Site Reorganization

[thepast]

Hi folks,

As you are noticing, the site is taking some affirmative movements towards ensuring that there is uniformity & readability for posts while still allowing custom avatars & sig blocks. We have already taken affirmative steps to shrink avatar size (note the thread in tech corner already & the response). Likewise, we are looking at sig blocks as well. PLEASE do us (and yourselves!) a great service & take a few moments to police up your sig blocks by looking at the following list.

The reason we are "concerned" about both avis & sig blocks is that they both affect the viewing of the forums for everyone. In particular, if your avi is huge but sig block tiny, everytime you post your post will be "long" simply to conform to your avi. Same issue w/your sig block--it is added onto your posts, so it lengthens the posts significantly.

A year ago or so, it wouldn't have mattered what size your sig block or avatar was--but the site has grown 10-12 fold since last year-- we have over 500 viewers online most days-- hence the need for the change.

Here's the list:

• Cut the size on your sig block font down to 3--any bigger is really unnecessary--at size 3, everyone can read it.
• Condense your sig block down. If you have 20 things you want to say, try & pick a few, maybe rotate through them. Folks with 6 lines of size 3-4-5 text that are spaced 2-3 lines apart or folks w/ 8-9-10 quotes: we're talkin to you! *grins*
• Justification--people like to play around w/it. Fine. However, please restrict yourself a bit--you don't need one 8 line blurp centered, then another right justified, then another left justified... maybe condense the lines down, or just do 1-2 at a time.
• Colors/fonts--colors & font choices in sig blocks are a GREAT way to express yourself w/o making the blocks bigger.
• Pictures/awards--some of you have awards that you like to show off--that's great! You might consider your 2-3 most prominent/special/important ones & put those up. Or put them all in a horizontal line (i.e. so 5 take up the same space as 1). If you have HUGE pictures in your sig blocks, you will probably be getting a PM to please shrink the pic--so you could do us a *big* favor & shrink it yourself!
• Preview your sig block-- take a look at it before you put it up--is it what you want?

If there is additional profile areas we can put in that people would enjoy, please just let us know--we are trying to give you more personal space (user albums, groups, friends lists, profiles) while at the same time balancing the needs of the site for readability & clarity (avatars, sig blocks).

If within a week or so your sig block is still at a ridiculous size, we may delete it--so please fix it yourself! It has been a guideline of the forums for over a yr, so this should be absolutely no surprise to folks! In a week or so we're going to start going through folks, starting w/the biggest "offenders"... again, please take the time to edit it yourself!

Thank you all for your cooperation!

delia
The Structural Admin

[angelic.zest]

gotcha!

[thepast]

Bumping, so everyone gets a chance to read it.

[Tufty]

Hmmm...wonders if 9 lines (incuding spaces) of coloured text could be too much of a signature? May need to amend some of it

[thepast]

??? Depends on the size of the lines, etc.

[Baddbaddgirl]

I couldnt figure out how to make my avi smaller .. luckily, I got a really smart subbie to do it for me! lol =) *hugggles Tufty*

[lucy]

No problem with anything except that the site seems to resize avis to 150 by 150 pixels even when it was 150 by 120.

[lucy]

Oops, didn't realize what i wrote in the above post was already adressed in another thread. It wasn't very helpful either. Sohoorry...

Trying to be helpful now: Whoever needs to have his/her avi resized but can't figure out how to do it can send it to lucy_in_the_sky(at)gmx.ch and i promise i'll do my best

[Torq]

Ok,
Folks been 5 days asking that everyone please reduce their signature blocks down to 3" or LESS as in the Forum Guidelines.

Please note with the amount of traffic we now get and the post count climbing to over 750,000 and members over 43,000 we ALL need to SHARE!!!!

As of Tuesday 12/20 I will start reducing same. Please do NOT reset them back larger after they have been reduced, re-organize or re-do quite ok, BUT not larger, TY

THANKS to everyone for your co-operation in this matter.

Be Well

T