After reading the posting

After reading the posting guidelines, I now realize that my signature contains an image and link associated with a commercial endevour outside the scope of this site. Please accept my apologies. I will remove the signature.

Cheers!

Marc

Thanks !!

Thanks Marc

That makes our job much easier and takes the spotlight off watching to see what you were about . Welcome to the Forums and hope to see more of you and maybe your RR.

Your signature - and commercial-oriented links

Marc:

There's a bug in the current version of our web site engine that doesn't put your signature on the first post in a thread - but the rest of the posts will have your signature. We hope to fix that here soon as we start to roll out new capabilities to the new site.

As to commercial-oriented links - as long as you have no financial gain from posting a commercial link, we don't mind it. But if you are associated with the commercial venture in any way and stand to gain from posting the link then that's advertising. Advertising is how this site pays the bills and thus allows all our magazine and media resources to remain free to the public.

In other words, if someone likes a certain vendor, advertiser or not, and they want to post a link to the site, then fine, post it. But if you are a freelance designer and you include a link to one of the firms you do designs for in your signature, then that's advertising.

If you are related to a hobby commercial venture in some way, we encourage you to look into advertising with us. Monthly ads start at $25 - and drop to as little as $10 per month for a 12x placement ($120 per year).

With our web audience at circa 50,000 unique sets of eyeballs per month and growing, we're reaching a notable segment of the market. By comparison, Model Railroad News has a circulation of circa 14,000, Railroad Model Craftsman is about 49,000, and Model Railroader is about 140,000.

Please don't shoot the greenhorn...

Thank you, Joe.

I own a site where I create add-ons for MS Train Simulator and Railworks, which is why I felt it was outside the scope of MRH (beside the fact that I also overstepped the boundaries of the posting guidelines). Nevertheless, I'll consider the cost of advertising here if you believe it to be of interest to MRH visitors (the costs of doing so here appear to be quite reasonable).

However, my joining and posting here have nothing to do with my work - I came here to socialize with those who have similar interests, as well as to learn more about building, maintaining and operating a layout. It was your Siskiyou Line that got me back into the hobby and also help push me to consider the SP! (I'm an ex-Clinchfield, B&O, and Santa Fe modeler - how's that for a mixture?!)

When I started my business I left the model trains to the spiders and mice, but recently I find that model railroading helps me wind-down from a hectic day. Besides, it's nice to actually touch something your create, rather than simply viewing a bunch of pretty pixels on a screen. Half the fun for me is seeing what others are accomplishing on their own pikes, which then fuels the fires for my own dreams (pipe or otherwise).

Once again, thank you.

Cheers!
Marc

Follow Up Question

Joe,

I am having this problem with my signature.  Is that fix anywhere in sight?

Later this year

We have to move to a completely different version of our website engine, and the upgrade process is complex.

In the meantime, just copy and paste your signature from another thread where you have posted a comment to get it into the first post of a thread.

Or are you having different issues?

A common problem is people update their signature and it doesn't appear to change. That's because it really did change but your web browser cache is pulling your signature from your local browser cache, not from the server. To get it to straighten up, you need to flush your browser cache. Just Google "clear browser cache" for your favorite browser to find out how to tell your browser who is boss.

Thanks, Joe

Nope, I'll just be patient and keep copyin' and pastin' ...