Thanks @jesusalva and no worries about the late reply.
It's good to know that it doesn't render on the Activity pages. It looks like they just don't show ANY of the text within the spoiler box? Which is fine; it's just not what one would expect. (Although, I've been planning to do away with the activity pages anyway; the only reason I still have them is because if I turn that off, then no one will get an email when their name is @mentioned...)
TL;DR (Also meant to be fun and light-hearted, and if you read it all the way to the end there's a reward. Kidding not kidding. No, I am kidding. There is no reward, except the satisfaction of knowing you'll never get back the time you invested into reading to the end...)
The Activity pages are part of "BuddyPress" which is an official WordPress plugin that handles all the member pages, the friends, activity, etc... Out-of-the-box, I don't think BuddyPress is really super amazing (to put it mildly). However, it's one of those things - if I didn't have BuddyPress installed, we would all have member profile pages through bbPress (the forum software), so that would be good - but nobody would be able to send Private Messages (which would be kind of a downer)...
So, I'm saddled with an entire plug-in that personally, I find to be only so-so, but that allows sending PMs (which is the only part of it that I really want to keep).
I mean, sure, some of the other parts of the member pages are neat, in concept, but in execution it's just... meh...
Now of course it can all be customized, but that also requires digging into the code and figuring out what to hook into - and since in my opinion the member pages are not that essential (I mean, people can still use the forum, with or without them), re-designing that section of the site just isn't high on my list.
But, on this latest update to the site's theme, I did discover all sorts of action and filter events in bbPress (the forum software), that could, potentially, some day in the not too distant future, if I am persistent in my studies and continue to understand the relationships between all the coding languages that WordPress uses...
... could just maybe allow me to enhance the overall user experience on forum pages - and that is totally worth digging into, because all the dedicated fans will use the forum as-is, even if it is hard to figure some things out... but a lot of people just won't do "hard" to begin with... it's like the movie "Field of Dreams" but in reverse: "If you confuse them, they will (not) come."
Anyway. The current attachments upload is handled through a paid plugin, so I don't want to go messing with it, but I too have thought it takes up a lot of space, where it doesn't really have to. So it's not on my list yet, but it is on my radar.
(I know that WordPress has its own code for handling attachments, and I'll bet the attachment plugin just hooks into that code, and I bet if I knew how to hook into the code I could put an attachment button inside the editor toolbar, possibly with a cute little paper clip icon so people know it's for attachments... but that's something I don't want to mess with until I 100% know, for myself, that I can do so without opening myself up to allowing "evil" or malicious attachments... which may be very simple but that doesn't mean I'll understand it just from reading up on the subject for 5 minutes... so it may happen someday but probably not any time real soon.)
At the moment, my success with the spoiler button is inspiring me to re-examine the forum editor (which will mean changing some buttons), and to write up my first full-fledged plugin, to include just the Visual editor (because really, Visual + Text = Confusing, and most people don't need both options), and of course to include spoiler support.
(Though the other buttons in the editor toolbar all spit out HTML, so as long as I can get the forum to accept those specific HTML tags from all users, and as long as most forum users anywhere in the world probably never think of using anything but the buttons that are available in the first place... with the exception of those few who want to really style their posts and if I could add a "source code" button, and some sort of "style guide" somewhere, than those few users like yourself, 1oldtymer, and others who would like extra functionality but which functionality is not needed by the majority...)
Okay I'm going to stop rambling now because this is just getting ridiculous (like it wasn't already ridiculous 10 paragraphs ago....) 8-O
Suffice it to say I am aware of every part of the site that "doesn't suck" and every part that "does suck," and as long as the forum "doesn't suck" I can live with pages (like Activity) that do... at least until I've learned enough code that I can change or remove the areas that "still suck..." Little by little, I'll get it all sorted out...
Meanwhile I'm glad that the spoiler button only spoils, and doesn't suck.
