May. 2, 2007 - How I Did My RT Signature

I get emails asking how I did my signature for the RT community boards so I decided to post the long and detailed answer on the blog!

All of the elements in my signature began their life on my personal computer. The BUTTONS were downloaded from the Web. I just Googled "free buttons" until I found things I liked. I used the "home" and "mail" buttons just the way they were and opened a blank button and edited it in a graphics program by adding the word "Blog". I used the same graphics program (any graphics program will do) to create my name and saved it as a .gif file. But, having the buttons on my computer does me no good at all. I had to upload them to the web somewhere so that RT could link to them. I chose to upload them to my blog! You could upload them to you webpage or any number of other places. The point is that RT has got to have a URL in order to pull the images in. So here is what that looks like:

Log into you blog and click on Blog Manager:

Now, click on File Upload on the left hand side:

When you click on the "Browse" button, you will see the "Choose File" menu and you can choose which file to upload. You can only upload one file at a time. Now you have all you pieces on the web and you are ready to assemble your signature on RT.

The "add signature" feature is under preferences when you login to RT. But here is the trick: you already have your browser open to your blog. You need to open a NEW browser window to RT and navigate to your "Preferences". You are now going to copy the image from your blog and paste it into your signature. Now you've got a hodge podge of graphics in your signature. Let's do some editing. Right click on any of the graphics.

Select "Image Properties:

On the "Image Info" tab you can set the size. Here I have resized the "home" logo to 40x40 pixels. But, there is a problem: the little blue line around the icon. You will have to click on the "Advanced" tab and edit the "Style" field.

In the "Style" block, change every place is says "1px solid" to "0px solid" and the box will disappear. Now all you have to do is arrange everything the way you want it and add the hyperlinks: