Very simple.. Via member group setting, a member of a group could add their own emoticons and names (although the names would be forced to be between colon's) that they could use when they make posts. The member group setting should be -1/0/# settable (-1 unlimited, 0 is off or not allowed, otherwise the # is the maximum number of personal emoticons they can have/setup).

Each emoticon would either be a file they upload or a URL to the emoticon itself. The emoticons should also replace the boards default emoticons (perhaps setting per group if that group can override default emoticons). So if someone wanted to use their own version of a common smiley, they could.

And then what happens on large boards where you have thousands upon thousands of members each uploading multiple emoticons?

Say goodbye to your disk space :lol:

1000 laugh emoticons is a bit over half of a megabyte...

The only real issue I can see would be the processing of personal emoticons. Other than that, if someone is able to "outsource" emoticons, then space isn't an issue.

And what happens if someone deletes an emoticon to make room for more? :P Everything's broken.

You can use the img tag to link to remote emoticons, or you could attach an image to a post. I think that's sufficient myself. This sounds like unnecessary bloat to me.

Well I had the idea and thought I'd toss it out.

What about user submissions of emoticons, where a member can supply the image and suggested :tag: and then the admin either approves it (and it gets added) or not? Per group setting (obviously) and view the group can limit the kb and x/y dimensions.

Why couldn't your members just start a topic on the forums where they post these emoticons they'd like added?

then you have to copy the image (save and upload to emoticon area) and make the name for it instead of a simple approve/deny process.

That's not like, a [i]lot[/i] of work though, to save an image and upload it to the emoticon manager, it's all of about 5 seconds.

Add up those 5 seconds to save and 5 seconds to upload and 5 to name it (ie, more than a total of 5 seconds per emoticon), multiply it by however many emoticons, say 20, and the time adds up.

[quote name='Μichael' date='10 August 2009 - 03:41 PM' timestamp='1249940517' post='1841507']
Why couldn't your members just start a topic on the forums where they post these emoticons they'd like added?
[/quote]
Thats how I got the 1000s of emoticons I have.