Editing Brighter Shores:Signatures (section)

==Custom signatures==
The default signature is a simple link to your userpage. Many users wish to express individuality in their signatures, so they create customised signatures. Users are encouraged to do so, however they must adhere to a few simple rules. We have these rules because without them, custom signatures very quickly begin making a mess of things. Custom signatures are often very long in terms of the code required to produce them. When many such signatures are posted in full on a single page, the page can get very long and become difficult to edit for users with slower internet connections.

In addition to bandwidth concerns, when an image is used in a signature, it quickly becomes included on hundreds of pages that it would not normally appear on. If the image in question ever needs to be replaced or renamed, the huge amount of pages that it links to becomes a large issue, since it must be replaced on each and every page to prevent it from appearing as a [[Special:WantedFiles|wanted file]], a file which is linked to, but does not exist.

To prevent both of these issues, signatures must be placed on pages as a template. This means that, when the signature is viewed in the page editor, it shows up as <code><nowiki>{{Signatures/Example}}</nowiki></code> instead of the entire code for your signature. Not only does it make pages much smaller by compressing the entire code of your signature into that one snippet of code, but it makes replacing images far easier, since the image need only be changed on the template, then it will be updated on every page that the template is used.

===Creating your signature===
Users interested in creating their own signatures can find help on [[Brighter Shores:Customising your signature|this page]]. When creating signatures, the following rules apply to both editors creating their own signatures and to editors creating signatures for others.

# Signatures must link to the user's userpage—or the user's talk page, if they prefer not to have a user page on this wiki. Signatures may link to both if the user so desires. The name does not need to be the user's exact account name, but it must be a name by which the user is widely known. Without this provision, signatures do not provide the useful ability to identify a comment from a certain user on a page.
# Signatures may not exceed the '''maximum height of 31px'''.
# Users may only have one signature template page. That page may contain more than one signature, but only one may be used at a time. Methods by which this can be accomplished are listed below.
# Signatures cannot contain more than two images, since signatures with more than this can cause computers to load them slowly.
# Images contained in signatures may not be higher than 31 pixels. Users can scale images to 31px high without distorting them by using the code: <code><nowiki>[[File:Example.png|x31px]]</nowiki></code>
# Signatures must not contain linebreaks. This results in a line break when the signature is used, which interferes with formatting and other page code.
# Signatures that use HTML tags must be balanced. This means that every <nowiki><span> must have a matching </span></nowiki>. You can tell if your signature is balanced by typing something after it. If it is plain text, then your signature is balanced.
# Signatures must not be excessively long. There is no set limit for how long is too long, but use common sense.
# Signatures may not be animated. This includes animated GIF images, GIF slideshows that switch between still images, or flashing text.

===Setting up your signature===
Once you have your signature code, either by creating it yourself or by having another user create it for you, you must create a template to store your signature on. Usually, this is <code><nowiki>Template:Signatures/</nowiki>{{USERNAME}}</code>, however it can also be a sub-page of your user page, such as <code>User:{{USERNAME}}/Signature</code>.
*If using <code><nowiki>Template:Signatures/</nowiki>{{USERNAME}}</code>
*:After the code for your signature, '''without''' hitting enter or inserting a line break, paste the following code: <code><nowiki><noinclude>[[Category:Signatures|{{ucfirst:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}]]</noinclude></nowiki></code>
*If using <code>User:{{USERNAME}}/Signature</code>
*:After the code for your signature, '''without''' hitting enter or inserting a line break, paste the following code: <code><nowiki><noinclude>[[Category:Signatures|{{ucfirst:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}}]]</noinclude></nowiki></code>
This won't appear in your signature when you sign, but is used to add your signature to [[:Category:Signatures]] and to sort it based on your username. An example of a signature page is:

<pre><span style="border:2px solid green;">[[User:Example|Example]]</span><noinclude>[[Category:Signatures|{{ucfirst:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}]]</noinclude></pre>

Once the template page is set up, go to your [[Special:Preferences|preferences]], ensure that "Treat signature as wikitext" is checked, and paste this into the "New signature" field:

 <nowiki>{{Template:Signatures/</nowiki>{{USERNAME}}<nowiki>}}</nowiki> or <nowiki>{{User:</nowiki>{{USERNAME}}<nowiki>/Signature}}</nowiki>

If your signature is not on a sub page of Template:Signatures, then change <code>Template:Signatures/{{USERNAME}}</code> and <code>Signatures/{{USERNAME}}</code> to whatever page your signature is located on, such as <code>User:{{USERNAME}}/Signature</code>

===Multiple signatures===
While only one signature can be active at time, users are free to change signatures whenever they wish, as well as having multiple signatures to pick from. A common way to do this it is to store signatures on your user page and paste whichever one you want to use currently in your template page. Another more advanced method is to store them on your signature page, but prevent them from appearing along with your current signature by use of noinclude tags. For example:

<pre><span style="border:2px solid green;">[[User:Example|Example]]</span><noinclude>

Other signature codes

[[Category:Signatures|{{ucfirst:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}]]</noinclude></pre>

Notice that the opening <tt>&lt;noinclude&gt;</tt> tag is pasted '''before''' the line break. If you do not do this, it will break the signature formatting.