First, you need to have an idea. I get my ideas from my Banner Shop.

Here's an idea that CraftMineT gave me:



If you don't have Photoshop, or any other Pay to Use application, it's fine! I used bannerfans when I first started out.

The size of the banner is very important. For server banners on PMC, the maximum size is 468x60. For other things, leaderboards (728x90) are popular.


Using Bannerfans, you can choose several backgrounds for your banner. You can choose a solid color, a gradient color, or upload an image from your computer:



Important: Whenever you make a change to your banner, to view the change, click 'Update my Banner' on the bottom of the page.

If you chose a solid color fill for your background, click the radio button and choose a color:

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If you chose a gradient color for your background, choose two colors:


And then a gradient mode:

The text on your banner needs to be catchy and short. For instance, if the server has 10000 plugins, don't put them all in! Just the necessary ones. And you most certainly shouldn't put PHRASES in your banner. No way!

Fonts, Colors, Size:

Bannerfans gives you a lot of choices for fonts and colors, so go ahead and pick one font that suits your banner text or theme:


(EXAMPLE: firey red font if it's a black and red banner, representing a PVP, Nether-themed server). You should always make the title of the server (or whatever the main thing is) the biggest size of text.

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Note: You can add shadows, effects, and borders to your banner. However, these are pretty simple, so I won't go into detail.
After you've done all of these things, and you think it's done, go to "Format" /
and select a file type. I always do .PNG because it's the best quality image.

Once you've finished your first banner, press 'download my banner', located on the bottom of the page, to the right of

If you want to make an animated banner with flashing words on it, that's a whole different story!

Ideas. That's the key. Let's say that I want my server title as the first flashing animated 'slide' of the animated banner. Then I have "Creative Mode" as the second 'slide', and the IP on the third.

To do so, you make 3 different banners:

1.
2.
3.

To animate my banners, I use MySpaceGens. First, you select the size of the banner. I always select 'leave original sizes' to conserve the size that I chose in the beginning.

Next, you select the speed of your animation.

Finally, you upload the banner 'slides' from your computer and, voila, your amazing banner is done!

First upload your .GIF banner to TinyPic. Then, you click on your image (it says 'view full size') and click it again when it reloads the page. This action brings up a little window. Click 'view raw image' on that window. This brings you to a page with a gray background with your image in the center. Copy the URL, then put it into 'IMG' brackets in your forum signature or thread like so:

You're done! Now you can make amazing animated (or not) banners!

If this tutorial helped you, do this: