What you have to know about signatures

To avoid explains things over and over again, here what you have to know for making a custom signature, hope this will be helpful!

Basic knowledge[]

First of all, how do you sign your posts? This is so simple as well important, because how can you answer to someone you don't know who is?

~~~~

~~~

~~~~~

The default signature you start with is simply a link to your user profile. You can find the shortcuts to sign in the editor, in source mode you can also found them in the edit tools (click on "+") together with other useful links.

Unsinged comments[]

If you respond to an unsigned comment and you know who left it, you may want to mark it with {{Unsigned}}, the basic way to use the template is to add the name (be careful it's case-sensitive) of the user who left the comment. Here some samples:

• {{Unsigned|Leviathan 89}} gives:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Leviathan 89 (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

• {{Unsigned|Leviathan 89|~~~~~}} gives:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Leviathan 89 (talk • contribs) 19:26, March 2, 2012 (UTC). Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

• Be careful, it's case-sensitive. {{Unsigned|LeViAtHaN 89}} gives:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by LeViAtHaN 89 (contribs). Please sign your posts with ~~~~ next time!

You can find more in the template page.

Make a custom signature: first steps[]

Now let's talk about customizing your signature: if you make a persona signature, please put it in a "personal template", the reason why doing that is simple as you can see.

Hello world! {{User:Leviathan_89/sig2|13:25|28|February|2012}}

So it's obviously better creating a template.

Creating your personal signature template[]

For your signature, use your profile, please don't create an actual template for it. To do so, just create two subpages of your profile, typically User:USERNAME/sig and User:USERNAME/sig1 but it's up to you. The reason why creating two subpage will be clear later. /sig will be your "main page" while /sig1 will contains the actual code of your signature. Now transclude your signature in /sig by using the code {{User:USERNAME/sig1}} in the page.

While creating the pages be careful to not add unnecessary new lines or codes that won't part of the actual signatures, to exclude part of the page from being transclude wrap it between the tag <noinclude></noinclude>, if you use HTML in your signature, avoid using divs, instead spans are to be preferred since they are in-line elements. A trick you may want to use for making the source code looks neater is using the HTML comments tags <!-- COMMENT -->. By using the comments you can mark specific section of the code or break the lines without problems, for example a complicated code like the one used before can be edited like this:

[[User:Leviathan_89|<!--
      Code for leviathan- part
--><span title="My profile" style="color:#0078ff; text-shadow: 0px 1px 0.4px #0054d3, 1px 0px 1px white, -1px -1px 1px white, 2px 2px 6px #0093f4,-2px -2px 6px #0093f4;">'''''<code>leviathan</code>'''''</span><!--
      Underscore
--><span style="color:#0078ff; text-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #0093f4, -2px -2px 6px #0093f4;">'''''<code>_</code>'''''</span>]]<!--
      My talk page link
-->[[User_talk:Leviathan_89|'''''<span title="Questions? Ask me!" style="color:#ff8a00; text-shadow: 0px 1px 0.4px #ff5a00, 1px 0px 1px white, -1px -1px 1px white, 2px 2px 6px #ff8a00, -2px -2px 6px #ff8a00;"><code>89</code></span>''''']] <!--
      Time stamp
--><span style="color:white; text-shadow: 1px 1px 8px #0093f4, 1px 1px 8px #0093f4, -1px -1px 8px #0093f4, -1px -1px 8px #0093f4;"><small>'''''<span style="color:green;"> {{{time|{{{1|}}}}}},</span> <span style="color:#FFFFFF;">{{{day|{{{2|}}}}}} {{{month|{{{3|}}}}}},</span> <span style="color:red;">{{{year|{{{4|}}}}}} (UTC)</span>'''''</small></span>

With the same result.

Preferences[]

Now that you made your signature, you have only to edit the Special:Preferences by adding the code {{SUBST:User:USERNAME/sig}} (or whatever you called your main subpage), be sure to check "I want to use wikitext". Even if you remove the SUBST:, it will be added automatically, hence now it's clear why we need two subpages: if you use only one subpage, your signature code would have simply substituted, making the whole page meaningless.

Changing your signature[]

For changing signature, simply create another subpage, like /sig2, and change the signature used in your main subpage (/sig), that's all! Please remember that the "actual" signature pages are still being used, and always be, in the forums or talk pages where you singed. This is why they shouldn't be deleted. Editing them will affect every page that uses them, that's why one usually makes a new one instead of editing the his current signature (though you can do it of course).

Some examples[]

Looking at other' signatures is the best way to learn! Some signatures:

You can find many others here.

Make a custom signature: including the time stamp[]

Some signatures are slightly different, because they include the time stamp on them. To do so you have to add a parameter: an unnamed parameter is enough and it's written like this {{{1|default value}}} or {{{1}}} where the number indicates in what order is given (1= first unnamed parameter, 2= second unnamed parameter...), we don't have to deepen this argument, if you want look for it in the help pages. Now add the parameter wherever you want to appear the time stamp in your signature and edit the other pages like this:

• Main page: {{User:USERNAME/sig1|{{{1}}} }}
• Preferences: {{SUBST:User:USERNAME/sig|~~~~~}}

This way the time stamp will be passed through the subpage's call. Other than using the time stamp you can use the time variables, but remember to add the SUBST: otherwise the time will be constantly change.

If you include the time stamp in your signature, then you will have to sign with only three tildes otherwise the time stamp will be doubled.

Some example[]

Cross-wikis compatibility[]

Remember that your preferences are globally, so you have to create the main subpage with the same title in every wiki you frequent, of course you can change the actual signature in different wikis, but you still have to use the same title since the preferences are the same for every wiki on Wikia. To avoid creating your signature for every random wiki you visit you can use this code in your preferences:

{{SUBST:#ifexist:User:USERNAME/sig|{{SUBST:User:USERNAME/sig}}|SIMPLE SIGNATURE}}

This way if the signature subpage is missing, a standard signature will be used. an example:

{{SUBST:#ifexist:User:Leviathan 89/sig}}|{{SUBST:User:Leviathan 89/sig}}|<code>'''[[User:Leviathan 89|leviathan_<span style="color:#FF9933;">89</span>]]'''</code>}}

or even simpler:

{{SUBST:#ifexist:User:Leviathan_89/sig}}|{{SUBST:User:Leviathan 89/sig}}|[[User:Leviathan_89|leviathan_89]]}}

Of course you can always just manually written your name and adding the time stamp alone.

Final suggestions[]

Please avoid deprecated tags such "font", use CSS instead, and always make your signature not much more taller than the line-height.

External links[]

• http://www.mediawiki.org/
• http://help.wikia.com/
• http://www.w3schools.com/