I’ve been a member of the Xojo forums for over 12 years. It’s been a great resource for me, and I’m looking forward to becoming more active in this space. However, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make my avatar. I did a quick search, and apparently I have to make a “gravatar” account AND a WordPress account? Is that right? It seems silly. Gravatar also seems very un-user friendly and unintuitive. It took me a long time to figure out even what it was, how it worked, and what was required.
There were some posts in here from years ago about bringing the avatar feature in-house for this forum. Did that ever happen? I’d love to add an actual picture of myself here, but I do not want to make and manage two more accounts just to do it.
If you remember how/where and why… then sure its not that hard… I did mine when this version of the forum was started… but don’t ask me how to change it as I have no idea. Thought it was strange that the forum software didn’t handle it, and that you had to register with a third party
It saves on development time letting somebody else handle storage, censorship, cropping, etc. Avatars can be implemented in just a couple minutes with Gravatar. When this forum launched, the process was simpler too. Today, Gravatar is owned by Wordpress and requires a Wordpress account, which makes it more unattractive.
Having the forum software log into some Gravatar/Wordpress server to find an avatar is easier than just being given a URL for a picture?
(like wot we used to do in the RealBasic forum)
I don’t need a Wordpress or Gravatar account, and the absence of my mugshot is probably for the best.
Yes. It’s dramatically easier. No additional data is needed to be stored. It’s just the prefix url + md5(lower(trim(email))) - there’s no authentication, api usage, nothing. And your email is on file, so the html just has to output a url. It really could not be simpler.
Thats good to know.
Personally, I really don’t feel the need to create an account somewhere I never go , using an email address that exists only for Xojo, just to get a thumbnail view here.
This post is for Perry to find a method, so I’ll go away.
This is the only forum that I have my real name shown, but I use my email on all.
Let’s say that I also participate on a credit card debt wordpress site, that they told visitors to use a nickname and not real name, but the forum software use Gravatar. Instead of showing a general icon it will show your picture. Some people don’t mind but some people do.
All the spam lists have my email, very few have my first name, I don’t want them to easily show/know my face thanks to Gravatar.
[quote=417212:@Alberto De Poo]This is the only forum that I have my real name shown, but I use my email on all.
[/quote]
Just so you are aware, only people who are logged in can see your full name. If you are not logged in (don’t have a Xojo.com account) it is just first name with last initial.
Yes, that is true but we all do like being able to associate a face with the name. I always recognize people at XDC based upon their forum picture. (On a more personal note, I think a lot of people weren’t sure if I was a guy or girl until they saw my photo. Thanks Dana Carvey )
Thank you Dana, I may have to ask you to remove the blank space on my last name, it looks like that confuses the forum software and instead of only the last name initial it shows 5 characters including a ; when someone quote my comments.
I obviously don’t have an issue showing a face here. I do appreciate that many people don’t want their image & id available to the Internet. I do however, also appreciate those who project an image of who they are, @Dave S for example. My Gravatar is well out of date, as like @Dave S, I can’t be bothered figuring out how to change it, and as for @Markus Winter I don’t see the delta symbol of a true scientist, I see this friendly character wearing shorts in the middle of Winter
Would I want Xojo to spend resources changing away from Gravatar? No, the team have more important (at least to me) targets to achieve and given the opportunity I would direct them away from any change.
What I would like to suggest is that if, and only if, the cost is negligible we are able to reference our own presence in the form of a perfectly sized image from a website somewhere be it dropbox, onedrive or elsewhere. The specs for the image should be published and if we stuff up well that would be too bad.
The thing is that the Gravatar hook is part of esoTalk. I know that Toby created an update that allows the upload of an image, use it or Gravatar, or use Gravatar only. It’s a plugin, so wouldn’t require developer / engineer time to mod.
And here we have the bullshit that is “open source”. Xojo has a version that allows us to post for example fb reports. This implies that the Xojo version is a falk. So unfortunately there is likeley a cost somewhere.
