Allow user to upload / choose Avatars

**newbieone** · 11-23-2009, 12:27 PM

Hi great CMS by the way, fantastic stuff so far and it's still early days!

I understand that Hotaru uses Gravatar for avatars etc, however it would be a nice feature for users to upload there own with perhaps a cropping feature very similar to gravatar.com?

If I was a techy I would offer to do this however I am but a humble simpleton.

Just an idea.

**Nick** · 11-23-2009, 01:14 PM

You know, just over a year ago, I made my first ever Pligg module. All it did was put "Hello World" on the screen. It was bloody hard! Took me 4 hours, but it worked!!!! I was incredibly chuffed with myself.

The great thing about modules or plugins is once you've done one, it gets easier and easier because you just reuse your own code and learn a few more tricks as you go along.

As for an avatar upload plugin, should anyone decide to do this, let me know because I've hardcoded a few isActive('gravatar') checks in various places which would need changing (always happy to do so, though!).

**Nick** · 11-23-2009, 02:34 PM

I'm playing around with RPX and am able to pull in the avatar used on the third party site, e.g. Twitter and Facebook. Once I complete the plugin, I might see if I can find a way to use those avatars. Wouldn't it be amazing to offer a choice of avatar from Twitter (or whichever profile you registered under), Gravatar, or an uploaded avatar?

I wonder if there are any existing scripts for uploading avatars? Hotaru already uses a few third-party PHP classes like Inspekt, ezSQL, htmLawed and Paginated. Can someone find one for image uploading? Would save a lot of work.

**carlo75** · 11-23-2009, 07:01 PM

This can help?

http://www.verot.net/php_class_upload.htm

It's open source, but have a commercial license

or this

http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1841.html

BSD license

**baadier** · 01-27-2010, 11:34 PM

Any ideas on this happening in the future?

**Nick** · 01-28-2010, 12:09 AM

I've hardcoded a few isActive('gravatar') checks in various places which would need changing

This doesn't apply anymore. You can make plugins for any avatar service/feature and use them instead of the Gravatar plugin.

Any ideas on this happening in the future?

It's not on my list. Maybe someone else will give it a go.

**Jason** · 01-28-2010, 09:10 AM

When would someone not want to use Gravatar? One thing that I find incredibly annoying is the number of sites that I have to upload my avatar to. By using Gravatar, HotaruCMS gives people one less place to update when they decide to support an online cause or change things for whatever reason. In addition to that, Gravatar lets us use multiple avatars with different visibility levels (G, PG, R, etc.) for different sites.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's certainly a nice change from most other software packages

**baadier** · 01-28-2010, 11:59 AM

I agree jason after I played around with gravatar last night. It would probably be prudent if I put a link to gravatar in my user settings tab so those who don't have one yet can add one?

**norby500** · 07-01-2010, 01:45 AM

maybe instead of the 'gravatar' idea that a good old fashioned upload an avatar with delete and update function?

[moved here. Nick]

**BakedGoods** · 08-04-2010, 08:31 PM

Originally Posted by norby500

maybe instead of the 'gravatar' idea that a good old fashioned upload an avatar with delete and update function?

Yeah, given the seemingly deep customization and community support of Hotaru, I'm surprised see this feature hasn't been created yet! I wish I could help.

The Post Images plugin does something very similar for story thumbnails. I imagine it would be easy to port this over to user avatars?

http://forums.hotarucms.org/showthre...ost-Images-0.6