Guides, signatures, space and such

Trying to come up with ideas here. Input would be appreciated.

Looking down at the ol' signature, I have a fair number of guides. Not all of them are listed there - I actually cannot fit more into the signature (thanks to our wonky signature editing box - in fact, if I just hit "edit signature" and saved what's there NOW, it'd complain it's past 5 lines - thanks to the links to the guides.)

I also have guides not listed there. Some are older, so I'm ignoring them. However, I have at least one not listed there that's current, and have 1-2 others in the works.

Obviously, the point of writing these things is to help people - and they can't help if people aren't aware of/can't find them. (And I know full well people have found them because of the signature, and found them useful.) So I want to keep them visible (and updated!) But I'm running out of room.

So... how do I fix this? That's what I'm looking for ideas on.

Now, I COULD just do a search and save the result - which is this.
The problem with that is - well, a few things:
1. No actual listing. If you're looking for how to use (say) the combat attributes monitor, that doesn't really tell you it's in there to be found.
2. It lists old and out of date guides (such as the quick guide to fiery aura - that shows 1.0 and 2.0.)
3. As I recall, that "search result" page expires after some set period of time.

Not an ideal solution.

I'd like to avoid copying everything over to paragonwiki, as well - nothing against the wiki, mind you, I refer people there constantly and use it myself. But I don't want to try to maintain two copies, or for that matter clutter up the wiki with it. It doesn't feel "right" to me to put it there. And that aside from the fact I stink at working on wiki pages (with formatting and such.) Just never clicked with me.

Plus, of course, there's the whole "less easy to find from here" thing, versus the signature.

I could, of course, just set up a blog and/or web page - but that runs into the same issues as the wiki. (I am, however, better at HTML. Web page designs tend to be bland, honestly, but what do you expect from someone who uses notepad when they do this stuff?)

OR... create a page for myself (which just smacks of ego - believe it or not, yes, that does bug me) over on either PW or Ouroportal (which I think is just player lore or something) ... with links back to the guides. Which is the closest thing to workable, but still a bit klunky (and again, I'm not sure is appropriate.)

Anyone have a solution or idea that:
- Is easily referred to from here ("Yeah, I could use help with that - his sig has something, let me look?")
- Is easily maintained/updated
- Appropriate (like I said, not sure about staking a claim on a wiki page for this) ? (And I'm not sure, if the Wiki page is "appropriate" - tonyv? - just how it'd be categorized and such.)
- Not involving duplication of the guides (just because I don't want five different versions - or a lot of work to do this, see easy to maintain/update.)

I don't write these for people *not* to find, after all!

Thanks in advance.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Yeah, one way or the other I'll need to do some trimming. The link to Paragon Wiki (with the "not wikia!" warning) is staying, that's just too useful.

About the only other concern I can think of, though, is having people ask questions and such. It's visible here (to me this forum tends to be the main "jumping off" point, I suppose.) I see you have some discussion on the MF Warshade guide, for instance... but it's more commentary than questions, it looks like, compared to what you had here (and what I get here.)

I may have to take a hybrid approach, set up a blog or website, link to it here, but have (at least initially) just a set of links *back* to the guides here. Which would let me organize and give a brief description on each to begin with, which I don't have room for in the sig, quite obviously. Almost wish we had a (more extensive, editable) profile page here. I can start copying/formatting/etc. in a bit slower pace after.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Not and end-all solution, but something that just came off the top of my head: what about rotating the links in your signature on a weekly basis, or other time frame? For example, every Monday morning switch up the links to X number of different guides, perhaps keeping some mainstays there for "important" guides?

Hi, not sure if this is stupid or not but...

Why not just make a post in the stickied 'Guide to Guides' post in the Player Guides section, where you have the list of your guides (and descriptions) and links to them.


Then, just have the link in your signature go to that post.

New idea that takes a bit more work than anything else:

Use an animated .gif image that links to a master list of your guides. Have the .gif rotate through the different names of your guides.

Change the links that aren't tinyurls into tinyurls, including the link to the Wiki.

Remove the two 'the's and the '2.0' as superfluous. Change 'never' to 'not.' Get rid of 'info guides' since the distinction isn't so important.

That should save you about 150 characters, or, three more links.


Or.. I've seen someone with a gif image that had links based on where the cursor was hovered. Don't know if that saves sig space or not.

>.>

<.<

...So you're saying someone needs to create a guide to listing guides?

Create a "guide to Memphis Bill guides" post in the guides section with just a listing of all your guides and link to that.

edit: which I see now is exactly what you ended up doing.

Well you have my sig.

Essentially what I've done is used TinyURL (though you could use any URL shortening service) to shrink the URLs and and image locations down.

Second, I've put the text in images. While, technically it's bloated the amount of bandwidth the text requires (each of the images in my sig is 5-7K apiece, 45K of text would be monstrous), the images are really quite small and load rapidly.

I could probably shrink them down to about half to 1/4 of their current size, retain legible text and cut the bandwidth even more.

Granted, I probably should have THAT many images in my sig. But, as I said, they're small, rapid loading, and my service provider keeps my site up pretty much for 4 9's. In the overall scheme of things, the formatting of the sig conveys lots of data, doesn't really impact the reader's surfing speed, and actually fits within the tiny sig space allowed to us.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

You know what I'd love to see (but will never happen)?

The option to use Flash files for our signatures.

There was a forum where, for a few years, they let people use Flash in their sigs (at least until they upgraded to different software that disallowed it). They had pretty strict file size restrictions and text line restrictions; no images larger than 450x180 pixels and 35 KB, no more than three or so lines of text.

I got permission to use Flash for my signature and I was able to, with a 33 KB Flash file, make an animated signature that was low-impact, had links to various game-related or personal sites, and detailed character information, all displayed through different buttons. I could cram a lot of stuff into that, more than I ever could through pure text or images!

It's just a shame that Flash can be too easily exploited for nefarious ends, because I'd love to make signatures like that again.