Avatars

[EvilTwin]

This new board has the capability for avatars , and I was noticing that it does not have them enabled . Is there any plan to enable them or is it just too much of a hassle / don't want it . Anyways , just wondering . Have a nice day .

 

[mat]

if someone enables avatars, please enable the option to disable them too

 

[Dave Baumann]

I've toyed with the idea of using avatars however I am loath to let users link to other locations as this can slow down the board, and I don't want uploads as that uses up disk space. If I were to enable them I'd have to find some avatars to create a gallery - but I'm not sure of what theme to use! Personally I think the Futurama icons might be quite cool!

http://phpbb.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/images/avatars/gallery/

 

[Simon F]

Dave,
Could you enforce a limit on their size, say 2 to 2.5k? That would give (at least) 16 colour @ 64x64 resolution.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The board already has the facility for setting size restrictions, but I'm still loath to allow uploads - I've seen many people use horrible animated gif's etc, that end up so distracting you don't want to read the actual post!

 

[Simon F]

So to summarise, the concerns are

• You don't want allow arbitrary images from the net because of potential "unavailability" problems
• Storing them on the server could be an overhead unless the image is 'small'
• Automatic uploading even with size limits (in bytes) is still open to abuse.

One possible suggestion to stop one form of abuse would be to limit the image to a small jpeg since that would be animation free - of course that doesn't deal with matters of taste. Perhaps the only solution would be to only allow "Mr.Mod" to install a user's avatar. Of course implies additional work. Tricky.

 

[Dave Baumann]

One possible suggestion to stop one form of abuse would be to limit the image to a small jpeg since that would be animation free - of course that doesn't deal with matters of taste.

Yeah. The board also doesn’t have any restrictions on image type’s that are allowed – I’m sure I could dig around the code and find it given time, but for now there’s other fish to fry/

Perhaps the only solution would be to only allow "Mr.Mod" to install a user's avatar. Of course implies additional work. Tricky.

Well, like I said, I’m not opposed to putting up a gallery – if some people suggest some theme’s and locations where they can be found…