Just a reminder to everyone: Please check your signature file size (those of you with pictures or animated files in your sig). If it's anywhere near 100k, please consider reducing or removing it. Also, signature images should be no larger than 600px X 200px.

Even though we've upgraded our servers significantly, here's the situation: If there are 40 posts on a page, and 30 of the posters on that page have a 100k sig, you're loading 3MB just in sig files each time you view that page. If several people are loading that page simultaneously, load times increase and leave connections hanging open. Not good.

Please consider whether your sig can be reduced or replaced with a link (for example, a link to a thread with pics of your car, a build thread, etc).

For those of you with JPG logos in your signatures: See if you can come up with a PNG version. PNG is REALLY good at compressing things with a small number of colors (almost always better than JPG), it's non-lossy (unlike JPG), and it doesn't introduce artficacts around sharp edges (unlike JPG). Now, don't just go pull the JPG up in Photoshop and save it as a PNG. The lossyness and artifacts will still be there, and it won't compress as well. Find the original uncompressed Image (TIF, PSD) or the vector art, and save it as PNG.

While we're operating on some pretty awesome hardware, we STILL need to prioritize what's important in order to bring you guys some of the cool goodies you've become accustomed to.

Please note the following when adjusting your signature:

1) Nudity and vulgar language is not allowed, nor is finding cute and clever ways of representing profanity.

2) Sigs are not to be used to make political / religious statements of any kind.

3) Banned members are not to be referenced in anyone's signatures. What's done is done, move on.

4) Linking to another forum, a non-sponsoring shop or company, or a competing website is prohibited, so please do the right thing.

5) If it's got a funny quote and it's been up a while, chances are it's no longer funny.

6) If it contains a picture or reference to an "inside joke", chances are it's not only no longer funny, but it's also confusing to new people.

7) If you don't want to look at other people's signatures while you're surfing NICO, there's an option in the User Control Panel to turn signatures off.

In order to be even-handed as possible in dealing with signatures, anyone in violation will have their sig edited without notification. If you are missing something in your sig, do not add it back. Adding edited material back into a signature may result in banning.

Thanks all!