Is this something new?
Why would there be a 900 character limit (with code) in ones signature? It seems so minuscule and arbitrary. I can't even add my holiday challenge lists and link to my list this year unless I remove something else. I can see a limit on characters/lines without the BB code, but users should be allowed to color code/size/link threads how they want without being restricted (or have a limit significantly larger than 900 characters.)

With the new way DVDTalk does the URLs for the threads, that adds a lot more characters for URL links to DVDTalk threads (especially for threads with long titles.)

I was going to suggest using another website to trim down the lengths of long URLs -- y'know, make a tiny URL -- but apparently I'm not allowed to link to that. The URL was munged when I just gave it a shot...

You can try linking to the individual posts, though. Those URLs are pretty small:

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/9076212-post.html

I suspect the limit is so pages load faster

If that's accurate information I'm concerned about the skill and knowledge level of those people administrating this forum.

Talk about nonsense.

No, I think the real concern is preventing obnoxiously long signatures. It wouldn't be that tough for the forum to ignore any markup and only count the length of actual words, but I guess it's not programmed that way.

We could ask IB to increase that 900 character limit.

That would be appreciated! As I said before, just linking to a DVDTalk thread with a long title can use 200+ characters if you have different sizes, colors, etc... I would suggest something more along the line of 5000 characters or more. I don't even think there was a limit before. With the five line rule, that really takes care of 99% of the obnoxious sigs.

I ran into this problem too. I finally gave up and put pretty much all my links to DVDtalk threads in a blog entry and just link to that. It's an extra step to click thru to everything, but a workaround for now.

I really don't want to view somebody's entire LIFE and LIFESTYLE in a goddamn sig.

Let alone if they post 10 times on the same goddamn page.

That's why.

I'm all for upping the max. Who is this IB person we are supposed to ask?

Not sure this is needed. I'm not a fan of long signatures. I'll probably turn them off if this is implemented.

I don't think anyone wants longer signatures.

The "problem" is that they changed it so that there is a 900 character limit, and that limit includes all the formatting characters.

One could have a one line signature but easily hit this limit.

The limit was never purposefully changed; when the forum was upgraded it added settings and gave them a default value. In this case, you can have 900 characters including BB code, and 450 excluding BB code.


Things like this should be addressed to one of the admin who will take care of it from there.

Exactly. I tried to explain that clearly in my original message. I don't want long signatures, no one does, but I should be allowed to put links and color formatting. Look at my sig, it's not obnoxious or long and I couldn't even put it on there until I did some unique changes.

X? Did you contact anyone to get that changed? At the very least, I would suggest it be changed to what it was before the software upgrade (which I have no idea what that was.)

Yes. I put in a request to have the limit increased to around 2000 characters.

The limit including BB code has been increased, as per X's request, to 2000 characters.
The limit excluding BB code has remained at 450 characters.

So, signatures should not be able to be longer, but you should be able to link more in them.

YAY!!!!

Thanks X and IB-Dick and Trevor and Numes and whoever else had a hand in getting the max upped.

I reckon I might link a couple more things, But I can't imagine that my sig will change much.