If this is done, please list some suitable alternatives that both allow hot-linking and don't require registration. I used to know a few, but they've gone down since I've last used them.

Otherwise, I don't mind - so long as someone can indicate other hosting options.

Yeah, well, as hosting option there's Omnimaga, but then your sig image is invisible to guests (since you would need to post it in randomness, as it would be irrelevant). Also, if the fact we have scripts in images enabled started to pose problems, I would need to disable this too, which would eliminate the possibility to use Removedfromgame Userbars as well in the process

Otherwise, there's Photobucket and Tinypic, I think. I'm not sure if they're reliable, though.

I have the same deal as FinaleTI, I use Photobucket for all my photo uploading needs, except for large animated gifs for which i just post in Omnimaga

Does Photobucket require registration? If not, that works for me.

For my signature, I attached an image file to one of my posts and hotlinked to that. As far as I can see, as long as the forum is up and nothing changes, it'll always be there.

A question for DJ: Is this practice acceptable?

It is, but you have to keep in mind about a few things:

-When attaching a pic, it needs to be relevant to the discussion, and you must not start useless topics just to attach a pic, else it gets moved to Randomness. By being moved to Randomness, your signature becomes unavailable to guests.
-We cannot guarantee that scripts in image tags will be available forever on the forums. If we ever get security trouble due to abuse of this feature, we would have to remove it. By script I mean stuff like userbars.php?bg=lightblue&msg=Nostalgia%20%2D%20An%20Axe%20RPG&pct=3&lines=true instead of stuff like miniuserbars2.png.

If I get some time, I may set-up something like imageshack for Omnimaga on my server. (I wouldn't recommend sharing it with friend and such because I'm not sure how big of a load my server can handle and I don't want millions of random pictures sitting around on the server either, but if it's just for Omnimaga members then it should be fine.

Also, I planned on adding a log-in to the userbar site that will let you edit your userbars there and make them normal "userbar.png" links. The link never changes after you made it and you'll have to log in to change anything about the userbar, but it'll make it to where you don't have to change the link on every site you use the userbar for anymore. Of course, I'll keep the old system up so you can use the userbars without signing up and logging in if you want, but it'll be easier for you and Omnimaga to load. This is much harder to do right now since I just don't have the time and I don't quite have all the information on how to code in a log-in system yet but I'll have it implemented EVENTUALLY.

Now that I think about it, I'll have some time this weekend and I already know how to make the image uploader, so I'll do that this weekend and have something functional then. It probably won't look pretty, but it really doesn't have to as long as it works.

The userbar thing will not get done then though.