Jump to content

BZPower Signature & Avatar Guidelines


Black Six

Recommended Posts

BZPower Signature & Avatar Guidelines

 

Content

All signatures must abide by the BZPower Rules & Guidelines. This includes:

  • Signatures and avatars are expected to follow the same guidelines as posts, which means no flaming, no swearing, no personal attacks, no HTML, and no adult material.
  • Advertising: Please reference the BZPower Advertising Policy for what is and is not permitted on the site.
  • No political statements may be made in signatures or avatars.
  • Religious statements are not allowed in your signature or avatar. This includes quotes from the Torah, Bible, Qur'an, or other religious publications, as well as statements, images, or signatures such as, "Jesus Loves You," "Proud to be a Christian," or, "PM me if you are a Christian."
  • During the months of December and January, you may use your signature and avatar to celebrate the various seasonal holidays that take place. This is the only exception to the above.
This is not something you will be punished for (by us, at least), but it's a good piece of etiquette: Don't steal bandwidth from other sites. If you would like to have an avatar or signature image, please make sure you are not directly linking to another person's server. You should save the image to your computer (assuming you have permission), and upload it to a hosting site such as Brickshelf (for LEGO images) or Majhost (for other images).

 

Format

  • Signatures may not exceed a total area of 800x300 pixels.
    • When you edit your signature, in the preview area you will see a box around your signature. This indicates the maximum space it can take up.
    • You can still use multiple text alignments/justifications (left, center, or right), since they scale automatically based on the viewer's resolution.
  • The file size of your avatar and signature images combined may not exceed 250 kilobytes (kB). Large images slow the loading and scrolling of pages, particularly for those who do not have broadband access.

    To check the size of your image, you can do the following:

    • Firefox: Right-click and select "View Image Info" and look at the "Size" field.
    • Opera: Right-click and select "Image Properties..." and look at the "File size" field.
    • Internet Explorer: Right-click and select "Properties" and look at the "Dimensions" field.
    • Chrome: Right-click and select "Inspect Element." Click on the highlighted URL in the menu that appears at the bottom of the page and scroll down to check the file size.
    • Other browsers: You have to save the image onto your computer and look at its properties there.
    NOTE: If you upload a personal photo that is larger than 200x200 pixels, it will be automatically scaled down. It will scale down further on your profile page and as your avatar on the forums, to a maximum of 138x138 pixels and 90x90 pixels, respectively. This will scale the file size down accordingly, but if the initial file size is significantly large (especially true with PNGs), it may still violate the combined 250 kB limit.
  • Signatures can contain up to ten images as long as the combined file size follows the above rule.
  • Banners from the official BZP quizzes do not count toward your maximum file size limit (250 kB) or image count limit (10) but they do count toward your overall space limit (800x300 pixels).
  • The only image types that will be allowed in avatars and signatures are JPG, GIF, PNG, and SWF. Other image types offer insufficient compression and result in file sizes that are too large. Additionally, SWF files can only be used in signatures, not as avatars.
  • Files that play sounds automatically are not allowed. Your signature or avatar cannot contain a file that creates noise unless the user has to click on it to activate it.
  • Spoiler tags may be used in signatures, but for spoilers only. When expanded, the contents must fit in the allotted space (800x300 pixels).
Repercussions

 

Enforcing BZP's signature guidelines has been somewhat difficult to do. Not only because we don't want to squash your creativity, but because drafting a PM pointing out what's wrong with your signature every time we spot a questionable one and providing a link to the guidelines gets somewhat tedious.

  • You may receive a warning PM from a staff member if the see your signature violates the guidelines.
  • Your signature will be removed and replaced with a link to this thread if it violates the BZP Signature Guidelines.
  • Repeated violations may result in the loss of Proto or other administrative action - this is at the discretion of the staff.
  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...