Discourse BBCode Color

[Discourse]

	Summary	Discourse BBCode Color adds BBCode colors to the post formatting options.
	Repository Link	https://github.com/discourse/discourse-bbcode-color
	Install Guide	How to install plugins in Discourse

As this is an official plugin maintained by the Discourse team, Support, Bug, UX, and Feature requests can be made in the respective categories here on Meta, and tagged with the appropriate plugin tag. Click on a link below to get one started.

Support Bug UX Feature

The Discourse BBCode Color plugin enhances the Markdown composer ^[1] with support for the BBCode [color] syntax and text background colors.

Features

Set colors inline with:

[color=#aaa]text[/color]
[color=red]text[/color]

Set background colors with:

[bgcolor=#aaa]text[/bgcolor]
[bgcolor=red]text[/bgcolor]

Caution: These features can easily be used for abuse by hiding text and making text unreadable. BBCode will also make your markup less understandable.

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1. This plugin is not built for the rich text mode of the composer, so you may need to use the toggle to switch to Markdown mode when using these codes. If your community relies on this plugin, you can update the default_composition_mode site setting to ensure that members see the Markdown mode of the composer by default. ↩︎

Last edited by @lindsey 2025-10-23T20:00:45Z

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[Roi]

Hi,
sorry, I do not understand. What is the purpose of this plugin, as the Discourse BBCode plugin also handles the color codes. I’m sure it is just a misconception here on my side and I am stuck somewhere. Please bring me up to speed.
Regards

[Roi]

@merefield

It’s the same plugin. The link to the repo is the same.

Hm, no, the repo is different and also the content looks different:

GitHub - discourse/discourse-bbcode: vBulletin BBCode plugin

GitHub - discourse/discourse-bbcode-color: A Discourse Plugin to support...

[merefield (Robert)]

Oh apologies, you are right. Still odd I agree.

If you just need coloured text, consider:

Discourse Coloured Text

“BBCode-lite” without the need to install a plugin … Adds a simple control (palette icon) to the Composer to facilitate colouring of the foreground and background of text [image] Select a word or text Hit the palette control It will be wrapped like so: [wrap=color color=# bgcolor=#]word[/wrap] Replace the #s with html-compatible colour names, e.g. “red”, “grey” … experiment. NB Same caveats apply as to BBCode: can be used to hide text. Credits Uses @joffreyjaffeux’s Generic…

[Roi]

@merefield

If you just need coloured text

No, I migrated from phpBB to Discourse. So I have a lot of BBCode in thousands of posts. I only have the discourse-bbcode plugin installed - and always was wondering about the differences.

[JammyDodger]

From having a little investigation it seems that it was kept as two plugins so people could have the option of having just the simpler colour version without everything else included as well.

[twofoursixeight]

Will there be a plugin / theme component that adds the ability to quickly select preset colors by pressing a single button on the user interface or a dropdown based on this plugin?