Signature around forums and communities influence user in many different aspects, one of the most important one would be encourage the viewers to click the link in the signature(Ad!). I believe the 5% of my click in forums are on signatures, especially when the post is wonderfully forged. Usually the link that suppose to promise a land of
artistic web page pursuit me to say "WTF" and close the window, but I can't denial the signature is a great place for ad placement.

Signature tracking, track the stat of a signature, like how many accesses in one day.
Here is a simple proof of concept of how it can work even the signature are not hosted on your site(usually, dynamic signatures hosted somewhere else).
Here is the HTML code for the image below
<img src="/scripts/mgccl/sig.php" title="this script direct the HTTP header to somewhere else" />

and here is the code for the PHP below:
<code type="php">header("Location: http://www.lf2.net/forum/templates/subSilver/images/logo_phpBB.gif");

So, to from today on, you can just use the code above for the signature
From what you can see, you just have to add a few lines of code to do tracking, then half of my article's title is done.
Is there any point to this article?
Yes, it means you can show image from other sites and make people think the image is from your site(with some mod_rewrite). So you are doing a smart and evil hotlinking that most visitors would never know.

vSig, the Virtual Signature, is a multi-feature dynamic signature system. When searching "dynamic signature" with Google, over 9 million results turned up, and over 1622 projects pop out at SourceForge, it's certain that the dynamic signature is common to developers. The first page filled with the most popular results from Google does not reveal the words "easy" and "simple." Non-developers or most people that use internet, who saw the effect of a colorful ever-changing signature, have three options when they look at their own:

Learn Server Side scripts into a intermediate level and download someone's script. Then, debugging for time ranging form seconds to hours and buy a server for hosting.
Use one of those free online dynamic signature system that is easier than learning programming, but it have many restrictions and the site some times can be confusing or old fashioned
Forget about what they saw

vSig stands out from the majority of dynamic signature system by compiling an adept but also straightforward UI for common users. According to Tim, the founder and developer of the project, vSig also provides high quality customization by allow users write their own XML to control the signature. ?Users create their vSigs in two ways--either through our Drag and Drop editor, or our XML interface. The Drag and Drop editor is the more popular one; it incorporates fancy AJAX/WYSIWYG stuff [component]. The XML interface is for those few control freaks among us, who prefer to edit X and Y positions, font IDs, XML comments, etc.?
High configurability with least effort needed is just a scratch on the surface of what vSig offers. vSig is extremely powerful, it uses PHP, GD and Imagemagick. Built-in features include Whatpulse statistics, Client information, counter, random quote, Last.fm information and feed syndication like feedburner.
The script was started in around 2005 of May, originally was for a quote-rendering script system for Tim himself. Then he expanded it. ?I made a single script that was specific to my own signature, and then I adapted it to make others' signatures when they asked. Eventually, I came up with a framework to make this all easy, and so vSig 1 was born. After around a year, we got tired of filling out requests and the old methods, and decided to revamp the whole thing into a modern interface for images!? said Tim.
The powerful vSig has many contributors. Tim listed a few ?Our very own mck did early work on the Drag and Drop editor. Script.aculo.us is an amazing library that without, vSig 2 still would have been in development. Tango provides some images. A man by the name of Dane hosted our site for the first year of its running. Go Dane!. Shwaza registered vSig domain one year and there are more people that contributed.?
Tim has other websites beside vSig, but they are mostly under construction and he believes they do not need public attention. ?vSig is really my first major website that counts.?
The vSig now is actually vSig2, the original version does not have a easy DIY feature for users. ?vSig 2 is very hands-on, do-it-yourself style. It's the revolutionary part of vSig, but I can't see a vSig 3 any time soon,? said Tim, he believe unless someone can point out a way to significantly change vSig, there will be only modifications for vSig2 by hacking the core codes. This means vSig2 is in a fairly stable state.
It is not easy to start everything in scratch; it?s harder to make one item better than any other in the same class. ?There have been problems all along, big huge headaches in creating new features,? said Tim. He encountered difficulties in writing a vScript phrasing engine, figuring out animation, making drag and drop editor. ?However, we have overcome all our difficulties!? added Tim.
Tim believes vSig will make the life of the people, who spend hours and hours designing systems to make dynamic signatures, easier. As he working on more features on vSig, he expresses the idea of open source the script. ?I think "open source vSig" might be interesting to do, and make the progress skyrocket. Nevertheless, there's not much demand for source code now, and vSig depends on many, many factors to run on a server. Maybe later on, but certainly not soon,? stated Tim.
The future of vSig?s popularity is unknown-- there is only 172 registered users right now. But with dozens of feature and some advisement, the future might be expressed by the word of mck, a developer worked on Drag and Drop editor of vSig. ?An unvsig-er is a goose!?

Editor Comment:

This is the fanciest dynamic signature system in years. The article already did enough explaining. I can only encourage you to do a test.