Okay, I know it is easy but I am a dork and have never figured it out.

TIA for any help you can give.

When you start or reply to a thread there is a section above the message body area where you type that says vB Code. You can select what you want there.

or you can use for bold [*/b] take out the *
and [*color=red] for the color [*/color] take out the *

[b] for bold with the * taken out
and for the color with the * taken out