How do I use these buttons to format my text and add links?

The easiest way to use these buttons, is to first write the text that you want to transform, and then select it and press the appropriate button.

The result will look like this in the form:

[b]bold[/b]
[i]italicized[/i]
[u]underlined[/u]
[s]strike-through[/s]
[url]http://www.example.com[/url]
[quote]quoted text[/quote]

After submitting the form, the above would look like this:

bold
italicized
underlined
strike-through
http://www.example.com

quoted text