Help:Signatures

Your signature is what appears when you type into the editing box three tildes (~~~). This page will (hopefully!) show you how to change it!

Where signatures are asked for

You should sign your post/contributions/whatever on talk pages, the community portal and whenever you leave a note for someone. Don't use it when you write articles, as then the whole article will be covered in signatures!

Editing your signature

Basic signature

For a basic signature, click on the 'my preferences' link in the top right-hand corner. Find the 'nickname' box, and type what you want to appear. For example, if your username is John Smith, but you want 'John' to appear when you sign, you'd type 'John' into the nickname box. This would then give:

John

Slightly more advanced signature

For a slightly more advanced signature, you can append links to the end (for example, to your talk page ). To do this, you either need to know the exact page name (for internal links); or the full address (for external links). Go to the nicknames box, and firstly write out a link to your userpage:

[[User:Your_username|Nickname to appear]]

Then, you can just use your imagination. To ^superscript text, use ^{to start the superscript and} to end it. For _subscript text, use _and. Normal HTML applies - wiki editing help can be found here.

So,

[[User:John Smith|John]] <sup>[[User_talk:John Smith|talk]] | [http://www.google.com website] </sup>

would give:

John ^{talk | website}

Two things to watch:

1. Remember to check the 'use raw signatures' box.
2. Close any tags you open e.g. if you use ^{, remember to put} somewhere.

Advanced signatures

Advanced signatures involve using a template to call your signature from a page each time it's used. The advantages of this are that you can change it whenever you want, and it will update, and that it's easier to see the formatting you've applied. This is what you have to do:

1. Create a subpage of your username i.e. http://www.br.../index.php/User:Yourusername/sig
2. Copy (or create) your signature on that page.
3. Type into the 'nickname' box {{Nosubst|User:Yourusername/sig}}
4. (Don't worry if SUBST: appears!)
5. Tick the box underneath (that says 'Treat Signature as wikitext (without an automatic link))
6. Save your preferences
7. Check that your signature works by testing in the Sandbox

With this, it's easier to also use colours ({{Template:C}}) and highlights ({{Template:Highlight}}) to make it more interesting!