Why can't I do certain things in my signature?

[proteus]

The rules for signatures are currently:

• No more than 2500 characters
• No more than 5 smilies
• No more than 1 image (smilies don't count)
• The image, if any, must be smaller than 600x150 pixels.

Text effects (e.g. shadows) and colors are not allowed in signatures, nor is HTML or PHP code.  When the rules changed, they were made to apply to new signatures, so you may see some old signatures which appear to break these rules.