User:Smurrayinchester/Tutorial/Signature

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Your signature, left on talk pages, is usually the first thing seen by users who meet you for the first time. As a result, many users choose to customise their signature, or 'sig', in order to seem more unique. These changes can vary from providing a link to your talk page to completely redesigning the entire signature. This page will attempt to provide some helpful tips and advice for producing a unique signature.

Note that changing your signature will not change signatures which have already been produced, only ones that are created after save has been clicked.

UserBob currently has a very simple signature:

UserBob 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

As a result, he would like to produce a more complicated signature.

1 Nickname
2 Talk pages
3 Getting colourful...
4 Fine tuning
5 Don'ts

[edit] Nickname

The easiest way to customise your signature is to change the 'Nickname' section of My Preferences. This changes the name shown to other users to the new nickname.

For example, if UserBob typed "Bob" into the 'Nickname' section of his preferences page and clicked 'save' (making sure the box marked "Raw signature" is not selected), his signature would change to

Bob 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

Note that it still links to User:UserBob, but says "Bob". This is useful if you no longer like your name, but don't want it changed all together. However, it is good practice to have your nickname related in an obvious way to your real username; if UserBob chose the nickname "Jenkinson", this would be confusing, since other users would have no idea who "Jenkinson" was, even if UserBob's real name is Jenkinson.

[edit] Talk pages

UserBob would like to link his signature to his talk page. To do this, he needs to produce a 'Raw Signature'.

To create a link to your talk page, click on 'My Preferences'. Below the 'Nickname' box, there is a box marked Raw signature (no auto link; don't use templates or external links in this). Click this box, and then type into the "Nickname" field [[User:(your name)|(your name)]] [[User talk:(your name)|talk]], and click save.

For example, if UserBob types [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|talk]], his signature would become

UserBob talk 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

These can be changed to use any other text. For example, [[User:UserBob|Bob]] [[User talk:UserBob|Chat]], which would make

Bob Chat 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

Some users "hide" their talk page link; it is there, but it is not labelled.

User Bob 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

This looks like the plain UserBob, but clicking on "Bob" leads to his talk page, as the code for it shows:[[User:UserBob|User]][[User talk:UserBob|Bob]].

To find these, hover your mouse over different parts of the signature. The status bar at the bottom of your web browser should you where each bit of the signature leads.

[edit] Getting colourful...

UserBob doesn't much like the colour blue, and decides to produce a more colourful signature.

In order to produce a signature with colours other than blue (or red), you'll need to use a bit of HTML, specifically the tag.

If I put at the start of some text , all the text I write turns gold. Note that the text will not turn back into black until I type .

Bob wants a green and maroon signature, so he types [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|talk]], producing

UserBob talk 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

He can even use different colours in the same part. For example, [[User:UserBob|UserBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|talk]] produces

UserBob talk 22:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC).

Note that "User" and "Bob" are now different colours.

Any colour can be chosen, although it is wise not to use very pale colours on the white background, for obvious reasons. If the colour you want is not available, consider finding the web colour code for the colour.

[edit] Fine tuning

UserBob is reasonably happy with his signature. However, there are still many other ways to alter a signature. The most commonly used are: adding ^, _, '''bold''', ''italics'' and for special effects, and using special unicode symbols, such as ☯, ☺ and ★ (for a complete list see list of HTML decimal character references (warning: large page!)).

Some users may have other links in their signature. For example, Esperanza members had a green e, linked to Wikipedia:Esperanza, which linked straight to Esperanza. So, if UserBob had joined Esperanza, his signature might have changed like so:

[[User:UserBob|Us]][[WP:EA|'''''e''''']][[User:UserBob|rBob]] [[User talk:UserBob|talk]]

Us e rBob talk