Signatures are very important, partly to identify the user and quickly go to his/her talk page to reply, but also due to the timestamp they carry, which helps keep track of discussions. Therefore, whenever posting on a forum page or a talk page, you have to sign your posts. For ease of replying it is mandatory for your signature to have some sort of link to either your talk page or your user page (this is a minimum, of course you can have both of these and other links too).
Signatures, while mandatory in forum and talk pages, as mentioned above, should never be used in the mainspace, whether to sign your edit or any other reason. As Wikia's license says, "you do not have ownership of your edits", and therefore editors should never sign content in order to express it.
Signing[]
To sign a post, you can either type four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your post, which will generate your signature along with a timestamp, or you can conveniently click the signature button at the top of the editing window, which will give four tildes preceded by two dashes: --~~~~.
Other forms[]
Typing four tildes results in your signature and a time stamp, which is fine most of the time, but sometimes other forms may be required/permitted. Typing three tildes gives just your signature. This can be used when a timestamp is either irrelevant or not needed, e.g. in a vote or guestbook. Typing 5 tildes results in just the time stamp appearing. This can be used in templates that need a time stamp, e.g. Welcome templates.
The below example assumes that you are using your default signature. Note that since Nitrome Wiki's upgrade to Mediawiki 1.19 on 5 July 2012, default signatures will include a link to your talk page. Please go here for more details.
| Wikimarkup | Gives | Which then generates |
|---|---|---|
| ~~~ | [[User:<insert name here>|<insert name here>]] [[User_talk:<insert name here>|(talk)]] |
<insert name here> (talk) |
| ~~~~ | [[User:<insert name here>|<insert name here>]] [[User_talk:<insert name here>|(talk)]] |
<insert name here> (talk) 02:54, May 12 2025 (UTC) |
| ~~~~~ | 02:54, May 12 2025 (UTC) | 02:54, May 12 2025 (UTC) |
Your own customised signature[]
The default signature is just two links, to your user page and to your talk page, like this: — <insert name here> (talk). However, this may get a bit drab and rather boring, so users can make their own signatures. There are some limits, which are to stop signatures becoming too big and requiring a lot of code, as well as taking up a lot of space. The first, and most important rule, is that all signatures must be templated, so something like {{Signatures/<insert name here>}}. This is done for two main reasons:
- To prevent huge lag due to lots of signature code dumped on a page, sifting through which can be a pain.
- Customised signatures often include images; if an image is used on a custom signature it is put on hundreds of pages - wherever the signature goes. If that image is renamed or deleted, the user has to go around every one of those pages replacing the code to prevent the image showing up as a red link, and appearing on Special:WantedFiles - files that are linked to but don't actually exist or have been moved.
You can also request users to creature for you a custom signatures by applying here.
Other rules[]
- Signatures may not contain more than two images, due to this adding pressure on the servers, which can result in lag.
- If a signature includes ANY non self-closed HTML tags, such as <div> or <span>, then ALL THOSE TAGS MUST BE CLOSED. This is to prevent the signature spilling colour or other CSS styling effects all over the page.
- Use your common sense. E.g. there are no limits on the height of a signature, but you should know what's appropriate and what's not.
Finishing off a signature[]
As mentioned above all signatures must be templated. Once you have your sig code ready and tested, follow the below steps to set it up once and for all!
- Create a page called Template:Signatures/<insert name here> and paste your code there.
- Then, do not hit enter or insert a line break, and paste in
<noinclude>[[Category:Signatures|{{ucfirst:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}]]</noinclude>to properly categorise your signature. - Go to your preferences, check the "Custom signature" box, and paste —
{{subst:#ifexist:Template:Signatures/<insert name here>|{{subst:Nosubst|Signatures/<insert name here>}}|— [[User:<insert name here>|<insert name here>]] ([[User talk:<insert name here>|talk]])}}into the "Signature" field. This makes ~~~~ return {{Signatures/<insert name here>}}, and if that doesn't exist the later part of the code makes it generate — <insert name here> (talk) instead. This can help if your account is active on multiple Wikis - your sig's template page may only exist on one Wiki, however your preferences apply to all Wikias.
Sign here![]
After you have set up your templated signature, you can post it below! Simply put ~~~ to sign. Again, please only post templated signatures, rather than the full code. You can also use the below table for ideas!
