A signature is a block of text which is inserted at the end of all your posts. To create a signature, click on My Account at the top right of any page, then click the Preferences dropdown on the left, and select Edit Signature - a video How To can be viewed by clicking here.

If you have made a signature, then the forum will automatically add your signature to every message you post. You can disable signatures on a per-post basis by un-ticking the 'Show Signature' checkbox when you compose your message.

You may turn the signature on and off on posts you have already made by editing the post and altering the state of the 'Show Signature' option.

Avatars are the little pictures to the left of people’s names. It adds a bit of individuality to the posts!

To add an avatar, click on My Account at the top right of any page, then click the My Images dropdown on the left, and select Edit Avatar. You can choose from any of the pre selected images by clicking and saving changes. You can also add your own custom 50x50pixel (max), 51,200 byte (max) image by linking to the image url in the space provided and saving, or uploading the image from your computer and saving. These options are found towards the bottom of the avatar page.

If you have an image you would like to use but is larger than 50x50 you can go here: Gif works (or Iaza) to resize it online. Best to use JPEG or GIF format. Try not to use BMPs as the filesize of a BMP is very large.

If you become a subscriber, you will gain the ability to have an avatar of up to 100x100 pixels. More details can be found in the subscription FAQ.

You can also add an image to your profile by selecting Edit Profile Picture from the My Images dropdown. Size limit on profile pictures is 640x480 pixels.

Referrals allow you to be credited for any new users you invite to the forum (not that there's much credit to be had other than a warm feeling inside).

You gain referrals by promoting The Student Room using your unique referral link. The link you should use as your referral link is this:

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=0

Each time someone follows this link to The Student Room and registers as a new member, your referral count will be incremented by one. The number of referrals you have can be viewed in your profile.

The buddy list is used to keep track of the friends you have made on this forum. By going to you 'Open Buddy List' in the quick links menu, you'll be able to see which of your friends are currently online, and be able to send them a private message. Adding people to your buddy list also allow you to send private messages to multiple forum members at the same time. You may add any member of the forums to your buddy list by clicking their username and selecting 'Add *username* to your buddy list' in any post made by them.

Ignore lists are used for those people whos messages you wish not to read. By adding someone to your ignore list, those messages posted by these individuals will be hidden when you read a thread. You cannot ignore Moderators or Admins.

As you post more, you get different status titles under your name.

You can get a custom status title which you can set to whatever you like (within reason) if you subscribe, click here for details.

In order to maintain a high standard on The Student Room, moderators may issue members with warnings for a variety of offences.

There are several types of warning, and each warning has a number of 'warning points' associated with it. If you reach 15 warning points, you will be banned initially for a period of seven days. Warning points are removed after a time; the length depending on the type of warning received.

You will receive a Private Message (PM) when you are issued a warning.

Note that moderators may choose to ban users on a permanent or temporary basis without use of the warning system.

You can view any warnings you have received here, or by clicking 'View My Warnings' in the quick links menu, or in your user control panel.

Due to the way The Student Room uses cookies, some users may have difficulty in logging out.

If clicking 'log out' at the top right or bottom right of a page, or clicking here does not log you out, you will need to clear your cookies if you want to log out.

Instructions for clearing your cookies

Internet Explorer

• Go to the 'tools' menu and click 'internet options'.
• Click 'delete cookies'.

1. Go to the 'tools' menu and click 'internet options'.
2. Click the 'settings' button just along from 'delete cookies'.
3. Click 'view files'.
4. Among the list of files that appears, you will be able to find a file called 'Cookie:user@thestudentroom.co.uk' and possibly another called 'Cookie:user@www.thestudentroom.co.uk'. Delete both of these files if you find them.
5. Restart your browser. You should be logged out of TSR.

Firefox

1. Go to the 'tools' menu.
2. Click 'options'.
3. Click 'privacy'.
4. Click 'cookies'.
5. Click 'View Cookies'.
6. Remove cookies marked as 'thestudentroom.co.uk' and 'www.thestudentroom.co.uk

When you logged in there was a checkbox marked 'remember me'. If you did not tick this box, you are automatically logged out after 15 minutes of inactivity.

There are some circumstances where you can still be logged out even if you ticked the 'remember me' box. If this happens, follow the instructions below:

1. Log out completely. See here if you are having difficulty in doing that.In your browser go to http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk and log in.Now point your browser to http://thestudentroom.co.uk and log in again (if you need to).

The above method works best if you use the 'remember me' checkbox.

vB code is a set of tags based on the HTML language that you may already be familiar with. They allow you to add formatting to your messages in the same way as HTML does, but have a simpler syntax and will never break the layout of the pages you are viewing. See the vB Code List here.

You probably swore. If your posts contain any censored words, they will be starred-out like this: ****.

The same words are censored for all users, and censoring is done by a computer simply searching and replacing words. It is in no way 'intelligent'.

Please do not attempt to get around the censoring by using alternate character sets, subscript and superscript, changing letters around or otherwise. Do not star out parts of censored words yourself, just type normally and allow the censoring mechanism to do it.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/feed.php?forumids=1&type=RSS2&lastpost=1&title=1

In My Account you can set your Current primary situation

By telling us what stage in your education you are we can get a better understanding of exactly who uses TSR and we can develop functionality and features that benefit you and your peers.

We want TSR to be relevant to you, by telling us what stage in your education you are we will do our best not to show you advertisements and content promotions that we think wouldn’t be of interest to you.

If you'd rather not tell us then simply select 'none of the above/rather not say' from the dropdown menu.

You can use one of two engines to put TeX into a post, [latex] and [tex]. The [latex] tag is preferred as it uses a nicer engine; the [tex] tag is provided for historical reasons and produces less nice-looking stuff.

View a tutorial and syntax guide for TeX here (external link).