My Thoughts
I have decided to remove my userboxes because I am sick and tired of the following:
- Dealing with fair use and other image problems
- Participating in the weekly votes to prevent deletion
- Having people change the templates for userboxes on my page
Additionally, I will admit that I was moved by Jimbo's personal request. To see how chaotic and visually painful my userboxes became, see the old version of my userpage.
I have replaced my userboxes with these image and category free boxes because I still like the simplicity and brevity of the userboxes and I do not think these will offend anyone. I still support people who choose to have userboxes and I hope that they will not be banned. However, for the reasons above I have decided that my time would be better spent making an encyclopedia.
You Can Too
If you wish to replace your userboxes with something like my boxes, you are welcome to use my templates. Please do not edit these templates, as this is part of the reason I stopped using public templates. If you think you have an improvement, however, you are welcome to mention it on my talk page. You are also welcome to copy my templates and either make your own or make public versions. The three templates I am using are the following:
To use them, do something like the following:
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:BoxTop|First Title}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:Box|#6ef7a7|does '''[[something]]'''}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:Box|pink|is '''something'''}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:BoxBottom}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:BoxTop|Second Title}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:Box|#0099ff|wrote in this box correctly}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:Box|#0099ff|This user wrote in this box incorrectly.}}
{{User:Ctdunstan/Template:BoxBottom}}
| First Title | ||
|---|---|---|
|
| Second Title | ||
|---|---|---|
|
This code will look look like the following: (to the right --> )
The template will always have the same border color (#606060) and text color (black). The first variable sets the background color, and can be in hex (#ff8045) or a reserved color word (white, green, pink, etc). The second variable sets the text, and has "This user " added to the beginning and a period added to the end. Users should therefore write things like "is male" instead of "This user is male."
It is also important to know that the Box template (the middle one) cannot be used on its own (without putting some specific text before and after it) because each box is a row in a table and the table opener and closer are located in the BoxTop and BoxBottom templates.
I like using links and bold on the key words at the end, but I think links are riddiculous for things like "This user is male". Also, I find the best colors are light colors (somewhat pastel). Lastly, if you want to be in categories, you will have to add yourself manually because these templates (obviously) won't add you.