Get rid of GIFs in signatures...

I think that GIFs are a great thing...but not in signatures. It takes long enough to load up 4 or 5 GIFs in a post...but when you open a thread, and every poster has a GIF or two in his sig, its slows EVERYTHING down...I have a cable modem and a computer with 2.66GHz processor and 1.25GB of RAM and it still puts a strain to download 20 gifs on 1 page, especially if the GIFs in the original post are large. I just think it's getting out of hand and I know that people with GIFs in their signature will disagree with me, but it's just a thought.

 

I agree to that...

Somtimes it takes longer for the Sigs to load than the main thread !!!

 

I completely understand man. I pretty much started the whole Animated GIF stuff on Phun so I feel fully responsible for what the forum has become. I apologize that GIFS have become a annoyance to the forum. I realize that 98% of members of Phun come here to see pictures not GIFS. The only two options I can think of would be to start thumbnailing GIFS or get rid of GIFS altogether. Whatever members and moderators decide to do is completely fine with me. This is your (members/moderators) board and you should have it the way you want it. Whatever you think is best.

 

I wouldn't say 98% is on the money, MM. There's a hell of a lot of people that come to phun to see the work that you and the other guys do in creating GIFs. If we didn't like the idea of it then they would have been outlawed, but on the contrary it has helped lift phun to a new level.

From a personal point of view, my 'net connection isn't the fastest, here in Australia we're way behind in terms of speed so they take ages to load for me, which is why I'm selective in which ones I look at. But because all of you put the word GIF in the thread title, I have that choice on whether to look at it or not.

Regarding signatures, it appears none of us have actually wanted to answer the question, so we'll take it to the Mod Forum and have a discussion on it. Thanks to you guys for the input and sorry for the delay.

 

Actually, the best thing to do is just leave the rules as is, but inform people that in their control panel they have the ability to not show signatures. Most people who have a signature worth seeing are using gifs anyways, so if you disable signatures you probably won't be missing much.

Instructions:
Click User CP at the top of the page.
On the left, click Edit Options.
In the middle of the page, under Thread Display Options uncheck Show Signatures.


Viola. At least this way the people who WANT to see the sigs don't have to suffer.

 

i sugest that alot of u get with the times and get broadband

 

^^what he said. its 2007. its cheap now. really aint no excuse for your modem to have to get a dial tone.

besides....you can always turn em off.

 

I have broadband, it's still slow, lol. Try living over here, we're way behind with the times, not our fault.

Still in discussions with the other mods but flybishop's suggestion looks to be the way to go.

 

or if youre using firefox and AdBlock, just zap the ones that bother you. s'what i do.

 

another option for the mods to think about is limiting the "file size" that is considered acceptable in sigs. I have used gifs in my sig for a long time and would like to continue to do so...but I will follow any rules that are set up. The reason that I mention "file size" is that when I create my sig gifs...i make them under 300k in size... where as I have seen many gifs in people's sigs that are well over 1mb each. Decreasing the file size would certainly help the pages load faster. I think we should be considerate of others when we choose gifs for our sigs.

 

yea, i'm not saying get rid of all gifs...i LOVE the threads with gifs in them...but the load time is so slow when 10 straight posts have GIFs in the signatures....especially large gifs. I think a file size limit on sig GIFs would work fine i think...

 

maybe limit the total amount of file space used in the sigs....I think my one sig is more than a meg, I would hate to resize it down as it would look shitty but If I had to I would get over it....

 

where is the video!

 

Azz, he posted it a few days ago. Pay attention and you won't miss these things

 

rofl. thanks kieks, gawd i love you. Muah!

 

All good my friend, could have done without the puckered lips though

 

hehehe.. who said it was puckered? <--- tongue

 

GAH, not in public!

 

Well you know you like it

 

Ssshhh, don't try and expose me here, in front of all these gawkers