Members are permitted to have images and text in their signature tags. However, we do have some rules that must be followed. Please review and abide by them.

For images:

- The maximum width is 500 pixels. The Maximum height is 70 pixels.

- Only one signature tag is allowed at any given time.

- Fast Flashing, blinking, or glittering tags are not permitted. Not only can this give one seizures, it is quite painful to some of our eyes. It also is murder on anyone with a slow connection and is quite frustrating when it takes 20 minutes to get the page to load.

- Images can not contain any inappropriate gestures. Reference the membership policy for further information.

- Darkness Embraced is not a bill board for advertisment of all the sites you visit outside of DE. Many web site owners encourage their members to sign up for other web sites and advertise their banners on forums. I don't like that at all. Why?

With SEO (Search Engine Optimization) this hurts me when the bots come through to list my site in search engines. What happens is that the bot will come through and see all these links and jump off my site and on to the links through your signature tag. It will then stop spidering (indexing) my site and go there instead, leaving my site half indexed.

Secondly, if the site you are linking to serves as a type of link farm, then I could be penalized and completely lose my ranking in Google all together. This is hardly fair to me or the site.

With that said, members who have their own site and are well participating members here are permitted to have a signature/text link to their own web site. I have no problem giving back to those who give. But the key here is that it must be your web site. Not your friend's or friend of a friend, or any kind of voting/rating scheme.

For Text:

The maximum for signature text is four lines.