Affiliate Buttons!

Not to be butt, but a pragmatic note -
Affiliates have a negative impact on our google rating and analytics as it (to grossly over-simply, can explain further if desired) treats it like 'spam'. On an inactive site it helps as it leeches from the affiliated sites ranking and... well, you can't get any lower anyway so there's 'nothing to lose', but for where we are right now(and it took a lot to get there) it has the opposite effect. I believe you were present in a pm where I explained some of this, but generally noting it because of my next comment:

If we're going to have affiliates, lets attach it to the advertisement section specifically(it is after all the section specifically for all ads), rather than the home page.
The advertisement section essentially quarantines the negative effect (you may notice when you search anything Souls related it never comes up with our ads section, not unless you are directly searching for a specific name listed in there and usually that's only when said sites google rating is so bad that google considers our ad section to be more 'trustworthy' than their main page. Technically if we got rid of the ads section it would improve our ranking even further, but it's useful to keep in place).

On a separate note - We should also have a renewal policy and quality standards on who should qualify as an 'affiliate'(whatever criteria that may be) - where perhaps we also remove buttons unless the person 'renews' with us every... 2 months? (it's kinda just easier than running quality control ourselves and as noted, affiliates for us are a charity given, mechanically[harsh though it sounds], they do the opposite of benefit us). One of the worst things I see on other sites is dead/dodgy affiliate sites or in some cases even broken affiliate buttons. If we're going to do this, we should maintain the standard of quality and also ensure said 'sister sites' are keeping in contact and maintaining a good relationship (not just 'here is a random person who posted once asking for us to add their button', since that makes it kinda pointless).

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I have a WIP button somewhere on my computer originally made for this stuff before I found out about the nasty side effects, if I can find it and it isn't too choppy I could post that (it was another like the default avatar, an animation cycle of all the races and then essentially our site banner). It's 100 by 50 though, I would acctually suggest this is a nicer size as it lets you have a little more detail (It was the button size used for groups on deviantart, I used a number of OC groups and stuff there as advertising targets back in the day, even though it took more work than proboards ads)

I do invite anyone to use those materials if desired since they reflect the aesthetic and content of the site. Also you know, making up little faction or race buttons and so on is also cool/fun