Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,079
Gravatar support
« on May 7th, 2011, 12:56 PM »
Feature: Gravatar support
Developer: Arantor
Target: users, admins
Status: 100% (believed to be complete.)
Comment:

Users may now use their gravatar (if available), instead of a locally or remotely hosted avatar.
One of the finest points in Wedge is that they can specify a gravatar e-mail address that isn't their account's e-mail address. For instance if your e-mail address is something@somewhere.com and your gravatar address is gravatar@somewhere.com, you just need to specify it in your profile area. Simple, yet epic.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #1, on May 7th, 2011, 10:06 PM »
Well, I use a gravatar already on another forum. I just copied my gravatar link and use it as my avatar. If i change the images, it gets changed automatically with it... so after all you can already have a gravatar.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #2, on May 7th, 2011, 10:25 PM »
Yes, but which is easier: entering an email address or copy/pasting a long, ugly link?

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #3, on May 8th, 2011, 10:53 AM »
Quote from Arantor on May 7th, 2011, 10:25 PM
Yes, but which is easier: entering an email address or copy/pasting a long, ugly link?
Well, the gravatar site provides even a link to copy. And I guess everyone should at least be able to past a link into a field...

But well, the other option makes it on this way easier, as I don't need to login into gravatar.com to get the link.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #4, on May 8th, 2011, 11:23 AM »
Actually I didn't know this was possible, but AFAIK admins can disable remote avatars so that would make Gravatar the only viable option here.
Otherwise, I guess other alternatives like Incarnate should be usable the same way... Oh my, headache :lol:

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #5, on May 9th, 2011, 12:08 AM »
But if admins disable remote avatars and you have the ability to use gravatars, wouldn't they be remote avatars after all? :hmm: Well, except if you store them temporally or for a certain amount of time in the forums cache. That would mean less requests to the gravatar site and faster responding on the forum.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #6, on May 9th, 2011, 12:33 AM »
They would be remote avatars, yes. But they would be remote avatars from a single specific provider rather than any arbitrary provider.

How, exactly, would making YOUR forum do more work than offloading the work to another site entirely give you faster response? Gravatar does caching, your browser does caching, and likely more usefully than many crappy hosts do - consequently, pulling it into your server does not benefit your users, and just ramps up your load - unless you have a setup more powerful than Gravatar does...


Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #8, on April 24th, 2012, 05:38 PM »
I just created a gravatar account to test this feature, and it ate the animation from the animated GIF that I uploaded to them. Aside from that, it was a big hassle to find a "good" username on the gravatar site because they merged their namespace with wordpress. Nearly everything I tried was already take.

Overall, I'm pretty sure I'll stick to just uploading the GIF file I've already got for an avatar.

-dw

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #9, on April 24th, 2012, 05:59 PM »
Gravatar sounds like something Gri would say, whatever happened to him/her?

On to the topic though, are you sure remote services that may or may not be there in a few years is a wise choice for a core feature? I understand if you make it as a aftermarket plugin but a core feature, nah.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #10, on April 24th, 2012, 06:36 PM »
It's been around for a very long time really... Heck, my gravatar uses an e-mail address I haven't used in like 8 years...
And anyway: if Wedge outlives Gravatar, we'll release a version that removes them.
If Gravatar outlives Wedge, no problemo :P

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #11, on April 25th, 2012, 05:32 PM »
I just figured that Gravatar was one of those things that isn't a lot of effort to support, and does allow for avatars that are uniquely tied to an account - so there's an element of consistency everywhere, especially for blog type support.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #12, on April 25th, 2012, 06:16 PM »
Quote from Nao on April 24th, 2012, 06:36 PM
It's been around for a very long time really... Heck, my gravatar uses an e-mail address I haven't used in like 8 years...
And anyway: if Wedge outlives Gravatar, we'll release a version that removes them.
If Gravatar outlives Wedge, no problemo :P
You know this is the first place I even heard of it. :whistle:

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #13, on April 25th, 2012, 06:17 PM »
I guess you don't go around WordPress blogs much?

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #14, on April 25th, 2012, 06:20 PM »
Blogs are usually one sided. :eheh:

I do tend to visit them time to time, but that is usually when a search takes me to one. I just really can't get into visiting a blog over and over again. I rather have a place where I can really discuss and post my opinions and thoughts also.

Re: Gravatar support
« Reply #15, on April 25th, 2012, 06:21 PM »
True, but it's a way for unregistered users to be able to have an avatar, and one that's pretty consistent across blogs.