XF 1.5 Giving a selection of Avatars

[MagicalMidge]

So you may or may not remember my post from yesterday whereby I want to limit what avatars certain user groups are using, ie if we had a user group "Android Dev" they would be asigned the avatar picture of the Android head. We do it this way on our forum because we only have a select amount of user groups, and it keeps it looking clean in our opinion... Feel free to disagree.

Essentially I asked if this could be done, and out of the box it doesnt seem like its something thats supported.

My next question is, I know you can lock different groups in allowing or not allowing them to change the avatar, is there any way I can give them a selection of avatars to choose from?

So essentially (sticking with the android dev group) they would have option of androidhead1, androidhead2, androidhead3? Rather than allowing them to upload there own file?

I know some people will disagree and say they should be able to upload there own profile picture but we do think it looks better this way for our particular forum, we allow users to have custom signatures but not custom avatar pictures.

I really hope there is a way of doing this as xenForo is running much better and looks much better than our vBulletin forum but this is an essential part of our forum.

Regards
Matthew

 

[Chris D]

The functionality, again, doesn't exist by default.

But there is an add-on:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/avatar-gallery.276/

This is an old add-on and it is no longer maintained by its author, but some recent posts suggest it works. I'm not aware of any alternatives, but there could be, I only had a brief glance.

This will likely be tied to the permission to allow people to upload an avatar. If that's the case, you may need to edit the upload controls out of the template, just leaving the avatar gallery. Hope that helps.

 

[MagicalMidge]

The functionality, again, doesn't exist by default.

But there is an add-on:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/avatar-gallery.276/

This is an old add-on and it is no longer maintained by its author, but some recent posts suggest it works. I'm not aware of any alternatives, but there could be, I only had a brief glance.

This will likely be tied to the permission to allow people to upload an avatar. If that's the case, you may need to edit the upload controls out of the template, just leaving the avatar gallery. Hope that helps.

Really appreciate the speedy response

I will give that addon a try, it looks like what we are after!

I know this isnt the suggestions thread, but do you think this kind of feature would ever make the actual build?

I have seen quite a few forums that work in a similar way to ours in the sense that it limits what the avatars can be and I would have thought it would be default option. By no means am I slating xenForo because it is amazing, but so far this is the only feature I would have thought would be standard, but isnt.

Regards.
Matthew

 

[Chris D]

It's not really something we're considering at the moment.

It has been suggested before, but as you can see there was really very little interest:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/stock-avatars-for-members-to-choose.27502/

(We gauge the popularity of suggestions via the number of likes the first post gets)

Even the Resource itself doesn't seem to be ever-so popular considering how many times it has been downloaded.

But, at least an add-on exists right now. Obviously it's concerning that the author doesn't maintain it, but overall the functionality should be straight forward enough for another developer to reproduce in the future (for example when XF 2.0 is released).

 

[MagicalMidge]

It's not really something we're considering at the moment.

It has been suggested before, but as you can see there was really very little interest:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/stock-avatars-for-members-to-choose.27502/

(We gauge the popularity of suggestions via the number of likes the first post gets)

Even the Resource itself doesn't seem to be ever-so popular considering how many times it has been downloaded.

But, at least an add-on exists right now. Obviously it's concerning that the author doesn't maintain it, but overall the functionality should be straight forward enough for another developer to reproduce in the future (for example when XF 2.0 is released).

I of course respect that you cant go adding anything and everything that people want/ suggest and you have to take xenForo in the direction the masses want, so of course if there's little interest it wouldnt make sense to focus time on it. I get that

There is one final thing you might be able to help me with if possible, the Avatar gallery is exactly what I was looking for, if missing a few options... Just wondering if there is an easy way of doing the following...

So under the user groups it allows you to select "Allow avatar upload" we want this to be no, and they select from the avatar gallery, unfortunately changing that option to no prevents the dialog box from even appearing with the error "You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action." Which is understandable because that feature out of the box would simply require hiding the basic box that appears when you want to upload a custom avatar.

Is there any way I can remove the option for custom upload, or at bare minimum just hide it with css?

Final final question, Would there be any way that you know of (I assume not because you didnt make the addon, but I may as well ask, you dont ask you dont get) of limiting the selection of the avatar gallery per user group? IE only allow a certain selection for certain user groups?

I know my questions are quite specific but this is the make or break on if we can actually move over to xenforo full time, we have already purchased it so I really hope so xD

Regards,
Matthew

 

[Mike]

These are things that would really be best addressed to the add-on author as we don't really have any knowledge of it. They would probably be best positioned to see if they can (or if it already does) support only picking from the gallery rather than uploading as well as the permissions it provides.

 

[MagicalMidge]

These are things that would really be best addressed to the add-on author as we don't really have any knowledge of it. They would probably be best positioned to see if they can (or if it already does) support only picking from the gallery rather than uploading as well as the permissions it provides.

I understand that... seen as the addon hasnt been supported since 2012 I think the likely hood of getting a response is very slim...

 

[Chris D]

I actually already sort of gave you the answer earlier. You would just be able to hide the avatar upload controls by editing the template or by using CSS as you suggested.

As for anything else, that would either require the author to answer or for a new add-on to be created. At the very least it's worth posting in the Resource discussion thread as you may find that other users of the add-on have implemented similar solutions to what you're after.