The Banner and Avatar Guide

Faub's Guide to Banners and Avatars for YDKspacers

Basic Info

Banner Sizes:

Note: the file sizes are gross overestimates. You can get the large banner down to 10k without difficulty. In other words, 200k animated banners are pretty to look at but they suck of WAY too much bandwidth. Do better.

Large: 468x60 pixels (50k max file size)

Medium: 200x40 pixels (30k max file size)

Small (button): 88x31 pixels (???) (10k max file size) Avatar (see left side of this post): 100x100 (10k max file size)

Step-by-step Guide

• Step 1) Create a banner. Use Photoshop, the GIMP, Windows Paint, doesn't really matter. Just make sure to get the file size as small as possible.

• Step 2) To get a banner to appear on these forums you just need to save the banner somewhere on your keenspace site. These forums will ignore the image directory block and your banner will appear. However, your banner will not work on ANY OTHER forum or weblog or anything because Keenspace will block access to it.
  1. Load any keenspace forum (and probably log in) like normal.
  2. At the top of the page there is a link to your profile. Click that.
  3. Near the middle of the list you will find an edit box labeled "Signature." This is where your information goes. To link to your banner you need to use bbcode, the same as you would use for this forum.
  4. Don't know what bbcode is? Go Here.
  5. Just specify your banner as an img tag and preferrably wrap that with an url tag to link back to your comic site.
  6. At the very bottom of this page you will see the Avatar Control Panel. In the text box labeled "Link to Off-site Avatar," enter the full path to the avatar you saved in your Keenspace images directory.
  7. Click submit and you are done. Most likely your images will not show up immediately. Give it time. Be patient.

• Step 3) Okay, Step 2 works fine but it totally trashes your webalizer info. There is a way to fix this, though. It's called Guide Banners. Basically, you can save a banner or three to guide.keenspace.com and any time your banner is loaded the guide takes the hit and not your keenspace account. So, your webalizer will display more correct results.
  1. Go to http://siteadmin2.keenspace.com/cgi-bin/members/login.cgi
  2. Log in like normal. If you can't log in there are other forum threads that address this problem.
  3. Click Edit "Your Comic's" Banners.
  4. In the text box labeled "Banner Path" enter the UNIX PATH (not the URL) of your banner image: /public_html/images/banner.jpg
  5. Click submit. It can take as long as a day for your banner to become available.
  6. Notice that a new block will appear at the top of your banner page. The first line is "Banner ID." This number is important because it's also the new filename of your banner on the guide. For example, the banner in my sig has ID #752. To link to it from the guide you need to reference: http://guide.keenspace.com/images/banners/752.png (Notice that the file format stays the same. Only the name changes.)
  7. Now, replace the reference to your avatar and sig banner from Step 2 with your new guide banner and avatar.
  8. Done.

• Step 4) Trading banners with other comics. Rules to Observe
  1. DO NOT LINK DIRECTLY TO THE BANNER ON THE OTHER SITE!Download it and put it on your own site. This is the only polite thing to do.
  2. It's a good idea to ask when you link to someone's site. Send them an email and be polite about it. Make sure to put a link to your own site in the email. If the person you're linking to likes what they see they may link you back and that's a source of hits.
  3. Don't force the issue. If someone doesn't link back to you, don't bother them about it. Phalanx: I agree. You're only getting other people's backs up if you continue to push.
  4. I can't think of anything else.

Phalanx: Many thanks to Faub for the use of his banner guide in the FAQ. Faub is also the creator of Fallen Angels Used Books, so do pop over to his site to thank him!

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Kisai's Additional Notes on Banners and the Guide

• The Guide ( http:///guide.keenspace.com ) only supports 468 x 60 in default mode...
• Technically the link system supports any size, but the size is locked to prevent idiots from uploading banners bigger than the screen size, or smaller than required. This means it will not work even if it is off my 1 pixel.
• 468x60, 200x40 and 88x31 are the only "supported" sizes, along with 150x300 for the NewsBox/NewsHack"
• Images need only to be added to the "Edit Banner" option for 'off-site linking' (in the forum) instead of uploading them. Currently, the ability to support them is due to a work-around for a bug in the forums.
• In theory it supports any size, but the sizes I picked are so I can go "select comics where banner_type =5" and have all the newsbox sized ones show up.
• The first three types are 468x60 , 200x40 and 88x31, with type 4 being 100x100 avatar.
• The reason for the size restrictions is to prevent people from using stuff that will break the fixed sizes of the guide tables or the newsbox frame.
• Fixed sizes are put in the img tags... so if someone is a asshat and decides to change their banner from a resonable size to giagantamungoeus size, it still gets contrained to the size specified.
• Then when the makelinks is done, it gets reassigned to type 0 'undefined'. I think the only script with any "AI" at all is the makelinks script:"
• It checks for changes everytime it runs
• It deletes the symlinks and entries for missing images
• It adds symlinks for ones that are missing
• It stores the type, size and path, so if I move it from server A to server B, it will automatically have the same number (Except the guideX it's on will change)
• Under no circumstance are BMP's (bitmaps) supported.

Phalanx: Also, to delete a banner from the guide, simply delete the banner from the location and wait a day or two for the 'guided' one to self-destruct ;) .