Why where the admin controls removed for avatars

[theisz]

I would like to know why I can no longer control whether avatars are uploaded to my server or not and why was the option for my members to link to external sources like photobucket removed? Instead there is an option to download from an external sources which is the same as them uploading to my server. That is redundant.

My members are aggravated as am I because I will not allow avatars to be uploaded. Now the only option they have is to have to create an account with another service, Gravatar, in order to have an avatar.

I had to make the profile directory read only so no one could upload avatars and that is confusing to them since I cannot remove the option from being listed.

I have two forums I run with over 12,000 members so I do not want to host all of those avatars and have them use up unnecessary bandwidth.

I have searched all over the site and found nothing in regards to this, so if this has been discussed I was unable to find it via search.

[Farron]

Your thoughts are much the same as mine and many others. A prior topic to this does exist though.

Can be seen here:



There was some mention that the URL linking to avatars would be possible to return, but if that is meant what is currently in 3.2.3 then it is nowhere what I was after, being that it is still uploading the image to the forum and that never had to happen with 3.1 (and as far as I'm aware every version prior). Before anyone also says there is a hook that allows URL avatars back, yes there is but it no longer seems to be compatible with 3.2.3 so only hope is for the original settings to be returned to the software without loooking for hooks and so on hoping they work.

[3DKiwi]

I have two forums I run with over 12,000 members so I do not want to host all of those avatars and have them use up unnecessary bandwidth.

12,000 members with a 20k image each is a mere 240kb. Sorry I can't see what the issue is and with this many members the small overhead of these using your bandwidth is very minor. If your bandwidth is so tight you can't host avatars you probably need to change hosts.

3DKiwi

[Biker.GA]

However, that 240kb isn't just used once. Every single thread view by members and guests will raise that consumption by quite a bit. And that's IF the limit is 20k for an image.

[bfarber]

However, that 240kb isn't just used once. Every single thread view by members and guests will raise that consumption by quite a bit. And that's IF the limit is 20k for an image.

Note, however, that if you leverage browser caching (i.e. if your server is configured to send image files with appropriate cache headers) that those files would only be requested from your server (in theory, depending on how well the browser honors the headers) once per cache-expiration period.