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Assembling a Sliced MAL Forum Signature

This guide will walk you through assembling a sliced MAL signature and configuring your MAL profile settings so that your signature displays correctly. This guide does not show you how to slice a new signature, and assumes you have generated all the necessary images already in the correct dimensions. There are other guides available for creating/slicing your own signatures, or you can simply ask around the club and someone can help you build one.

To give you a better idea, the layout of a custom mal signature is generally a single MAL-generated signature image surrounded by other images in a grid. For example:



So, let's get started putting the pieces together!

Step 1: Save the Images
Most of the time in this club, your sliced images will be provided to you by someone else through a forum post. You should save each of them to a folder somewhere on your computer where you can get them easily later. That way you'll have a backup of them should you ever need to upload them again later.

Step 2: Configuring the MAL Part
Since we just want to use the minimum update text, we want to configure it so that MAL only produces the minimum list text for our signature, and uses our custom-sliced background image. Usually your settings will be as follows:

• Image Type: Recent Anime & Manga Updates (anime or manga only works too, but nothing that says "Custom - ...")
  
• Enter the proper number of entries for your signature
  
• Check the option to Make rows transparent
  
• Check the option to Remove time stamps (if your sig has space for them though, you can leave it unchecked)
  
• Set the Text Color to the RGB color values that make sense for your signature. 0, 0, 0 is black and 255, 255, 255 is solid white. (Do the same for the Time Color, if you're using timestamps)
  
• Check the option to Hide "My Recent Anime/Manga Title"
  
• Finally, hit the checkbox next to Check to use a custom background and use the Browse button that appears to select the mal background image you saved earlier.
  
• Here's an image of what your settings might look like (color values may vary):
  
  
  
  
  
• Hit the Update Signature button to save your changes. Afterward, you should get a preview at the top of the page. Make adjustments if necessary.

Step 3: Hosting the Surrounding Images
The mal background part is hosted by myanimelist.net, but the surrounding images are not. It's likely that the person who provided the images to you has already uploaded them to an image sharing site, in which case you can probably use the image urls they provided. You can get the url for each image by right-clicking on it in the forum post and choosing to view the image properties.

If you sliced your signature yourself, you'll have to find a place to host them online, and make note of each of their image urls. If you're new to image hosting, click the spoiler for more instructions...


Step 4: Putting It All Together in BBCode:
If you've been around forums at all you'll recognize bbcode, but you'll get used to it quickly if you are new to the concept. You basically write special markers (tags) into your text that are interpreted by the forum to change how the text is displayed, or to insert special objects like images. The tags we'll be using to construct a signature are mainly the [img] and [url] tags. You can learn more about the bbcode supported by mal here.

The basic code template for a sliced mal signature:

Sometimes, there will be fewer images if the mal part is along an edge, so you may not need all of the pieces. For example, if the MAL part fits along the bottom right corner, there would be no need to have right or bottom images. Ask the creator of the signature if you need help formatting it properly.



Important Note about newlines about your bbcode: The location of the return characters (Enter key on your keyboard) does affect how the signature is displayed. Stray returns or spaces in your signature code will make spaces between images. For best results, there should be no spaces anywhere in your code except a single return after each row of images except the last.... so...

[img]...top[/img]return
[img]left[/img][img]malpart[/img][img]right[/img]return
[img]bottom[/img]

If the returns are omitted there, Internet Explorer does not wrap them properly, expanding the forum in a nasty way -- so make sure you put them in! The returns are already in the bbcode template earlier in this tutorial, so you can safely copy/paste that one to use as a starting point. Browsers other than Internet Explorer do not have this wrapping problem.

Amazing tutorial. Now i dont have to explain it to people i make a sig for =]

can someone help me code this together

I've tried but can't get it quite correct.
EDIT: it looks like this

You have to make sure that all of your images, when put in rows, do not lie in multiple rows. so when you want to have a linked word on a picture, make sure that a piece with equal height is on the right and left. example:



So your 8th splice needs to go all the way to the end of the pic. you cant have splices interrupting other rows of other splices. The 12th one needs to be matching height with the "back to my profile" button as well as some other changes. hopefully you get the idea from this post.

thanks for the help :D

but i want my sig updares ont the left not rightbut i want my updates box on the left not right any help please

I'm sorry, but that really made no sense.

i spent over 1hour trying to fix my sig because one of the slices did not fit by a single pixel i uploaded over 30 of the same pic with dif measurements LOL but i got it now :P

uhh guys if you highlight my signiture you can see a gap between the updates and top is that suppose to happen? o.o

no its not supposed to happen but since you have a white border anyway it doesnt seem to really matter.

Just a tip to make slicing easier in Photoshop:
You should have a plain MAL generated sig saved on the PC. Open that file in Photoshop, and copy paste it on your sig, move it where you want it, so it looks something like this:

Before using the slicetool make sure, that the layer with the plain MAL sig is the active layer. Now trace along the sides to create the slice. After that Photoshop will automatically generate the slices, but unfortunately PS slices horizontal not vertical. So you have to adjust the height of the slices, wich is pretty easy: just right click on the slice with the slicetool and you will see an "edit slice" option. There you can change the height. Best to start is with the slices next to the MAL part, and make the the same height as the MAL part.
When slices are ready don't forget to delete the layer with the MAL part on. After that go to Save for Web and Devices, and there you can save all the slices in separete files.

Hope it made sense. If it did not, I can make a tutorial with pics, but only after I woke up...man I'm sleepy...

guys need help my MAL list does not fit into the rest of the sig

It's because the slicing is wrong. The MAL part's height is 62 px, the othher middle part's height is 70px. Contact the one who made it, and ask him/her to re-do the slicing.

thanks for the help

Uhh... looking at the original post, it should fit. It's probably because your sig settings are incorrect. :[ Or it could be a combo of both since in the original, all the slices in the 2nd row are the same height.

The problem is that the sig wasn't sliced according to the standard heiights of the MAL generated part. MAL part with 3 updates rows is 62px, with 4 updates rows 80px (in both cases the "Recent Anime/Manga" part is hidden).

Actually most of the time, when slicing goes wrong, it's cos of the MAL part. That's why I advise everyone to have a plain MAL generated sig saved on the PC. I myself have one with 2 rows (and timestamp), and one with 1 row (without timestamp, but with the longest anime display title). If you use this while making a sig, than you really just can't get the slicing wrong. Cos if you have the layer with the MAL generated sig selected while slicing, the slice will be the same size as the MAL part ^^'

Ahh right okay, that's what I meant by a "combo of the two" earlier, that the slicing was incorrect. xD

I have a copy of the default 2 rows and 3 rows saved (I just don't remember the dimensions off the top of my head D:), but maybe it would help to post a copy somewhere on the club as well, maybe?

I don't think it's necessary, and if we wanted to have such thing, then we should have all versions...i mean different rows... with time without time... with hie "Recent Anime/Manga" without hide... But well of crouse if someone collects them, I'm fine having it, I'm just too lazy to do it myself :P :D

Could someone help me with mine please? I think I got it right, but when I hit update it only shows the MAL part.

This is what I type:


And this is what shows up:


(and sorry, I have no idea why the spoiler became a link)

fixed ur post, you were just missing a [/url].

you're very close, all you need to do is take that entire code for the sig and put in un ur signature settings. If you did that, I really don't know why it wouldn't work for you... Well I added that [/url] on your post, maybe somehow that would help...?