User blog:TheGoldenPatrik1/Best Signature Practices

Signatures are used to signify who posted a comment and when they posted it on Talk pages, although they can be used anywhere. This blog details the best signature practices.

Make Your Signature Wiki-Specific
Signatures can take many forms; some might look like "~TheGoldenPatrik1 (Talk) 19:51, January 22, 2018 (UTC)" while others include formatting, styling, and images. But before we get into making a customized signature, we need to establish the concept of making your signature wiki-specifc.

You see, you can customize you signature in the "My Info" tab of Preferences. But let's say that you want your signature to be very dark, perhaps a black box with light gray letters. Now perhaps this looks great on your main wikis, which use light backgrounds. But if you ever leave your signature on a wiki with a dark theme, that beautiful styling doesn't stand out in the slightest! In fact, it might even clash.

So how can we avoid this problem? I recommend (after enabling wikitext in your signature) pasting this code into the signature blank: ~TheGoldenPatrik1 (Talk) Of course, make sure you replace my username with your username.

So what exactly does this do? It makes your signature wiki-specific. Unless you have a page called "User:YOURNAME/sig", your signature is the default one, ensuring that your signature will always be perfectly suited to the wiki at hand.

Customize Your Signature
But what if you still want to customize your signature? Never fear! Just create a page called  and write up a signature. There are tons of ways to do this, so many that I simply cannot list even a fraction of them. And that's the beauty of it—every signature looks different! As long as it doesn't clash with the theme and isn't obnoxiously large, I'm sure it will look great.

Use Your Signature
All this talk of signatures is useless, however, if you don't actually use your signature! Never forget to post or else your beautiful signature won't even get used.

But I'm so forgetful, you say. Don't worry, there's always an answer. Just import SignatureCheck either on your home wiki's ImportJS page (provided that you are an admin) or into your personal JS page. That way you'll never forget to leave your signature behind. Happy signaturing!