The Goban Editor can be used to create a shape to start a shape-game or added as game-board in the forums, private messages or move messages. For a shape-game the shape must be saved and extended with attributes to describe and configure it for game-setup.
 
There are several ways to create a shape with the Goban Editor:

• Create new board of given size:
  Select the requested width and height for the game-board and press the "Create Board"-button to get an empty goban.
  To use a shape as shape-game the width and height must be equal to form a square.
  When using the goban in the forums the size dimensions can be different.
   
  
• Load board from game:
  To create a goban from an existing (running or finished) Dragon game you need the game-id. The move-number is optional. If it's omitted, the last move is used to create the setup of the goban.
   
  
• Create board by uploading a SGF:
  When you have a SGF, you can upload it to create a goban from it. Variations in the SGF are ignored, only the main-path is used.
  Uploaded SGF with a size exceeding 30KB are rejected. If the SGF is larger you first have to reduce its size by stripping away variations or comments for example.
   
  
• Copy the raw-format of an existing game-board on DGS:
  When you see a goban (not a game-board from the game-page) on DGS you can add the URL-argument '&raw=1' to the page-request. This will show the raw-format of the goban to the right of the board diagram. To use this you have to create a new empty goban with the goban editor first (see above). Then copy the raw-format into the top right textarea and pressing "Preview".
   
  
• Copy board from existing DGS shape:
  View one of the existing shapes on DGS. On viewing the single shape, follow the bottom-link "Show in Goban-Editor". Then in the goban editor if you are not the author of the copied shape, you have to press Preview once to extract the shape; otherwise you are not able to save it as it's still connected via the original shape-id.
   
  
• Copy board from go diagram from Sensei's Library (SL):
  As the goban-syntax is based on the go diagram format of Sensei`s Library, you can copy the raw-format from there and edit it into the <igoban>-format used on DGS. For this you just have to surround the original format from SL with the following tags:
  

  <igoban SL1> ... </igoban>

  Note however, that not the full specification of the SL-format is supported. The supported DGS syntax is shown on the goban editor page.
  

Once created, you can start to edit the goban in the Goban Editor.