Question about the "spam/advertising links" rule

[Daniel15]

I was going to change my signature, but noticed this:

Do *not* post spam/advertising links in your signature or you will be banned from the forum.

I've placed links to my personal sites in my signature (as I do on most forums), and I just wanted to check whether this was actually allowed. The way that I saw it was that this is not considered advertising as such? But I'm not *too* sure, as different forums have different definitions on what "advertising" is (some only consider referral links as advertising, others consider *any* signature links as advertising)

[tomos]

from the other signature thread

Well, going against myself, i think that tall signatures with big images might become anoying. (i do love mine, though ) But people around here tend to be polite, and i probably have the biggest sign in the forum.

honestly not trying to be smart here,
but me, I think a few less recently played tracks would be ..ehh.. nice 

[Carol Haynes]

I don't see any problem with your site links. Am I getting old or is the track list pretty meaningless? Trouble with internet music is that there is never anyone I have heard of in track lists!

Seriously - share your music by all means - but why not just add a link to your last.fm user page instead of the large image?

[mouser]

i agree with replies so far -- by all means put your sites in your signature, but try to minimize the space they take up -- the music list is def too long imho and you might be better off without it completely.

in general i think the guidelines should be: try for as short (in terms of vertical height) a sig as you can live with, so as to minimize the space it takes up when reading posts.

ps.
hey maybe we can make a default setting that puts all signature text in a little pop-open plus sign box, like the spoiler thing.

[mouser]

One other thing I should remind people, not because it's relevant to you Daniel but just for anyone reading this thread.  If anyone has one of those "affiliate" links in their signatures (which is almost always a bad idea), then they need to have a clear statement about what it is and that they profit from it.

[Daniel15]

the music list is def too long imho and you might be better off without it completely.

I changed it to only show 5 recently played tracks, so it should be better now
I might remove it completely later. My signature has a link to http://www.daniel15.net/ which (among other things) links to my last.fm account.

[OGroeger]

Am I correct? By inserting a link into your signature you can load stuff from another site?

[Carol Haynes]

You can use BBCode - just like in forum messages. For example:

[img]http:\\www.mywebsite.com\mypicture.jpg[/img]

will display 'mypicture.jpg'

[OGroeger]

Yep, i have bookmarked the User help.

So Daniel15 has a link to an image in his signature, and the image is being rendered dynamically on each request, right?

[f0dder]

I personally don't have a problem with the links in your sig (haven't checked content though ) - you're a participating member here, not just a spammer, you're linking to your own pages, and there's no referrer crap in there.

I do think your signature is a big large though, I prefer if signatures are half or 2/3rds the size of this: - but I do run a lowly 1280x1024 resolution, and like to see posts rather than signatures . Personally, I'd drop the last.fm box (what's the point of those anyway?) and simply line up the links.

[scancode]

Daniel15 -> Nice music tastes :-]

What about a small scrolling image?

[Daniel15]

Alright, I changed my signature

So Daniel15 has a link to an image in his signature, and the image is being rendered dynamically on each request, right?

Yeah, that's it

but I do run a lowly 1280x1024 resolution

Same resolution as me...

Daniel15 -> Nice music tastes :-]

Thanks! 

What about a small scrolling image?

Good idea, but I haven't seen any last.fm scrolling images (nor do I know how to code them in PHP)

[scancode]

As soon as I get last.fm working with XMPlayer, I'll code it :-]