Images in signatures

[Dani]

Do you think that images should be allowed in forum signatures? What happens when too many members post huge images in their signatures?

Do you think that images should be allowed in forum signatures? What happens when too many members post huge images in their signatures?

I think that people really get carried away with them. I've seen full on banners in signatures....multiple banners...flash animations...animated gifs...it's just silly. A small half banner with no animation would be where I draw the line. Otherwise it just sucks up bandwidth which is costly to webmasters :)

[IshWig]

I have seen them getting outragous too. I don't like them. They clog up the forums.

[Dani]

My feelings pertaining to DaniWeb ...

- It clutters the interface and distracts from the most important thing - the content
- Long loading times of threads. Especially when someone with an image in their sig posts multiple times in the forum
- From a marketing perspective, glancing at a page with images in the signature portrays a much less professional atmosphere, which can be detrimental to some prospective members but most importantly when trying to land corporate clients as advertisers
- So many website owners use banners (even 468x60 which isn't HUGE) and link them to their website as their signature ... therefore getting free banner advertising on DaniWeb ... so no one will buy and we won't make any $

The way that the forum system works when you disable signatures, is an [IMG] [/IMG] tag is converted to a hyperlink that points to the image when you click on it ... so it just doesn't show inline.

I feel that images in signatures are fun for some lighthearted / off-topic communities, but I want to give the impression of a professional business I.T. type atmosphere. The images seem to counteract that.

[mikeandike22]

i think that forum members should be limited to one signature with a max size that you can set. But i think it is not fair to not allow any image sigs ever other forum that i have been on allows it.

[mikeandike22]

i dont like this new policy at all i just learndt how to make grunge sigs in photoshop and it took me along time. Also i feel like this is my fault because for a short amount of time i had a really big sig but i didn't know it was that big until i uploaded it i must have been zoomed out when making it.

[img]http://willpull22.remnetworks.com/hl2sig.jpg[/img]

[Catweazle]

Hi mikeandike22

Please don't feel that this is in any way personally directed at yourself. I know we've had a little dialogue about reducing your image size, but I'm afraid that's merely coincidence. Discussion of matters such as this go on behind the scenes on an ongoing basis amongst the administrative team. Refinements and improvements to the forum are constant topics of discussion.

The matter of sig pics is merely one which relates to the overall 'tone' of DaniWeb, which is a forum with many facets. One of the major focusses of DaniWeb is to service a membership of largely Programmers and Webmasters, and attract relevent advertising. Because of that, the 'professionalism' Dani mentions above is a very important consideration.

Personally, I agree with Dani that restricting the images to avatars is perhaps a better way to go, and Dammit, that stops me from having a banner made up of 'Catweazle' pics, like I use on other forums! :D

[Sphyenx]

Well what i think hes saying is that sig, in a way express who you are, so that when people read your post's they get a feel for who you are and what you like. Its ok to not allow them I can understand that. Ill tell you I never thought they would cause A problem. But at least every ones working together and I support all actions the administrative team puts forth.

[nathanaus]

People on dial up connections suffer extreme slowness when signatures are too big. The time it takes for them to download the signatures they could have read the thread and posted or moved on to the next thread.

Signatures should be text based or a small graphic that isn't animated. Number of lines for a signature should be limited too.

If I go to a forum that has a lot of people with massive signatures, even though I'm on broadband I turn viewing of signatures off in my options so I don't have to view them.

[Sphyenx]

Well, what about un animated signatures? Mine sure wasen't.

[jwenting]

I've seen sigs get way out of hand.
On one forum there were people with sigs that were almost a screenfull (at 1024x768) of images and a page of text (for about 500k of data for the sig alone).
They'd then post 10 or so replies in a thread, each a single line long...

That was the end of that, strict limits were imposed as to the size of banners (something like 200x70 pixels and 5kb max, plus max 3 lines of text) and ever since the moderators are having to tell people to scale down their sigs several times a week...

[Token]

I think it all depends on the type of forum you have and the enviroment you are trying to create. I have been to many a forum and many of them allow pictues which i am fond of esp when they are funny or creative and many ofthe posters limit themsleves on this but at times it becomes a problem and rules are set pertaining to the size of the image. as for animated images i find these semi rude to the people who are still on dial up and have to wait even longer for the page to load. pics in sigs arent bad just not always fitting

[mikeandike22]

yeah sigs can cause loading problems but the sigs here are not hosted on this site they are hostedd remotely.

[IMG]http://willpull22.remnetworks.com/hl2sig.jpg[/IMG]

[kernel]

My take

- It clutters the interface and distracts from the most important thing - the content

That depends on what it is. Make strict rules on what the sig can and cannot be and a uniform look can still be achieved.

- Long loading times of threads. Especially when someone with an image in their sig posts multiple times in the forum

This is not really true. If an image is loaded once it does not get loaded again no matter how many times its on the page. After all, it is just one file regardless of how many times its shown. However, the load time can be an issue if the users servers are slow like many free hosting servers.

- From a marketing perspective, glancing at a page with images in the signature portrays a much less professional atmosphere, which can be detrimental to some prospective members but most importantly when trying to land corporate clients as advertisers

Once again, moderating what sigs can and cannot be comes into play here.

- So many website owners use banners (even 468x60 which isn't HUGE) and link them to their website as their signature ... therefore getting free banner advertising on DaniWeb ... so no one will buy and we won't make any $

Simply make a rule that they cannot do such things. No outside links. Besides that, they can still advertise in their sigs now with text links. Once again, its about rules.

I feel that images in signatures are fun for some lighthearted / off-topic communities, but I want to give the impression of a professional business I.T. type atmosphere. The images seem to counteract that.

Can't disagree here. Only with good moderation of sigs could you allow them.

[harishankar]

I am not a big fan of images on signatures because they tend to take away the flow of a topic and are annoying distractions.

I recently had a member who posted two huge images on his signature and I asked him to remove them - politely of course - and gave him my reasons why I didn't want them there.

[mmiikkee12]

Yeah. I'd say just make a rule that images can't be animated and can't be bigger than (insert some image size here.) I'd like to put one of those "mmiikkee has contributed x posts to our community" badge things in my signature but I just wind up with a link to it.

[ReDuX]

Check out many of the forums on the internet, almost all have the ability for sigs. Simple fact is those that have one, love them. either to show off their abilities or work or something similar. Many like them as a simple 1 image with details in it about their PC or gaming clan or work/website or all those other things they are used for.
Personally i like them, its nice to see what users are doing with themselves these days.
I would definately enable them but limit the image size to say 80k or something reasonable like that.
At the end of the day it cant be a size of page worry for this forum due to the adverts all over the place and the html code thus far for this thread being over 24k. Add images and avatars and adverts and the total download is pretty large.
Id say allow sigs but insist they be either hosted remotely or locally but small (im sure you have bandwidth/storage concerns).
There are many free image hosts out there (getsigned.org uploadit photobucket and others)

[Antonbomb22]

Well you can always install only show the signature once per page, that will decrease the crowding, and possibly add a script to check [img] tags for the image etc and if its too large return an error stating the allowed size;)

[Sphyenx]

Well you can always install only show the signature once per page, that will decrease the crowding, and possibly add a script to check [img] tags for the image etc and if its too large return an error stating the allowed size;)

lol, things are getting complicated (= Good idea.

[Antonbomb22]

also if your using vB use the function that counts the number of times an image tag is used, this you can use to set it to that only one image may be present in a signature;)

[pulse]

Well, On my biz related community, they are not allowed. On my offtopic site -- It is :)

[Danny]

I don't think Daniweb has this feature enabled, but vB3 comes with a feature that allows users to upload a profile picture.

This picture is only seen when a visitor clicks on the users profile, and the image is much larger than an avatar.

If there is a dire need for more user images, simply enable this feature.

Also, aren't smilies considered images? I currently have two in my signature.

[Gandalf]

i like ozzu forums policy on images, they do allow it but not big and not too many.

[007]

I think text signatures should be allowed.

[BSkiLLs]

Yes i Do.

I was about to ask a question post about it and why we are not allowed to. Can somebody please answer this for me ?? Besides what some of the posts above say or the peoples feedback.

As i run forums also, Pretty popular ones to so i know you can set the amount of code in the sig, plus set a size restriction.

At first i thought maybe you could only if you donated, but thats not correct either as they can not post sig's neither.

Which i also do not think they should be the only ones allowed as everybody should at least on that part, and i'm not just saying that as i haven't donated, because i actual plan to and also maybe become a paid member but not sure yet because of certain little reasons like this and such.

[MktgRob]

I have seen many arguments for and against these image sigs. I don't use one (not my thing) and I while I agree with cscgal about the clutter issue I am at a loss regarding the people who have taken this as a personal affront or an intrusion on their personality. I skimmed through some of the comments and was happy that no-one claimed their first ammendment rights have been violated.

My question to the pro-image people who feel their presonal expression is being hindered is if why do you want an image to be what makes you memorable. How about compelling comments? DaniWeb and other forums like it allow the use of avatars so leave it at that. Personally, if I see a response that has little animations and images I tend to view that as a person who is promoting something and they are probably not providing any worthwhile feedback.

Save the images and animations and all the other clutter for facebook. The one place on this site where an image belongs in a signature is the business exchange and then I would limit it to a logo for your business of product.