Not a bug Disabled gravatar but XF is still sending requests to gravatar.com

[karll]

Affected version

2.3.4

I have just disabled Gravatar support (unticked "Enable Gravatar support" in the User Registration options) but I still see GET requests going to gravatar.com.

I did notice under the option in the AdminCP it says:

If disabled, this will not remove Gravatars from users that already have them.

I thought this meant the Gravatar avatars had been stored locally, so it would continue to use those, but maybe I thought wrong?

If it means it will continue to use Gravatar avatars hosted on gravatar.com, is there some way to remove these from the relevant users? A clever SQL statement, perhaps? (E.g. UPDATE xf_user SET gravatar = '' WHERE gravatar <> ''; Although, is there a risk that could break something?)

 

[Chromaniac]

yeah this has been annoying for me too. gravatar has been off for a long time now. and every time i encounter an inactive user with gravatar, i just delete the avatar to prevent blinking effect on thread loads. would be interesting if someone here has a fix to remove it for all users!

 

[Jeremy P]

I thought this meant the Gravatar avatars had been stored locally, so it would continue to use those, but maybe I thought wrong?

We don't store or cache Gravatars locally at all, they are always served directly from the service. So, yes, any existing ones would be unaffected.

Removing them manually should be fine, but the usual caveats apply (at your own risk, take a backup, I am not a lawyer, etc.):

UPDATE xf_user
SET gravatar = ''
WHERE gravatar <> ''