PirateGhostShip said:
What is so wrong with having a large signature? how is it hurting u?
Per the Dis Signature Guidelines:
Why are these guidelines important?
Why are these requirements in place you might ask. Good Question.
In order to keep the DISboards user friendly for everyone, we have developed the signature guidelines shown. Not everyone has the same type of equipment from computers, to monitors, to browsers, or to type of internet connection. Observing Signature Guidelines helps everyone.
1. Maximum of 3 images. The DISboards are a discussion board, not a photo gallery. Users are interested in what you have to say. If you want them to see all your photos, direct them to your photo site. The maximum of 3 was set as a 'workable' number of images.
2. Maximum width of 550 pixels. While many users have monitors with high resolution, about half of all computer users are at a resolution of 800x600 pixels. The DIsboards are presented in FRAMES, with a user's posting and signature in the rightmost frame. When a post is displayed on a monitor, the browser will automatically wrap all text to fill the user's screen. However images cannot be wrapped.
If an image causes a user's post to exceed the frame size, another user's monitor can't display the entire image all at once, so the broswer will put scroll bars at the bottom of the screen, forcing the user to scroll left and right to see everything. This wouldn't be too bad if it was just the signature image, but the wider screen also puts the poster's text off screen, forcing the reader to scroll just to read the post. A large image in your signature could frustrate some users not to bother to even read your post.
3. Maximum height of 200 pixels. The purpose here is to limit the amount of 'vertical real estate' displayed on a user's screen. Remember it's all about your post and what you and others have to say. If your signature stretches too high vertically on a user's screen it forces them to have to scroll a lot more just to get to the next posting. Remember if someone is using a computer with 800x600 resolution, your 3 images at 200 pixels tall are taking up their entire screen.
4. Maximum of 50KB combined images filespace. Remember, when you post an image and someone else looks at your post, your image is downloaded to the other person's computer and stored on their hard drive. You are taking up space on their computer for your image. Most users have a set amount of disk space allocated to the internet. When that space fills up, their computer must delete old things to replace with the new things. This slows down their computer.
Also, while you may have high-speed internet, thousands of users still use Dial-up. By putting out large images you are actually slowing down their capability to access the boards and read posts. If someone has a dial-up connection at 56Kb it can take a long time to download all the images in everyone's posts. For example, a 56K modem will usually connect at about 50Kb. Note that this is kilobits, not kilobytes. There are 8 bits to a byte, so at 50Kb (50,000 bits/second) a user is downloading at about 6KB (6,000 bytes/second). If one of your images is 200KB (200,000 bytes) in size, it takes that user 33 seconds just to get your image. This slows up their use of the DISboards considerably. Keep in mind that an image such as one in jpeg format has already been compressed, so even with someone using a dial-up accelerator, the photos still take a longer time.
5. Maximum of 12 lines is also to control the 'vertical real estate' of your signature as it displays on the user's computer
6. Links are board policy and are to keep this as YOUR discussion board and not someone else's SALES board.
These were taken from the Signature Guidelines located here:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=947493
I've made the changes and my signature now complies to the guidelines (whew!!)
