There plenty of web based tutorials for html. Here are a several: http://html.net/ ,http://html.net/tutorials/html/ , or http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/
One thing you may already know is that you can copy and paste a link and it will automatically be posted as a clickable link in your post.
However if you add a single HTML tag of your own then the auto feature is turned off, and you must format your entire post with HTML. Even a link. And even paragraph brakes/ line spacing.
Also no images are hosted on FR. They must be hosted off site.
Video and audio embedding are not allowed.
The first rule is, you don't have to use HTML. If your post doesn't contain anything that looks like HTML, then it gets presented pretty much as written. The only major change I'm aware of is that anything that looks like a link gets link-enabled automatically.
However, if your post does have any HTML, then it needs to be proper HTML. E.g., if you include a link, you need to enclose it in an <a> tag, or it won't be live; it will be just text. You also need to insert proper paragraph and newline markers, or your post will end up as a monolithic blob of text.
So, you just need to learn some of the basic HTML markup elements, such as the ones for links, italics, bold face, headings, block quoting, ordered and unordered lists, tables, images, etc. A good place to start is w3schools.com.
One function that trips people up is images. FR doesn't host images. To show an image on FR, it has to be hosted on the web somewhere (other than FR). Once you have a URL, it's pretty simple (usually). You just drop the image URL into an img element. If it's your own photo or whatever, you need to upload it to a hosting service (e.g., PhotoBucket) first, then obtain the URL, and post.
Occasionally, a picture will look just fine until you post it on FR, whereupon it either doesn't show at all or a different image shows. What is happening is, the server from which the image is being fetched is taking umbrage at the fact that the image request is referred from an FR page and is serving up nothing or something else. This phenomenon can be hard to notice as well, since the image is already in your browser cache, so it works when you preview (you get the cached image), but not for anybody else. It's also possible that an image will get taken down, moved, or changed by whoever is hosting it.
One way past the above problems is to rehost an image. That is, to say, to place a copy of it on another server, then post the URL to that copy. There is actually a Firefox extension, Rehost Image, that makes that really simple. You right-click on the image, select Rehost Image, and it will upload the image to a hosting service such as imgur and copy the short URL to the clipboard.
Im really quite surprised that no one has said anything about it. We all know the most common mistake made while posting to FreeRepublic.com is forgetting to Log On.
Tip if using Firefox. To see how someone did a post, select the post with your mouse and then right click and choose “view selection source” . It will show you how someone else coded their post.
May I offer a comment about a personal pet peeve?
When posting, please utilize the “keyword” feature so that Free Republic articles are categorized in somewhat of a chronological news database. This would help others when doing research or when just trying to find an interesting article that we need to review or share with someone else.
Thanks! And welcome to the Freeperhood!
No sarcasm? On FR?
Congratulations, your single thread has probably garnered more hits than all of mine in 8 years. Of course I would never post a thread like this because it takes about 3 seconds to figure out what you would like to do on your own merit.