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Inserting An Image Into Your Signature
1. Pick the image you want to use.
You may have to crop or resize it because we require that all images in sigs be reasonably sized. How big is reasonably sized? Well, as long as your image is no taller than around 150 pixels, and no wider than about 600 pixels, it's probably okay. If your signature is a problem, we will tell you, but try to make sure there's less work for both of us by not pushing boundaries.
Also, remember that this is an all-ages forum. Don't post any image with cursing, derogatory language, sexual content, racist content, and anything else that might offend your grandmother. We also strongly discourage political or religious images that could potentially be divisive. An image of a cross or the words "God Bless America" would be okay. "Repent sinners!" or "Vote for this guy." is probably not okay.
2. Upload your image somewhere.
There are lots of places you can do this. Your own server is probably the best option, but if you don't have one, try some free services like flickr or UploadGeek. We do NOT recommend ImageShack or Photobucket. These two services, though popular, tend to have some low limits on how often people are allowed to access the image, meaning that your image may show up as a "This image has exceeded its bandwidth" instead of its normal glory.
3. Click Profile.
It's at the top of the page, every page, as long as you are signed in. (Sorry kids, most of you will not get an Admin button.)
4. Click Forum Profile Information.
On the left, you can't miss it.
5. Locate Signature text box.
Now that you're on the right page, you should see the boxes pictured below towards the bottom of the page. Now that you've found where to edit your signature, let's get to inserting graphics!
6. Insert graphics.
So, in your signature, you have a grand total of 300 characters for both image links and text. Image URLs can take up a bunch of characters. I've got a trick to help later. For now, here's how to insert your image.
Take the image URL you got from your hosting solution (step 2), and insert it between two image tags. These are the same image tags used for the rest of the forum to post images. They look like this:
[img][/img]
See? There are two here. The first one, img, is the opening tag. The second one, /img, is the closing tag. You have to insert your image's URL between these two tags (between the closing and opening braces) to make it appear. Here's an example:
[img]http://files.krystalarchive.com/ka/downloads/images/images/kasig.gif[/img]
When you put that in your signature, you should see this in each of your signatures:
This is the image I use in my signature. You hopefully will have your own URL (from step 2).
So, in summary, you have to insert the code like this:
[img]http://imagehost.com/image.jpg[/img]
7. Finish up.
Now, just repeat these steps and insert another image, if your images are small enough. You can also add personal text and maybe a link or two (great way to advertise your site without appearing obnoxious). Don't forget to click the "Change profile" button at the bottom to save your changes.
Bonus: Tips And Tricks
Want to do something a little more fancy with your signature? That's the kind of creativity I love to hear!
Image links
What if you want to have an image in your signature that people can click on and it take them to another site? It's simple! Check out the code below:
[URL=http://krystalarchive.com][img]http://files.krystalarchive.com/ka/downloads/images/images/kasig.gif[/img][/url]
See that? All I did was insert some URL tags around the image and specified an internal link to krystalarchive.com (by sticking the website URL after an equals sign inside the opening URL tag. That's really all there is to it.
Remember, links in your signatures must follow all the rules of the forums. Don't link to shock sites or do anything else bad with them. Breaking the rules, even in a signature could get you banned. Also, please be considerate to others and don't post in image that simply says something to the effect of "Click here!"
Smaller URLs
You want to have a lot of text and an image, but you're finding that the image URL is taking up too much of your precious 300 characters. What do you do? Fortunately for you and me, there's a special service called TinyURL that transforms long URLs into short ones (that are very hard to remember). Simply take your image URL (or even website URL) and run it through TinyURL's service.
TinyURL.com
Paste your URL into the text box and click the button. The page they give you will have the very tiny URL for your use, forever.
With tiny URL, this:
http://files.krystalarchive.com/ka/downloads/images/images/kasig.gif
... becomes this:
http://tinyurl.com/4vjewg
Much smaller. You can get a lot more use out of your 300 characters this way.
If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask your friendly moderators and admins! Enjoy your stay.
