

Finally, you must post or share the generated codes. Tuzulo doesn't publish your codes automatically.

See Also