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Suggestion: Larger Avatars For Premium Members


Parker

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I vaguely recall this topic from several years ago and I believe the answer is Avatars in IPB are set globally, not by User Group. What that means is it's one size fits all with no option to increase it for Premium Members. I've just checked one of my client's IPB installs and it seems to be the case.

 

There may be plugins to overcome this limitation, but bolting plugins into the core forum app means more things can go wrong, they can add more CPU overhead (which costs more money depending on the webhost) and can block or delay forum core upgrades (plugins aren't always compatible with the latest release and / or take time to become compatible), so it's preferably from an Admin perspective to limit or eliminate their use altogether.

 

Larger file sizes also means more storage and bandwidth costs, so it's a toss-up between the potential benefits of additional revenue vs the additional hosting costs to support larger avatars  :hmm:. When you're talking about 81,000 members (though not all are active), those numbers quickly add up.

Edited by ant1th3s1s
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Yes, I'd also like bigger avatars in the PSN profile page.

 

 

Edit:

wait, are we talking about forum avatars, or PSN avatars?

Because forum avatars are fine. I like that they don't need to be square and you can make them very long!

Edited by DocDoomII
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So you can change it but you prefer not to? :hmm:

I think that what Sly is saying is that, yes it can be changed, but it would need to change for both premium and non-premium members.

That would sort of render the change a bit pointless (in the context of this thread at least) as there would be no discernible difference between the 2 types of account (except the limit on the file size for the avatar).

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Honestly, I'd be in favor of changing the size for everyone else too. I think the size of the "Pro" members on .com looks good and I'd like to see our avatars over here be able to be that big. 

 

 

Parker

 

I don't know if he's able to, he only answered about the space required, but not the size. Haha, it kills me when Sly comes in and answers some random question, but doesn't talk about the main question.  :P

 

Also, congrats on 4,000 posts Parker! Question, have you ever forgotten to put the word "Parker" at the end of any one of your messages? lol

Edited by BlindMango
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I don't know if he's able to, he only answered about the space required, but not the size. Haha, it kills me when Sly comes in and answers some random question, but doesn't talk about the main question.  :P

 

Also, congrats on 4,000 posts Parker! Question, have you ever forgotten to put the word "Parker" at the end of any one of your messages? lol

 

I'm not gonna attempt to speak for Sly in terms of whether or not he should or will do it, but it is possible to change the size for everyone. It's just not possible to change avatars for ONLY premium members.

 

If the file-size limits remain in place (eg 50kb / 150kb) while the dimensions increase (say 150px x 300px), then it shouldn't dramatically impact the performance of the site. Active members will likely upload larger files, but that's probably less than 2% of the overall members. 

 

In terms of file-sizes, your images are bloated if you can't create a jpg / png / gif within the 50kb / 150kb limits. Resize the image to the correct width (eg 150px) prior to uploading and use apps like ImageOptim on PC & Mac to compress the file-size. The only images that may struggle with those file-size restrictions are animated gifs, EVERYTHING else should easily compress to 50kb at those dimensions.

 

FYI - OS X has a cracker of a jpg compression tool named JPEGmini. I use it on several of my client's forum site uploads (they allow images to be self-hosted rather than offloaded to hosting services like PhotoBucket) and on my personal photo collection, and the app compresses images by roughly 4 x without any noticeable quality loss. It's a beast and has saved me 132GB in less than a year.

Edited by ant1th3s1s
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I don't know if he's able to, he only answered about the space required, but not the size. Haha, it kills me when Sly comes in and answers some random question, but doesn't talk about the main question.  :P

 

Also, congrats on 4,000 posts Parker! Question, have you ever forgotten to put the word "Parker" at the end of any one of your messages? lol

 

From what I can recall, one. It was right after Sly allowed Premium members to change their forum name, I went from James_Page to Parker and the next post I made I didn't sign my name. 4 or 5 people claimed I was an impostor (joking, obviously) so I went back to my old ways and signed my name after each post. I can't remember if I edited that post with my name so there may be one post somewhere here without my name at the end.  

 

Ant, thanks for the information. I've been looking for ways to compress some files and I'll definitely check out the app you mentioned in your post.  

 

 

Parker

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