A polite request re: signatures - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

**Clint** · 01-14-2006, 11:52 AM

Hey, everyone. We've had a recent trend of flashy new signatures at our site. They've been largely tasteful and attractive, but they're getting pretty big. Many forums disallow images altogether to avoid the problems they cause, namely slow loading (yes, some are still on *gag* dialup), heavy server loads, and looooong threads.

We've discussed this issue in the moderator forum but haven't come to a consensus. The fact is, none of us mods want hard restrictions on signature size. So I'll appeal to you all to moderate your own sig layouts.

Please keep in mind that your signature is seen repeatedly, sometimes in a single thread, and that means mouse-wheel smoke and lots of it. If you weren't aware, you have the ability to link to photo galleries or single images through your signature (see my "Clint" image below). There's no need to install a full-size image there. Just use a thumbnail and a hyperlink, and those of us who want to see your bike/dog/kid/lawn mower in large-as-life detail can do so, when we choose to and only as often as we choose. No need to force-feed it.

So - I propose the following guidelines (my own, not those of the entire moderating team):

Try to keep the total height limited to around 150 pixels, including both images and text. For help on resizing images without distortion or reduced quality, feel free to PM me. For help with creating links, click here. Using an image as a link involves using both the [img]http://www.motorcycle-journal.com/forum/paddock/ and [url] tags, as demonstrated in the above link.
Limit total byte size to about 50KB for all images combined. We don't have the means to limit linked image size, so we'll rely on your cooperation so we don't have to disable this feature.
If you have several images, show them in a single row rather than using line breaks. They'll automatically wrap for smaller window sizes and monitors, and your sig won't be so tall. You can make them look more organized by using the [center] tag.
If you're displaying lots of text, size it to "1". It's still plenty readable and doesn't interfere so much with the normal flow of posts.
Remember that this isn't really the place to loudly broadcast your political, religious, or philisophical messages. Large, bold type isn't going to help your cause. Just link to it.
If you do insist on keeping your entire human experience in your sig, uncheck the 'show your signature' box in most of your posts, and only display it when deemed appropriate.

I hope it makes sense why I'm asking for this. I'm sure the other mods will have additional suggestions to make it easier to create small signatures that still convey the theme you'd like them to.

Thanks for understanding, and I welcome your comments.