Gravatars...bbPress has them in Core, so should SMF

[GrassrootsPA]

Hey guys,

I'm a SMF newbie (less than a week) and am really getting a kick out of your program. It's AMAZING!!! 

After fooling around for a year with bbPress I got tired of waiting for it to mature.

Was used to WordPress and figured it was worth investing the time in a similar forum program but got frustrated by how few features were in the bbPress core, how underdevloped it was, and how many plugins/how much editing was required to do simple forum stuff.

So anyway, SMF seems to have everything I could ever want in a forum program...except for a couple features, one of which is Gravatar support!

I tried the Gravatar Mod (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=854) but it did not want to work with 2.0 RC2.

Tried searching your forum for more info but there doesn't seem to be much on Gravatars at all.

One of the things really great about bbPress was it had Gravatars built right into the core, which could be turned on or off.

I really think this would add a great deal to SMF...why not make them optional and allow the admin to turn them on or off, and for the user to use their default Gravatar or use an Avatar? Thoughts?!?

Yeah, this could be a mod...but the current one doesn't want to work! Plus it is such a useful feature to have built into the core, really personalizes the experience for everyone!

[青山 素子]

In general, the SMF philosophy has been to not depend on external services in the core software. If the service is down, or the host has blocked the method of accessing that service, the software is usually blamed.

[GrassrootsPA]

Thanks Motoko-chan.

Hmmm, I see where you are coming from but Gravatar is administered by Automattic, a pretty stable online entity. It's not like the folks behind of WordPress are going to drop off the map anytime soon. Plus if one uses Gravatar they don't have to risk letting users upload personalized Avatars to their servers (thus eliminating a security risk)

Motoko-chan, I am a newbie and am lost. Is there a way to implement Gravatars that I am unaware of? The Mod on your forum seems to be very old and doesn't want to work. http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=854

[青山 素子]

While the external service might be stable, some of the hosting providers people run SMF on might not be. You'd be shocked at the weird stuff disabled at times by some providers.

I don't own this forum, but thanks for the nice words. My best advice is to contact the modification author and see if they have any plans of adding 2.0 compatibility.

[kat]

Surely, it's easy enough just to use the same avatar, everywhere, without having to rely on someone else doing it, for you, innit?

[青山 素子]

Surely, it's easy enough just to use the same avatar, everywhere, without having to rely on someone else doing it, for you, innit?

To someone who isn't too technical, it might be a bit more of an issue. Also, Gravatar is a lazy man's way to set up avatars. On sites that support it (very few I've encountered), it automatically fetches the image. You pay in security, however. There is actually an attack against Gravatar URLs that can get the underyling e-mail address, btw.

Me? I use content negotiation via MultiViews and a directory named "current" that I switch avatars through. For sites that support linking without upload, it makes it easy to do a global switch.