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~~~BLINKIE BASICS~~~

• DO NOT JUST COPY AND PASTE FROM A SITE (OR POST/SIGGY) TO YOUR SIGGY--THIS IS DIRECT LINKING (HOTLINKING, REMOTE LINKING, ETC) AND IS BANDWIDTH THEFT (I.E. NOT NICE a.k.a RUDE)--PLEASE READ "What the Heck is Direct Linking?!" BELOW
• If your blinkies doen't blink once you save them, please read "Why aren't my freakin blinkies blinking already?!" below
• It's easy to get carried away when personalizing your siggy. Please keep track of the file size of each blinkie and image to make sure you do not go over our 80KB (80,000 bytes) limit. The more flashy the blinkie, or animation the bigger the size. Text does NOT add to your file size limit. Remember, it's not the physical size or amount of blinkies in your siggy, but the FILE SIZE that will put you over the limit To check, right click each blinkie and choose properties. Add up all the files sizes to get your total siggy size.

~~The Basic Steps to Snag A Blinkie~~
1. Find a blinkie you like (see our Blinkie websites sticky for good blinkie sites)

2. Check to make sure the site doesn't require you to give them credit or link back to their site (different than direct linking).

3. Right click on the image you want and choose "Save Image As..." and save it to your computer (make sure you remember where you put it )

4. Find a site of your own to host your images (look here for some good ones).

5. Upload (transfer from your computer to the site) your files to the site. Usually there will be some sort of box with a "browse" button beside it. You click on that and a file menu will pop up where you can find the file on your computer and click "open". That will paste the file location into the box and then there is usually a "done" or "upload" button to click.

6. Once it's on the site, if they don't give you a code, right click the image and choose properties and copy the web address shown.

7. Once you have that, on C/S, go into "My Control Center" and choose "Account Preferences". There will be a box towards the bottom that says Use Custom Signature. Paste the web address for you image into that box and then type [ center ][ image ] before the address and [ /image ][ /center ] (without the spaces) after the address. Make sure the little box beside "Use custom signature" is checked and then choose "save changes".

YOU'RE DONE!!!

~~What the Heck is Direct Linking?!~~
Many of you have had issues with your graphics disappearing and later learning that you have "direct-linked" or "hot-linked" to a page that does not allow this. There are certain niceties that are expected on the net. "Netiquette" or net etiquette shows courtesy to your fellow Internet peers. I know it can be confusing, so here is a GREAT explanation I have found and used with the permission of www.wagsouth.com (Blinkies-2-Go). This is meant to be informative, not judgmental. Please read it in that regard. For further information on Netiquette, including copyright issues on the net, please visit www.wagsouth.com/netiq.html.

Quote:

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A SCENARIO: Your car needs gas. There's enough in the tank to get you to a gas station; but, you decide, instead, to go next door and siphon what you want from your neighbor's car. Your neighbor won't see.. he'll never know, right?

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Duh.. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Direct-linking, (aka remote-linking, hot-linking) and its resulting Bandwidth Theft operate the same as the above scenario. Let's suppose you see something you like on someone else's site, like a neat image file (or other types of media including music and zip files). You then add it to your webpage or use in a forum or guestbook by linking to the site's domain you found it on.

So.. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?
The image file is loading on YOUR page, forum or guestbook entry; however, the person's remote site hosting the file, (the site you found it on and are now direct-linking to) is having its own bandwidth stolen by serving up the file to someone else's site, all because of your direct-linking. (Think of bandwidth as the gas used to power a car, as the scenario above, only in this case, its powering a file server. Everytime a file is called-on to load, including those you've direct-linked to, the server storing those files is using "gas" to load them.) Now that's fine for the person who owns the site paying for the gas. They can load anything they want on THEIR pages. After all, they're paying the bill, right? But, they should NOT have to pay for gas you siphon from them when you call on THEIR server to load a file to YOUR page. And people wonder why this is frowned upon? This is not a victimless lack of ethics. Your actions are costing THEM bucks, not you. It's very appropriately called "bandwidth theft", don't you agree?

Theft of bandwidth is a real slap-in-the-face to those freely sharing their artistic wares with us, along with the monetary loss dumped on them. Without question, bandwidth theft has closed down many promising sites.

Still sound harmless? The consequences are not. We may feel "anonymous" on the web, but server logs employed by many sites record much info about our activities, links and connection the moment we land on their sites and/or direct-linking is detected by their servers. Site owners can opt to report bandwidth theft to our ISP (Internet Service Provider), blog or forum hosts. They don't condone these practices, and their Terms of Service reflect their disdain for it. Websites and/or Internet connections can be yanked out from under us in a heartbeat. It is suggested that you look up the TOS of your ISP, web and/or forum hosts; that you become aware of the penalties involved.

Ummm... HOW DO I LINK CORRECTLY?
Files must be linked to YOUR site's bin, and the file must be uploaded there. ("Bin" or web server, is where your files are stored online by your webhost.) To get a file to your bin, you first save it to your computer by doing the "Right-click, Save-As" thingee. The file is now on your computer, wherever you saved it. Now upload the file to your site's bin and link to it from your page; that is, to the file located in YOUR bin. Do not link to the file stored on the site you got it from. Depending on what directory (folder) you saved the file to, you will reference its location in the link you place on your page.

Reality: Some direct-link and steal bandwidth knowing it's unethical, fully understanding how the whole process works and choosing to continue in their theft. But, for those who truly didn't realize what they were doing, we hope this has helped you become aware. We all had to learn at some point.

NOTE: If you don't have a website, (or your free webhost doesn't allow direct-linking, such as Angelfire and others), but you want to leave sig files and other gfx in forums, guestbooks, etc, find a separate host that allows image storage and direct-linking. Open your own account w/them. Upload files to that host and link to that host site instead of to someone else's personal site. One server to try is: photobucket.com At the time of this writing, it remains a free service and allows direct-linking.

~~Why aren't my freakin blinkies blinking already?!~~
If, after you've saved them, your blinkies don't blink, check and see if they are saving as a .bmp file (find them on your computer and look at the name or right click the file and choose properties). They need to be in a .gif file to still "blink".
IF they are .bmp, you need to clear your browser cache and save them again.

How that's done depends on your browser:
~~For Netscape~~
Choose Edit--Preferences. Click the triangle next to "advanced" so it's pointing down and then choose "cache". Click "clear cache" and then "ok".

~~For Internet Explorer~~
Choose Tools--Internet Options. Click the "general" tab. In the middle it says "Temporary Internet Files". Click "delete files" and "ok" (when the message pops up) Once it's done
click OK in the options menu.

You should now be able to save the blinkies as .gif
files. You put them in your siggy as described above.

~~~Enjoy your blinkie mania!!~~~