Avalon

If posting is that much of a problem for you, why not try Xisto.net? Posting is not required to maintain an account there, it is supported by advertising on your web site. You indicated you were willing to put advertising on your site, perhaps this is a better hosting option for you?

I can't agree with this at all. It is not hard to have a small reserve of credits, (10 or more) so you can go without posting for a while. Really, for all the hosting features you are given here, posting is such a small investment in time to remain active. Think how much time you spend playing games, watching television and the host of other activities that give you nothing in return. All you need to do is devote a small amount of that time to post in these forums and you are given high quality web hosting that rivals many commercial web hosts. I seriously doubt you will find a better deal than that anywhere.The reason your account is suspended when credits run out is very clear, this is so inactive members are removed to make room for new members that do want to participate in the forums. To enable Xisto to offer this hosting for free to as many people as possible, it is necessary to remove redundant accounts.The final thing is everyone knows by accepting the conditions for hosting here, they are required to post to keep their account active. Do not complain when you do not hold up your end of the deal and your account is suspended. The way the hosting credits are calculated, if your account is suspended (not cancelled), it is very easy to gain enough credits to activate your account again.

I tend to agree with you, the animation didn't serve much purpose except eye candy. But like I mentioned earlier, the customer requested it so as a designer you tend to do what the customer wants. There have been many times when I didn't particulary liked the project I have made. I'd be interested hear from other designers that have been in a similar situation and what they did to try and convince the customer to go with a more suitable design. The ones I really hate are the customers that want a 'cheesy' design for their business site, especially when they want inappropriate music.

Here's my entry. Unfortunately it got a little burnt during the creation process... need to teach that dragon to be more careful! Notice from snlildude87: Render must be from a game.

My vote goes to D3moxx, I like the different approach used with the small squares. With all the sigs starting to look very similar it makes a refreshing change. ^_^Samma: 1Mayank: 0Reaver: 0Avalon: 0D3moxx: 1Psychiccyberfreak: 0Truefusion: 0

Here's my entry! Good to see some interest in the contest again.

Congrats SnlilDude!! While I agree your sig was the best, it would have been nice for there to be more voting. Hopefully the next SOTW will generate more interest.

Hellooooooooo? Is this topic still alive? I thought this SOTW closed 2 days ago.

floresid, please upload the sig to your own web space. By linking to it from my web space you are using my bandwidth. It will be removed from my web space in 7 days. The sig also is located at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/404.png You can use that link if you wish, although I understand you have a problem viewing images hosted at imageshack. Best you upload it to your own web space and link to it there.

Congratulations BuffaloHELP and wassie! You guys will make an excellent addition to the admin team. I must apologise to you BuffaoHELP, for some reason I thought you were female, please don't hit me too hard. Moving right along, you have both been a great help to the forum as mods, I'm sure you will continue and be even more help as admins.

2 of my kids underwent the same operation, one of them twice. While it does fix the immediate problem, it doesn't stop the fact that you need to look after your toenails. As you have found it out, it hurts if you don't.I'm sure you'll make a full recovery. Just think, people will have to wait on you while you sit in bed with your feet up, literally!

Heh, I thought something like that might have been what had happened. You can't blame a fella for trying for more space and bandwidth can ya? Only kidding, I figure it probably confused some other people too.

I wonder if the fact this is a "No Post Count" section now has anything to do with it? Just a thought.

Is this contest closed now? Seems very quiet around here.

I am a little confused by the Xisto.com web site. With regards to the 2 free hosting packages, it lists in 3 places 3 different amounts of space and bandwidth. On the right hand side of the site it lists the 2 packages and the credits required to earn them. These are the space and bandwidth figures I am familar with. What confuses me is lower down in the center section of the site where it lists a large range of features.. see below. How exactly does one qualify for the space and bandwidth featured on the quoted section above?

Is this something like what you had in mind?

You have some very nice sigs there Reaver. Generally good brushing and blending of the renders. I think you should steer clear of the small animations in the sigs, 480Kb+ for a sig is way too big. The only other general thing I could say is be careful with your smaller text, some of it looks a little pixelated. I look forward to seeing some of your other creations, good work!

Please provide more information about what you want on your sig. I suggest you read this post, it is pinned at the start of this forum for this very reason. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Well if you haven't posted in 3 weeks of course you will lose credits. You knew when you signed up posting was required to keep your hosting credits up. It's a small investment in time required to use an excellent webhost that provide services for free that rival paid webhosts. If you you don't want to post for a while, just build up your hosting credits enough to cover it. I could currently go for over 3 weeks without posting if I wanted to because of the number of credits I have built up.

To put text over an image is quite easy, you can do it with tables by setting the background of a table to an image like this: <td valign="top" background="img/light_paper.gif"> or using CSS tags like this: <div style="position: relative; margin-bottom: -35px; padding-left: 7px;"><img style="display: block; position: absolute; width: 466px; height: 50px;" src="http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/; There are other ways, but these are the common ways to do it. Hope that helps.

I really like this sig samma. The brushing is not overdone but it is still gives a lot of depth. Personally I wouldn't used the bands of dots at the top and the bottom of the sig, but that's just me. I don't know if you put the 'glow' on his eye and clasp thing or if it was part of the render, either way, it's very effective. If I had to choose between this one and the Ratchet one, I'd choose this one. I think the grunge on the Ratchet one is just a little overdone.

I too was looking for a good webhost for free. Trust me when I say you have finally found it! I have been for a couple of months now and it is better than many paid hosting services, all just for making a few posts in a forum. You can't beat it.

Hrm, once again voting is slow in SOTW. Are people tiring of these competitions? Any ideas how to generate more interest before the competition fades away to nothing?

The amount of animation was limited to keep the size under control and hence the time it takes to load. Because the animation uses graphics rather than vector drawings, making the water ripple made the file too big. I did actually have the water rippling in one version of the animation but the customer was not happy with the load time.This particular game was an online roleplaying game that had lots of dragons, in fact, one of the races you could choose to be was a dragon. Therefore, as far as the game was concerned, it not unusual for a dragon to be living in a cave like a hobbit might. Strange perhaps, but then this was pure fantasy so anything goes I guess.

Here's my entry, Wolverine on the rampage.