User:Splintax/Signature tutorial

Signatures on Wikipedia are quite different from those on other sites such as public forums.

On Wikipedia, it is necessary to manually input your signature using a shortcut, unlike most other websites.

Wiki markup	My customized sig output
~~~	splintax (talk)
~~~~	splintax (talk) 17:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

As you can see, ~~~ delimits your signature, while ~~~~ does the same with the addition of a timestamp detailing when that post was made. (Incidentally, you should never use your signature on an article page - it's only supposed to be used on talk pages and in other discussion areas.)

The question you are asking by coming to this page is "how can I make a fancy signature that says more than just my name?". As you are probably aware, the standard signature looks something like this: splintax - in other words, it's just your name with a link to your user page. If you read any discussion pages, you'll probably notice someone with a signature more like this: splintax^(talk) or even splintax^t_c^@. (By the way, t or talk means the user's User talk page, c their contributions to the Wikipedia and @ their email contact form, usually. Also, clicking a username should take you to that user's User page.)

The most important thing to know is that the signature is the text that is rather unhelpfully described as your Nickname, in the User data section of the Preferences page. However, if you have the Raw signatures option unchecked, the wiki software will attempt to place a link to your user page automatically based on the nickname.

So, you need to uncheck this option, and write yourself in a new username. Here are some helpful (some critical) tips when writing usernames:

• When you uncheck the 'Raw signatures' option, you are removing automatic links back to your user page. So, just for a basic signature identical to your default signature, you should enter the following (where USERNAME is your username):

[[User:USERNAME|USERNAME]]

• If you wish to color your username, like me, you should put all markup used for this purpose within the [['s for the name. Thus, our above example in green would be written like so:

[[User:USERNAME|<font color="#00FF00">USERNAME</font>]]

• On that subject, there are three main HTML tags used in signatures:
  • Font tags: <font face="FONT NAME" color="COLOR IN HEX">
    • The color in 'hex' or hexadecimal is created by entering the red, green and blue (RGB) values in as hexadecimal numbers after a hash sign, ie. #RRGGBB. For example, #FF0000, #00FF00 and #0000FF. Try searching for an HTML color chart for more complex colours.
    • Also, the color and face attributes of the font tag are both optional, that is to say if you do not want to change the font you do not have to include face="", and if you do not want to change the color you do not have to include color="".
  • Super/subscript tags: x² for "x squared", H₂O for the chemical formula for water
• There are also special links that you may want to familiarize yourself with:
  • For your user talk page, use [[User_talk:USERNAME|BLURB]] - replacing USERNAME with your username, and BLURB with the descriptive text you wish the link to hold (such as ''(talk)'', ''(t)'', ''(talk to me)'', etc). ** For your contributions page, you may wish to use either your Wikipeida contributions pages (contains all edits with details), or [http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits.cgi Kate's tool] (gives a brief summary and lists the total number of edits). *** Use <nowiki>[[Special:Contributions/USERNAME|BLURB]] for a Wikipedia contribs link
    • Use [http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=USERNAME&dbname=enwiki BLURB] for Kate's contribs page
  • For your email contact, you may wish to use either your Wikipeida email contact form (secure, does not reveal your email), or a mailto address (reveals your email address which could be exposed to spammers, but could be considered more convenient by some users).
    • Use [[Special:Emailuser/USERNAME|BLURB]] for a Wikipedia email contact form
    • Use [mailto:EMAIL@YOUREMAIL.TLD BLURB] for a mailto link, replacing EMAIL@YOUREMAIL.TLD with your email. (unconfirmed)

That's it for now. Thanks for reading my tutorial, and I hope you found it useful. Please do not edit this page - I've left it as a user subpage for a reason - instead, should you wish to alter or discuss it, leave a message on my talk page.

splintax ^(talk) _{17:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)}