Avatar suggestion

Master Zen · June 24, 2003, 16:26

I have a suggestion for the Poly admins and mods related to the unfortunate suspension of avatars due to the server slowness...

In my brief experience with vBulletin I believe there is an option to disable uploading avatars as well as disabling the avatar gallery. But there is still another option that remains which is to link to a picture outside the board.

That means, for example, you can upload your avatar to somewhere else (say if you're registered in another forum you can use that pic) and link to it here. That would not cause any bandwidth problems as every time the page loads the bandwidth would be occupied by the other site and not Apolyton.

The only problem I see is that people may start uploading avatars to their upload accounts and linking them there... but after the recent "crackdown" on uploads, perhaps people will think twice

-MZ

Harry Seldon · June 24, 2003, 16:34

I don't know that it would do me any good but if it gave a shot to get my screaming baby avatar back up I'd go for it.

Locutus · June 24, 2003, 16:51

Sheesh, why are people making such a big deal out of the avatar thing? What would you rather have? Avatars, or actually being able to access the site?

We went 4 years without them so we can do with another a few days/weeks...

Inverse Icarus · June 24, 2003, 16:54

ZEN, even when you link them, the server downloads them, i've tested it.

alva · June 24, 2003, 17:02

I still have webspace from ISP provider I don't really use, so I could have a couple of avatars on there.

Dis · June 24, 2003, 17:20

we'd like both

I'm not sure I exactly understand what you are saying.

I have a website I can put my avatar on if that's what you mean.

This poses a qustion I was wondering about. does linking images to Apolyton using the image tag reduce bandwith and take up server space?

ixnay · June 24, 2003, 18:22

The only bandwidth it would consume would be to convert the img tags into html code so that it can be displayed. The actual picture itself wouldn't take up any bandwidth.

Personally, I would support allowing off-site avatars, because then I could point mine to a PHP script on my website and have it select a random avatar every time somebody views a page with my posts on it.

DrSpike · June 24, 2003, 19:39

Well let's see what the next week or so holds for the avatars and general server reliability before considering drastic changes.

Inverse Icarus · June 24, 2003, 20:01

Quote:

Originally posted by ixnay
The only bandwidth it would consume would be to convert the img tags into html code so that it can be displayed. The actual picture itself wouldn't take up any bandwidth.

Personally, I would support allowing off-site avatars, because then I could point mine to a PHP script on my website and have it select a random avatar every time somebody views a page with my posts on it.

you'd only be able to link to images, you nit wit.

i don't think they'd want me with the ability to add PHP and javascript code to poly pages

Master Zen · June 24, 2003, 21:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Uber KruX
ZEN, even when you link them, the server downloads them, i've tested it.

how so? you are downloading them from another site, not Apolyton, in fact you can check in the status bar of your browser and see how when that image is being downloaded, it shows the link to the other site.

I know a lot of forums do this precisely to avoid bandwidth problems.

Master Zen · June 24, 2003, 21:49

Quote:

Originally posted by ixnay
Personally, I would support allowing off-site avatars, because then I could point mine to a PHP script on my website and have it select a random avatar every time somebody views a page with my posts on it.

Off-site avatars ARE supported, check it one avatars are re-enables, problem is that since you are able to upload them, most people choose to upload rather than link.

alva · June 24, 2003, 22:00

Quote:

Personally, I would support allowing off-site avatars, because then I could point mine to a PHP script on my website and have it select a random avatar every time somebody views a page with my posts on it.

ooOOOOooooOOooo Look at me.....

-
No alternating avatars btw

, confusing enough as it is...

Skanky Burns · June 24, 2003, 22:17

With Markos off in the army at right now, and Dan holding the fort by himself, I don't think this will be a priority. Sure, it would be good, but the effort needed would probably be prohibitive. Besides, all we need to do is wait until the RoN Rush (tm) is over and avatars should be back.

Master Zen · June 24, 2003, 22:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
With Markos off in the army at right now, and Dan holding the fort by himself, I don't think this will be a priority. Sure, it would be good, but the effort needed would probably be prohibitive. Besides, all we need to do is wait until the RoN Rush (tm) is over and avatars should be back.

IIRC switching these things is just a few clicks in the Admin CP away...

alva · June 24, 2003, 22:53

Summer should help traffic too.

ixnay · June 25, 2003, 00:34

Quote:

Originally posted by Master Zen
Off-site avatars ARE supported, check it one avatars are re-enables, problem is that since you are able to upload them, most people choose to upload rather than link.

I know that you can link to an avatar that is currently off site. HOWEVER, like Uberkrux said earlier, without a hack to the forums software, vbulletin will save the image to the server the forums are running on and load it from there. Believe me, I've tested it.

Master Zen · June 25, 2003, 01:14

Quote:

Originally posted by ixnay

I know that you can link to an avatar that is currently off site. HOWEVER, like Uberkrux said earlier, without a hack to the forums software, vbulletin will save the image to the server the forums are running on and load it from there. Believe me, I've tested it.

ah that sucks then... oh well, I guess we'll have to wait

Rasbelin · June 25, 2003, 09:45

MZ,

you say you have experience with vB? Then you would have known that. Meh.

To be precise, by standard all avatars are saved by vBulletin in the MySQL database, including all gallery avatars, uploaded custom avatars and custom avatars saved by the vB PHP script into the MySQL database. On ACS Forums the difference is that all avatars are saved as regular files via Apache, so they are not located in the database as usually. This reduces the number of time required to load pages and reduces the number of SQL queries. You could of course change the off-site avatars to be directly loaded from the entered location, however that would require some work by Markos or Dan, which doesn't seem to be possible now as both seem to be very occupied. Also using the tweak seen on vBulletin.org is ruled out as it's not compliant with the current system in which avatars are as files. However you could of course always change the policy so that only actual off-site avatars are allowed.

Ergo epso facto, like Loc said, avatars aren't the #1 priority. What is more important is to make the service stable first as there has been frequently very high load spikes and the QoS has dropped. Keepin all avatars disabled is maybe an equal solution for now. Ideas worth to concider are using a separate server for MySQL, mirror server and the various forms of financial support, which could result in a database or mirror server. Apolyton is after all already very large with ~35 000 users registered and many anonymous ones.

Quote:

Personally, I would support allowing off-site avatars, because then I could point mine to a PHP script on my website and have it select a random avatar every time somebody views a page with my posts on it.

Ixy,

that would require enabling dynamic addresses for images, which is possibly opposed by the site ownership due to the fact it opens a backdoor.

rah · June 25, 2003, 09:53

Darn DP

rah · June 25, 2003, 09:53

Personally, I could do without the little group icons. They can be a bit overwelming when you have over half a dozen of them.

Rasbelin · June 25, 2003, 10:29

Yes, Rah, those are also a way to decrease the database load.

alva · June 25, 2003, 10:33

Can't disagree on that one, one or two are nice, but too much is too much

And if it helps, get rid of them (temporarely?).

ixnay · June 25, 2003, 12:49

Also, if you do have to do some tinkering around to get avatars back, could you enable .pngs for avatars while you're at it?

rah · June 25, 2003, 13:57

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
Can't disagree on that one, one or two are nice, but too much is too much

They're getting as bad as medals on a generals uniform.
Just how meaningful are they? I don't even know what some of them stand for. At least Avatars add some personality, but I do understand and support why we're not using them for a period. They'll be back.

Master Zen · June 25, 2003, 14:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Asuka
MZ,

you say you have experience with vB? Then you would have known that. Meh.

I said brief experience. A couple of days of trying it out does not mean I know the whole system. The board I use for my site doesn't save images on the database so I assumed vB did the same.

DarkCloud · June 25, 2003, 14:37

ah, the site is so much faster now that Avatars are disabled!

Ban the avatars forever!

I feel so happy!

Rasbelin · June 25, 2003, 15:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Master Zen

The board I use for my site doesn't save images on the database so I assumed vB did the same.

Invision Power Boards and vBulletin are two different PHP scripts, so don't make too hasty assuptions. They're very different from each other.

Japher · June 25, 2003, 16:04

I miss the Avatars, but since the have gone I have had no problem loading the pages...