Hi Everyone,
I noticed most of you talk about months when it comes to creating forum Signatures. I was able to create 5 signatures for our project in exactly 12 hours.
Since it takes so much time for some of you to create signatures, I decided to share what I learned about Signatures, Forum's BBCode, and motivate you.
After 12 hours it will not be perfect but good enough. If you spent more time to create icons out of BLOCKS it will be perfect.
In order not to spam I will show you our Hero and Full Member Signature only.
Hero/LegendaryFull MemberTools you need:
1. Notepad
2. This forum Preview Window
3. Grid paper
Here Is How I Have Learned It In 12 Hours:1. I read this post by ROSLINPL :
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/learn-bbcode-lessons-tutorials-tutorial-videos-1727100That post is all you need to start. I will add to his post and show you my tricks of doing it.
2. Learn the basic building blocks (characters). To be exact: Unicode Characters
FULL BLOCK: █
UPPER HALF BLOCK: ▀
LOWER HALF BLOCK: ▄
LEFT HALF BLOCK: ▌
RIGHT HALF BLOCK: ▐
LIGHT SHADE: ░:
MEDIUM SHADE:▒
BLACK RECTANGLE: ▬
LOWER ONE QUARTER BLOCK:▂
LOWER THREE EIGHTHS BLOCK:▃
LOWER FIVE EIGHTHS BLOCK:▅
LOWER THREE QUARTERS BLOCK:▆
These characters are part of a bigger set called: Box Drawing Characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character3. Learn the advanced buildings blocks (characters). This is the part that everyone missed. There are more characters you can use besides the basic blocks.
You can find them on Wikipedia. Just make sure to test your code in different browsers/platforms in order to see if they form correctly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_charactersOnce you know where to find your characters and play with them, you will become a BBCODE
♚4. Draw your desired image on gird paper. From the grid paper you will be able to see if it will work out in BBCode forum or not.
Perfect for this is this website:
http://tommaitland.net/graphpaper/You can change the LINE WIDTH to 10 there and test your image.
5. User online character counter in order to make the 4000 limit:
http://www.charactercountonline.com/6. This is how you make Background Glows:
[size=19pt][glow=teal,2][color=transparent].[color=#fff]Blockchain Started Signature Madness[color=transparent].[/glow][/size]
.Blockchain Started Signature Madness.7. This is how you make sections:
█
█
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█
█
█
█
█
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█
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█It's nothing more than few FULL Blocks one on top of the other.
[color=blue][size=2pt]
█
█
█
█
█
█
█
█
[/size][/color]
8. This is how you make small links
▶ Twitter
▶ Facebook
▶ Reddit
▶ GitHub[size=7pt][color=teal]▶ [url=https://twitter.com/OnasanderICO][color=#023a7c][b]Twitter[/b][/url]
[color=teal]▶ [url=https://www.facebook.com/OnasanderICO][color=#023a7c][b]Facebook[/b][/url]
[color=teal]▶ [url=https://www.reddit.com/user/OnasanderICO][color=#023a7c][b]Reddit[/b][/url]
[color=teal]▶ [url=https://github.com/onasander][color=#023a7c][b]GitHub[/b][/url][/color][/size]
9. Building
▃▅█▅▃
▂▃▅▆██████▆▅▃▂
██████████████████████
██████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
████████████████████████
██████▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒███████
[color=#f1f2f4][size=2pt]
[color=#000]▃▅█▅▃[/color]
[color=#000]▂▃▅▆██████▆▅▃▂[/color]
[color=#000]██████████████████████[/color]
[color=#000]██████████████████████████[/color]
[color=#000]████████████████████████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]█████[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██[color=#fff]█[/color]██████[/color]
[color=#000]██████▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒███████[/color]
[/size]
10. Hacks and Rules
1. BBCode is forgiving sometimes. Play with closing tags if you are over 4000 character limit. Remove closing tags and see what happens. This works with SIZE and COLOR tags.
2. Instead of adding white color, use space.
3. Nest colors. Use 1 outer color like in the Building example and then apply individual color. Calculate which technique gives you less code at the end.
4. Always test with SIZE pt2. That way there will be no surprises.
5. Never use generators.
6. Use Photoshop for color offsets if you need to do something creative.
11. Some cool characters:
⋙
⌚
⍟
⚓
☎
⚿
⛦I hope it helps. Feel free to ask more questions. It honestly took my 12 hours to do this. All you have to do is try. I hope I motivated you enough.