Markdown to BBCode Converter for Forums

Real-world use cases

• Post a polished changelog on a game or software forum

  You keep release notes in Markdown in your repo. The community forum for your mod or app runs phpBB, which mangles every heading and asterisk on paste. Drop the Markdown in here, copy the BBCode, and the post lands with real bold headings, code blocks for the install commands and a clean bullet list of fixes, exactly like the GitHub release page your testers already know.

• Cross-post a review or guide from your blog to a board

  You wrote a long buying guide or how-to in Markdown. A subreddit-style board or a hobby forum wants the same content but only takes BBCode. Paste once, copy the converted output, and your links become [url=] tags, your screenshots become [img] tags and your numbered steps become a [list=1], so the forum version reads as carefully as the original instead of as a wall of raw symbols.

• Move documentation between a wiki and a forum

  Your project docs live in Markdown but the support forum thread that pins the FAQ runs on BBCode. Rather than hand-editing every tag, run the Markdown through here and paste the result. Inline code stays in [code] tags so command examples survive, and quotes from users keep their [quote] framing.

• Format a signature or profile blurb for a forum account

  Many boards let you write a signature or an about-me using BBCode. Sketch it in Markdown the way you think, with a bold name, an italic tagline and a link to your site, then convert and paste. You get the exact bracket tags the profile editor expects without memorising the BBCode syntax for each one.

Common pitfalls

• Expecting a real heading tag in the output. BBCode has no h1 to h6, so a Markdown heading is rendered as bold plus a [size] tag. If your forum strips [size], the heading will still show as bold but at body size, which is the closest BBCode can get.

• Pasting Markdown links and wondering why the bracket order looks backwards. Markdown puts the label first then the URL; BBCode puts the URL inside the opening tag as [url=address]label[/url]. That flip is correct, not a bug, and it is what every forum parser expects.

• Assuming inline code and code blocks render differently. BBCode has only one [code] tag, so both a backtick span and a fenced block become a [code] block. On most forums an inline code span will therefore look like a small monospace box rather than flowing inside the sentence.

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