Making your own forum signature...

[laniza]

A simple (I hope) guide for those who likes customization like i do....

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in neither html nor BBCode, everything that is written below was derived by using google and common sense. Thus any extra information, tips and tricks would be much appreciated.

So......For those who may not know this already, the forum signature is that little area of text and/or pictures that appears under a person's message board post. While DDO has an option of using a pre-made signature (to use this option you will need to log in into your forum account/go to “User CP”/ “Edit Signature” where you can find an option to generate your signature), I would like to talk more about the second option - creating your signature using BBCode.

Here you can find a list of the BBCode tags you can use to format your signature (as well as your forum messages). While from the first sight they may seem a little confusing, in the reality they are very straightforward and easy to use.

To illustrate that I will make a step by step walk-through of this signature (while it is definitely not the most interesting signature out there it is simple enough to make a good example):

You never learn anything by doing it right.

Redsonjja / Shantih / Graymouse / Simralin / Caffeine

Orien

1. Log in into your Forum Account/go to User CP/Edit Signature

2. Start by typing text that you want to appear in your signature.

You can never learn anything by doing it right   

Redsonjja / Shantih / Graymouse / Simralin / Caffeine

Orien

3. Start editing (this is where you going to use those BBCode tags)

a. Color: To add color you can use either color name (blue, gray.....) or its hexadecimal value (#ffffff (white), #ff00ff (fushia)....) To find a name or the value of the color you want is quite easy; just put “color codes” into any search engine and it will give you a number of websites you can use (example). Once you picked a color simply use [color] tag to add it:

[color=#FF00FF]You can never learn anything by doing it right   

Redsonjja / Shantih / Graymouse / Simralin / Caffeine

Orien [/color]

Note: […] tag is the start tag that turns formatting on, [/…] is the end tag that turns formatting off. Use it to wrap the part of the text you are trying to add formatting to. And do not forget to use [/color] to turn the color formatting off.

b. Bold / Italic / Underline: Use [b], [i], [u] to add text formatting to your text. In my signature i decided to make first sentence bold:

[color=#FF00FF][b]You can never learn anything by doing it right[/b]  

Redsonjja / Shantih / Graymouse / Simralin / Caffeine

Orien[/color]

c. Font: To add font you will use ….[font] tag the same way we used [color] tag or [b] tag. However, while using [font] tag remember that browsers can use only the fonts installed in each computer, so it means that every visitor of your web page needs to have all the fonts you want to use installed in his/her computer. Of course, different people will have different fonts installed, and thus it is more reasonable to use most common fonts instead of the rare ones. One of such listings you can find Here

In my signature I decided to use Comic Sans MS:

[color=#FF00FF][font=Comic Sans MS][b]You can never learn anything by doing it right[/b]   

Redsonjja / Shantih / Graymouse / Simralin / Caffeine

Orien[/font][/color]

d. Left / Right / Center. I wanted my signature being centered so I used [center] tag:

[color=#FF00FF][font=Comic Sans MS][center][b]You can never learn anything by doing it right[/b]   

Redsonjja / Shantih / Graymouse / Simralin / Caffeine

Orien[/center][/font][/color]

e. Links: To add a link you will need to use [url] tag. This is how it is done. Lets say I want to link the word “Shantih” to myddo webpage that has Shantih info. One way to do it is to go to myddo.com and search for your character, then copy its http address. Shantih can be found at http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/shantih/ (you can actually see a pattern here...). Now I can make a link using [url] tag:

[url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/shantih]Shantih[/url]

Note: DDO forums seem to fall back into default color when using links, to add the color u want to the link you simply need to put [color] tag AFTER (inside) [url] tag thus overwriting the default color:

[url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/shantih][color=#FF00FF]Shantih[/color][/url]

Do the same of all each link separately and you will get (btw I did not use the trick above and instead stayed with the default color for my links):

[color=#FF00FF][font=Comic Sans MS][center][b]You never learn anything by doing it right.[/b]

[url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/redsonjja]Redsonjja[/url] / [url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/shantih]Shantih[/url] / [url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/graymouse]Graymouse[/url] / [url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/simralin]Simralin[/url] / [url=http://my.ddo.com/character/orien/caffeine]Caffeine[/url]

Orien[/center][/font][/color]

f. Use other tags to further edit your signature. While creating your signature you can use other tags such as [quote], [email] (I do not think you can use [img] tag tho...at least I have never managed to make it work in the signature ).....again the complete list can be found here). I am not going to write how to use them simply because they are used in the same way as tags that i already covered above. Also while making a signature, remember that ddo does not allow long signatures and there is that much you can squeeze in there.

I am hoping this guide will help some of you. Thank you for reading and happy hunting all

P.S. Oh and I am not a native speaker so apologies if something was not spelled properly as well as extensive misuse of definite and indefinite articles (what the hell are they for is still a mistery to me....)

[tigerlilli]

+1 100x! Thank you so much for this post! I always wondered how to do this and you made it pretty simple... instead of using "myddNO" (since it's broken and doesnt show any character info past lvl 20) I used yourDDO for my character links and it worked perfectly Great job!

[laniza]

Thank you

And great idea on using yourDDO (I followed your example and updated my signature links as well, and while it is not perfect either (my legends do not show up as legends and my bard is missing her epic levels....) it is soooo much better then MyDDO that does not seem to work at all.

[tigerlilli]

my legends do not show up as legends

you can tell if it's a legend by the total experience points for level on the character sheet.. ie for a legend it will show 4378500 (just won't display if you're on life 3 or life 9) or 3139250 if you're a 2nd lifer and so on...

[DarkForte]

Neg repped for using comic sans

Nice guide, by the way.

[barberous]

what a really good article .... nice work

[barberous]

how do i get my avatar to show on this reply?

[laniza]

how do i get my avatar to show on this reply?

I am not 100% sure what you mean by avatar so ill give you 2 answers. I am hoping one of them is the correct one

If you mean the picture under your forum name all the way on the left go to:
User CP/Edit Avatar (its under Settings & Options)/pick avatar you want (you can only use version offered by ddo btw)/save changes. This should do it.

If you mean showing your toon avatar in your signature (which in turn means using premade forum signature) go to:
User CP/Edit Signature (its under Settings & Options)/Pick your main character/Choose your options (signature;border;avatar style)/Copy signature html code/Paste it into your signature/Save signature.

Hope I got it right

[Bolo_Grubb]

thank you for the lesson.

[barberous]

well done! you are never to old to learn