Your “signature” in the Hearth.com forum is the couple lines of text underneath your name. This signature can be changed and updated by you in your member control panel (link at top of forum page).

Signatures must be in reasonable taste, and links in signatures are generally tolerated, but the Webmaster and Moderators reserve the right to request changes in, and / or eliminate, any avatar or signature that they feel is detrimental to the spirit of the Hearth.com website.

As some general guidelines – The Hearth.com Forum is a service of the Hearth.com Web site, and exists in order to help users. It is NOT designed to be a place for folks to drum up business, although business may end up being the result of forum participation. Therefore, signatures which are blatant advertisements such as:

The Fireplace Guy
We sell the best stoves for the best prices and ship anywhere
www.fireplaceguy.com – 1.800-GET_HEAT

That may be a little too strong. At the same time, if the member in question was a regular participant in the Forum discussions, then something like this might do:

The Fireplace Guy
Expert in Harman, Upland and Quadrafire Stoves
www.fireplaceguy.com

In general, we would appreciate if industry affiliations were mentioned in a signature – although we understand that some people must be incognito! The main point here is that a member should not act as a “civilian” steering folks toward a brand of decision, while they have an undeclared interest!

We also discourage links to “scraper” sites, which are sites that are designed to bring in ad revenue, but have very little actual content.

Your signature should not be “for sale”, whether for money or fame. In other words, a regular customer can certainly link to a picture of their stove, but NOT to the manufacturers site (in general).

The administrators are not as concerned about links in the posts themselves, as these are one-time occurrences. However, your signature shows up hundreds or thousands of times throughout the forum, so should not be too “loud”.

Thanks, and please contact Craig or a moderator if you have questions about this policy.