NEW SIGNATURE & AVATAR RULES - PLEASE READ

[judiaci]

American Girl Fan board is an all ages board meant to discuss AG in an atmosphere of friendship and support. Several inappropriate avatars and signatures have been used on our board over the years that are not in keeping with our focus and atmosphere. We would like our board to be a friendlier place without the distraction of religious, political, adult oriented and scary/creepy avatars and/or signatures. This rule is meant to keep our board as pleasant and stress free as possible. Here are the new avatar rules that the moderating team has decided on:

<font size="5">AVATARS ALLOWED:</font>

1. Pictures of AG Products as generally pictured by AG or your own AG photos.
2. Pictures of you or your family members.
3. Pictures of pets/animals.
4. Nature Scenes
5. No avatar ? there is always the choice not to display an avatar.

Avatars not allowed:

1. Pictures of AG or non-AG products that have been altered into scary, creepy or inappropriate images.
2. Avatars reflecting political, religious or other controversial affiliation or interest. Save those kinds of avatars for other boards, not ours.

As with posting and signatures, use good judgment choosing your avatar. Thanks for your cooperation and respect!

Your Moderating Team
Judi
Joy
Georgia
O'Susannah
Jeanette


Feel free to try any of these great AG Avatars made by our own board members:

Custom AG Avatars For You!


Everyone who asked for help with their avatars now has a lot of good choices. I hope to see some on board very soon.
They are JPEG format and the right pixel size so just:

Right click on your desired avatar sample and save the picture in your computer.

Go to your profile to upload a custom avatar.

Click here (in red) to add a custom avatar

Browse and click on the sample avatar you saved from the board.

Click on "upload"

Click here (in blue) to return to your profile.

Click Update Profile at the bottom of the screen.

Check back on the board on one of your posts and see if the new avatar appears. Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes to show up or a refresh to show up.

Good luck!


<font size="5">SIGNATURES:</font>

Our board is getting cluttered and our posts are being lost in a sea of signatures. Due to a demand for some guidelines to help clean up our board and reduce download times as well as scrolling, please follow these guidelines for a maximum signature length.
Less is OK, too!


Maximum Signature Size:
Total size about 3"x5" (measure your screen with a ruler to check)

4 Lines of Text

2 Tickers Maximum, regardless. Rotate as needed.

1 medium picture or up to 3 small pictures side by side preferred. If you have no tickers or other text, your picture can be larger.

AG related items are preferred, but not required as long as they fall within our rules.

Please don't post links to websites that would break our rules.

Tips To Reduce Signature Size -
Put lists of dolls all on 1 line.

Use the URL function to have one name for albums. Here is the Hostboard Language Code to use in your profile:

[ URL=http://www.Hostboard.com]Hostboard.com[/URL]

I put a space between [ and URL but don't do that when you use this code. I only did it so the link wouldn't show up instead of the code.

Post your wishlist in the sticky at the top of our board.

Post your website or albums on the website sticky at the top of our board.

You can post pictures on just the related thread using the tag feature in photobucket.com instead of always having it in your signature where they keeps getting repeated.

This is a good size for a signature picture:


This picture is too big for a signature:



Some variation is OK, but be reasonable.

[img]graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ September 12, 2006 10:38 PM: Message edited by: judiaci ]</font>

[dlnw]

I think the thing we all need to keep in mind is this: How interested do you think others will be in looking at your pictures/lists of dolls/tickers/etc. <u>every time</u> they go through posts to read them? It's not just a one-time deal. Every time one of our posts appears, members have to go through the same signatures over and over again. Even if things load quickly for me, I need to think about others who read the boards. Everyone doesn't have a high speed Internet connection. Even if they do, do members want to scroll through stuff they have seen several times before?

For me, the actual posts are what I am looking for. I choose not to include sig pictures/tickers/etc. as a courtesy to fellow members. Again, just my personal opinion.

<font color="#051E50" size="1">[ March 05, 2006 03:51 PM: Message edited by: dlnw ]</font>

[aggirl479]

I have a "pet peeve." Some (not a lot) of members have Historical doll's names misspelled, or other misspellings, in their signatures, and (no offense to anyone) it really bothers me. It's one thing when you have a "one time only" misspelling in a post, but when you misspell something in your signature, it misspells it EVERY SINGLE TIME you post (except when you post more than once per page). So, if people could just double-check their spelling in their signatures, I would really appreciate it [img]smile.gif[/img] !

[cami713]

I have a "pet peeve." Some (not a lot) of members have Historical doll's names misspelled, or other misspellings, in their signatures, and (no offense to anyone) it really bothers me. It's one thing when you have a "one time only" misspelling in a post, but when you misspell something in your signature, it misspells it EVERY SINGLE TIME you post (except when you post more than once per page). So, if people could just double-check their spelling in their signatures, I would really appreciate it !

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have to agree with Emily. Not so much that it annoys me, but it seems very odd to me that someone would spend 100 dollars on a doll and then not even know how to spell her name properly. I mean, it shouldn't be a rule or anything, but it would be nice for people to double check the way they have their dolls' names spelled. Countless people spell Josefina, "Josephina." It's weird.

I think the board could use with an overall reminder to use the spell check before posting. I know I make mistakes every so often, as do most people, but some just make constant spelling errors.

If we're trying to make the board more pleasing on the eyes, I know that correct spelling definitely helps that.

[Kenshinchan]

I wonder if people can try not to use signatures that "break" the board? If someone has a signature that is a very long line of text with no spaces (such as a very long URL) it can stretch the board so someone with a 1024x768 screen has to scroll left and right to read the board, which is pretty annoying. (Very long links to images that are meant to display but are coded incorrectly will do the same thing.)

[cami713]

There's a bunch of ways to resize pictures [img]smile.gif[/img] .

I personally use Thisprogram. It's very simple, easy to use, and best of all, free [img]smile.gif[/img] .

You could also use photobucket. I hear they've changed the wording on the resize feature, so I don't know which is the correct dimension to use for here. But, for avatars, you really just need it to be perfectly square (or else it'll be distorted), and, apparently, smaller for HB to resize it on its own. Avatars (because of their small size) always look better when they're resized to the correct size, though. And it gives you more control on what's the focus of the picture.

Your Digital Camera's software should have a crop and a resizing feature. I don't think they all do, though, and sometimes they're hidden [img]frown.gif[/img] . I still haven't been able to find it on my Kodak software (granted I didn't look too hard since I have the IrfanView program).

If anyone wants to send me their pictures, or just post them here, or in another thread, I'd be more than happy to resize them. Just be prepared to be a bit patient, I either work or am in school everyday. I check HB every morning and every night (and a couple times in between, of course [img]smile.gif[/img] ), so it might take a few hours for me to respond, however it only takes a few seconds to resize, so I'd be more than happy to resize any [img]smile.gif[/img] .

emsmombuysdolls, are you trying to resize the picture of Lindsey and Marisol? It seems a good size to me, or I'd resize it right now for you [img]smile.gif[/img] .

[AGTeacher]

All siggy pics must be 320x240. (per mod Judiaci)

You may go to photobucket, upload your picture there and then click on the edit button. There will be four choices to edit your size on the picture, choose the 320x240 size. Then your picture will be this large...



Thank you.

<font color="#33CCCC"><font size="1">[ October 25, 2006 01:36 PM: Message edited by: Scarlett Slipper ]</font></font>

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ October 25, 2006 01:41 PM: Message edited by: Scarlett Slipper ]</font>

[AGDancer]

Do you think that my signature is to big? If it is then could some one please get it smaller without having it so you can't see it. I can never get them the right size.

[horselvr2]

Are my siggy pics okay? I have 2 of them, but they are small...so I'm not sure if where aloud to have 2 of them this size...when I resize my pics, they come out all pixel-ized.
KayaKacey04, I think your sig is too big...

[judiaci]

Originally posted by kayakacey04:
Do you think that my signature is to big? If it is then could some one please get it smaller without having it so you can't see it. I can never get them the right size.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It is a little bit too big. I tried to re-size it in photobucket.com to 320 wide, but for some reason, it wouldn't work. I re-sized it to 320 wide with adobe photoshop. Here it is. Copy it to your computer and then upload it in photobucket to use for your signature.



<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ October 26, 2006 02:26 PM: Message edited by: judiaci ]</font>