These are my instructions on posting your signature graphic on the EQ2 Official Forums or EQ2 Guild Forums. Please read them carefully, since omitting a step might cause your sig to not be displayed properly, or at all!
Important things to know:
- The EQ2 Forums only give you 500 pixels across and 165 pixels down for your entire sig -- this includes images and text. Anything that extends beyond 500x165 will be chopped off!
- You should try to keep your sig filesize as small as possible. Larger files mean longer page load times, which won't win you any friends.
- It's the forum moderators' prerogative to zap any offensive, inappropriate, or overly distracting sigs.
1. Before you can display a sig, you first have to obtain a sig!
You can make it yourself with any one of various graphics programs, you can use a dynamic sig from the EQ2 Players website, or you can have someone on the EQ2 Signature forum make a custom sig for you.
If you're NOT using a dynamic sig from EQ2 Players:
If you've made your own sig or had someone make one for you, you should save it to your hard drive in a place that's easy for you to find again. You can just save it in your "My Documents" folder, or you can create a special folder -- named "Sigs," for instance -- and save it there. Anywhere is fine as long as you remember where you saved it!
2. Once you have a sig, you need a URL.
(If you're using an EQ2 Players sig, you already have a URL and can skip ahead to the next step.) This means you will have to upload your sig image to a website somewhere. There are a number of free image hosting websites that will allow you to "hotlink" to your image. Keep in mind that some private websites (like a guild site or a friend's site) might not allow hotlinking; if you want to use a private website to host your image, it's best to first make sure that hotlinking is allowed.
Once your image has been uploaded, make a note of your image URL. It should look something like this:
http://www.your-url.com/folder/imagename1.jpg
If you type (or copy & paste) your URL into your browser's address bar, you should see a blank page with nothing but your image displayed. If you see anything else, you should double-check your URL.
For example, this is one of my own image URLs:
http://eq2.lunaclick.net/galleries/mine/Riannon_Frostfyre_1_500x100.jpg
If you click on this link, you'll see that the browser address bar content is identical to this URL, and that there's nothing displayed but a single image.
3. Next, you need some basic HTML code.
The EQ2 Official Forums use HTML to display your sig, so if you want text formatting or images to show up in your sig, you need the proper code. Anything else will show up as just plain text.
The most important HTML tag is the image tag, <img>. This tells the browser to display an image located at the URL you place inside the tag. There are some basic "attributes" to the image tag that you may find useful:
- src
- This is the image "source" -- your image URL.
- Usage: src="http://www.your-url.com/folder/imagename1.jpg"
- width
- The image width. Optional but recommended.
- Usage: width="500"
- height
- The image height. Optional but recommended.
- Usage: height="100"
- border
- The image border width. Optional but recommended. If set, its value should be "0."
- Usage: border="0"
- alt
- The alternate image text, which is displayed as a placeholder until your image is loaded by your browser. Optional but recommended.
- Usage: alt="This is my sig!"
When you put your attributes inside the image tag, it doesn't matter what order they're in. Just make sure that your values are in "quotation marks" and that there's a space between each attribute, like this:
<img src="http://www.your-url.com/folder/imagename1.jpg" border="0" width="500" height="100" alt="This is my sig!">
The second HTML tag you might find yourself using is the anchor tag, <a>. You need to use this tag if you want your signature to be clickable; for instance, you may want it to link to your EQ2 Players character profile, or to your guild website. There are two attributes for the anchor tag that you MUST use:
- href
- This is the website URL that you want people who click on your sig to be taken to.
- Usage: href="http://www.your-guild-url.com/"
- target
- The target for the link. You should only ever use "_blank" or "_new" for the value. If you don't include a "target" attribute in your anchor tag, links in your sig will open where your sig is, in a tiny 500x165 space!
- Usage: target="_blank"
Again, it doesn't matter what order the attributes go in, as long as their values are in "quotation marks" and there is a space separating them. With anchor tags, you MUST remember to "close" the tag to tell your browser that you don't want anything else in your sig linked; note the closing </a> tag after the image tag:
<a href="http://www.your-guild-url.com/" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.your-url.com/folder/imagename1.jpg" border="0" width="500" height="100" alt="This is my sig!"></a>
4. Time to put it all together!
Now we're ready to paste our code into our sig block.
- Go to the EQ2 Official Forums. If you're not already logged in, click the "Sign In / Change User" image at the very top of the page to login.
- Click the "My Profile" link near the top of the forum index page.
- In the second section, "General information about yourself," the last field is labeled "Signature."
- Type (or copy & paste) your sig code into the textarea.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Submit" to save your changes.
You don't have to post a zillion times to test your sig. In fact, you don't have to post at all...all changes to your sig affect every post you've ever made automatically. You can just view one of your old posts to see how your sig looks.
If you really do want to test it, the "*** Official "Test Your Sig" Thread ***" on the Signatures forum is the place to do it! Please don't start a new testing thread; it clutters the board.
That's it! You should now have a sig that the whole world can see. :)
Want to learn how to make your own sig? Check out my "Making a Basic Sig" tutorial!
Do you have more than one sig, and you can't pick just one to use? Use them all! Learn about "Randomizing Sigs!"