Lilypie and Tickerfactory: The Best Sources for Tickers for Signatures and Blogs

If you're new to online forums and blogging, you probably had no idea about tickers. They're cute and after awhile you'll most likely want to add one (or several) to your signatures or blog. There are many websites devoted to tickers. A Google search turns up page upon page of ticker websites. Lilypie and Tickerfactory are the two best sources for all your ticker needs. Tickerfactory alone has 165 ticker rulers and 186 ticker sliders to choose from. Lilypie's tickers focus on family events and Tickerfactory has almost any kind of ticker you could imagine.

One of the most popular kinds of tickers are pregnancy due date tickers. To create one you choose your ticker ruler--think of it as the timeline image--many of which have numbers from 0 to 40 for each week of pregnancy. Then you choose your ticker slider, the small image that moves along your ticker ruler to mark progress. There are quite a few to choose from, including twins and several skin tones, or you can choose a different slider image altogether. Once you've chosen your images, you enter the current date and your due date, and Tickerfactory or Lilypie takes care of the calculations for you. The text underneath will show what week and what day you are in your pregnancy and countdown the days left until your due date. The numbers will change every day and the slider will move automatically. Anniversary, vacation departure, special event, wedding, trying to conceive, adoption and many birthday tickers work the same way as the pregnancy ticker. Some birthday tickers count up from the birth date instead of counting down until the next one, so they show how old your child is.

Tickerfactory's health and fitness tickers can track your weight loss, your BMI and your progress toward a fitness goal like walking a certain number of miles. You can track financial goals, from debt reduction, to savings and fundraising totals. Believe it or not, you can also track the number of scrapbooking layouts you've made or the number of books in your library or objects in your collection.

Lilypie's tickers (and tickers from its sister site Daisy Path) can help you mark special family milestones. In addition the standard birthday, pregnancy, anniversary, vacation, trying to conceive and wedding tickers, you can also track how long you've been breastfeeding your baby. You can count down to your adoption date or mark how many days you've been waiting to adopt.

After you create your ticker on either site, you have the option of having a large or small graphic. Large graphics are approximately four inches long and are the most common tickers for forum or email signatures. Small graphics are approximately two inches long and fit in tight spaces like blog columns, but of course you could use small graphics in signatures and vice versa. You can also choose the background color of your tickers. Once your ticker is complete, you'll have to copy and paste the code into wherever you plan to use it. Depending on what kind of code your page or email program uses, you have several different kinds of codes to choose from. Standard HTML and BBCode are the most commonly used codes, but if you're not sure which code you need, consult the FAQ for your website or program.

Tickers are a fun way to track your progress or count down to a special event or goal. Creating them and using them in your forum or email signatures or blog pages is quick and easy.