User blog:Leviathan 89/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:
 * Leviathan 89 gives:


 * Leviathan 89 gives:


 * Be careful, it's case-sensitive. LeViAtHaN 89 gives:

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.

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  and   but it's up to you. The reason why creating two subpage will be clear later. will be your "main page" while  will contains the actual code of your signature. Now transclude your signature in  by using the code   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, 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. 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:        , ,  (UTC)  With the same result.

Preferences
Now that you made your signature, you have only to edit the Special:Preferences by adding the code  (or whatever you called your main subpage), be sure to check "I want to use wikitext". Even if you remove the, 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, and change the signature used in your main subpage , 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  or   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: 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  otherwise the time will be constantly change.
 * Main page:
 * Preferences:

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.

Cross-wikis compatibility
Remember that your preferences are globally, so you have to create the main subpage with the same title, 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: SIMPLE SIGNATURE This way if the signature subpage is missing, a standard signature will be used. an example: or even simpler: Of course you can always just manually written your name and adding the time stamp alone.
 * }}
 * leviathan_89}}

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