Over the last year and especially the last three months, the Clinic has seen a large increase in the members who regularly visit the site. This increase puts additional strain on the servers, which at times has reached our maximum bandwidth capacity. The Clinic is a free resource for RoadStar owners (although donations are welcome) and we would like to continue this tradition. Our goal is and always has been to provide a place where knowledge of Road Stars could be easily accessed in a way that provides a positive experience for all who come here.

While the majority of us who frequent the clinic are now using some form of Broadband internet access, we still have a fair number of users that access the clinic via dial up internet access, and a diminishing number of users who have older screens smaller than 1024x768 pixels. One of the features of the Clinic that can present a challenge for these users is our sig pics. For dial up users, downloading large resolution pictures can take a really long time, and downloading several is truly awful. Dial up users will often quit trying to load a page with high resolution pictures rather than wait minutes for them to load. Users with low resolution screens often grow frustrated when we have pictures that are very tall as it can take many screens of scrolling for them to access the text in posts.

The Clinic staff has been discussing how members can continue to showcase their bikes through the use of a sig pic while keeping resource requirements for them minimal.

The staff were guided by the principle of maximizing the clinic experience for all our members, while keeping parameters within acceptable ranges for our friends on dial up and with lower resolution screens. We are, therefore, providing the following guidance regarding sig pics:

- Ensure that the size of the photo, on the website used as a sig pic, is no more than 450 pixels wide and 50 kb in size. The photo should also not be higher than 450 pixels. Using a photo this size means that dial up users won't spend minutes trying to load forum posts where these photos are included.
- Only one photo meeting the above size restriction should be used for a sig pic. The photo can however have multiple images within it.
- There should not be any other graphics within the sig pic area, except perhaps a weather banner should you choose to include one.

Over the next few weeks, members should ensure that their sig pics meet the above guidelines. The staff will be available to help those that do not have the resources to resize their photos.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter and hope your stay at the clinic is profitable and enjoyable.

The Road Star Clinic Staff

The RSC Staff would to thank its members who have taken the time to format their sig pics to conform to the new standard.

It has been 5 weeks since we have posted the sig pic rules and by now everyone should have seen this thread. Starting today, all sig pics which do not conform to the standard are at risk of being deleted, without notification.

An important thing to remember is that your pic needs to be the correct size on the site which is hosting your pic. If it is not, your pic may still be oversized when it’s used as a sig pic.

If you are having trouble getting your pic to meet the standard, the Clinic staff will be more than willing to help you. Please post HERE if you need help and one of us will assist you. There are also other members who have the necessary skill to help and the Clinic staff welcomes their assistance. If you are helping a member resize their pic, please post that you are doing so in order to prevent duplication of effort. Once the problem has been resolved the related posts will be deleted to keep the thread efficient.

We again thank you for your cooperation.

RSC Staff

.
.
To check your sig pic .....

- find one of your posts
- place your cursor on the pic and right click your mouse
- select Properties
- resize pic if: size is greater than 50 kb, pixels are larger than 450 wide or high.

Doc

Some of you folks have probably noticed that your sig pic has deleted. We now note that when you repost your sig pic, it's still too 'large'.

First I'd like to thank you for resizing your sig pic.

Secondly, it's not sufficient to shrink the pixels so that the pic is under 450 pixels. You can have a pic that's 200 pixels still be way over the 50 kb limit.

Thirdly, we don't want to get into a merry-go-round (roundabout for the English blokes) situation where you post a pic that's too big, we delete, you repost, we delete, etc. Everyone loses.

Before submitting your pic ... check the pixels (is it 450 or less?) and the size (is it less than 50 kb).

If you are having problems or don't know how to do it .... ask for help .... the Clinic staff will be more than happy to help ... that's why we get all the free beer we can drink.

Doc

If you don't have photo editing software, Yakman has suggested these links for photo tools ...

Link to resize photos: http://www.shrinkpictures.com

Link to create avatars: http://www.shrinkpictures.com/create-avatar

The thread discussing these tools is HERE

Thanks Yakman,

Doc

There are also tools in Microsoft paint to reduce the size of you sic pictures as well. If you need help just yell.

Please check your sigpics gang. I've found some oversized pics even with some of our "seasoned" members.