It’s a feature from the history of the board servers being slow. Sigs are off by default in the control panel, but you can turn them on.
Go to
User CP > Edit Options
Then scroll down to Thread Display Options. There’s a tickbox to Show Signatures.
Being able to post a sig, that’s a different story.
Do my posts have an avatar next to them? Because when I turn the script on they do, but I haven’t added the SDMB Avatar text to my profile, so where is it pulling a picture from?
There is an avatar visible but I don’t know where it’s from.
Yes, you have a photo of a man, presumably you. No idea where it is coming from.
Tis indeed me. Way back in the day when I was still a member, I know I uploaded a picture to be a profile pic and it’s highly probable that’s what this is. I’m not a member anymore and I can’t upload or remove photos associated with my account but it appears the board has that info saved somewhere and the script can still access it, so that’s something that guests who used to be members might want to be aware of.
Interestingly, it’s not the same photo as on the SDMB picture page but it does appear to be the same dapper guy.
Did you ever have a picture in your user profile, IS?
ETA: Just saw your latest post. I think that you solved it. I bet that if you re-upped that pic would be visible in your profile again. An Admin could probably edit it out.
It might be getting locally cached, meaning that all of our browsers are remembering your avatar even though you’ve removed it. I can still see it when I am logged in, but when I call up this page using chrome’s incognito mode, there is no avatar for you.
Be he didn’t say he removed it. He said he never had it. Where else could the script be pulling the picture from?
We’ll need to call tech support on that one. But I thought I remembered seeing his avatar in his profile when I looked a few days ago.
No. He said that he did upload one to his profile when he had a paid membership. When his membership expired, the pic became invisible but it’s still there.
I see. Then could he still remove it for real if he wished, and if so, would it still show up as his script avatar?
!
Well, really!
No, I let my membership expire when they moved to the free guest/paid member tiered system. It may have been several months after that switch but I’ve been a picless guest for quite a while now.
Looking at the page source code, I don’t see any external images being pulled in. There is only a reference to his profile page. So I am guessing that even though he’s lost the ability to add/remove/edit his avatar, the forum is still saving it and providing it to any browser that asks for it.
I don’t know, would it?
I don’t know anything about the User CP menu for Guests. Is there still a place to post a profile picture even though it won’t show up, and is your old link still typed in there?
No, there’s no field to input a picture URL. At least, there isn’t one under either Edit Your Details or Edit Options. I can’t imagine where else it might be.
I guess when your membership expires, your avatar becomes a tattoo.
I can edit mine, and I’m a guest.
User CP->Edit Your Details (left hand side of the screen)->Scroll down to the Additional Information section…if you’ve got any pic link in those boxes, I think the script pulls it. Mine is in the “Additional details about yourself” field so I know it pulls from that one.
How often does the script update the avatar picture?
What is it showing for my avatar right now?
I think it’s once an hour.
Looks like a mall cop.