Legends of Equestria - Forum

Forum Information => Forum suggestions => Topic started by: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 16, 15:08:24

Title: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 16, 15:08:24
There's a chance this might have already been discussed, so apologies if it was.  X3

So, I'm an active user on a couple of forums and I have to say, it's been a while since I didn't have to use an URL to change my avatar to a custom one like here. Uploading images to use as avatar is a common thing, specially at forums. A lot of people like to customize before adding them (like me), so it should make sense having an option to add the avatar through upload.

Also, I honestly think the maximum viewing size of the avatars should be increased. 178x300 for example is probably one of the best-looking avatar sizes out there, and it makes everything prettier. Just an example of what my currently avatar could look here:

Spoiler: show
(https://i.imgur.com/MLlO7CE.png)


What you guys think? Considering it's a mlp-based forum, I'd love to see bigger and prettier avatars out there...
Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: Night Striker on 2018 Aug 16, 18:20:27
Uploading images, instead of URL would be nice, but I'm not sure if LoE could really do it. Don't quote me on this, but I imagine they would need to invest more money and/or resources to hold the possibly thousands of avatars people would upload and doing it by URL would definitely save money and resources since you're using an external site to host all these images.

As for the avatar size change, I'm not sure if I would really support it since a square avatar size is the one of the most common shape on forums and generally the internet, with other being a circle(or at least as far as I can tell), and if it were to change to a rectangular shape you suggested, it would definitely make your avatar look good, but for others who use square images like me as a universal avatar or just in general, it would probably just look awkward if the forum stretched an image out or probably at best, just look inconsistent if everyone had different sizes for avatars.

And just out of curiosity, is there like another forum or website that uses a rectangular avatar that you could link to? I have genuinely never seen another forum/website that uses this format
Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 16, 19:28:45
Not necessarily change URL to upload, having both options would be nice so anyone can decide which to use. This is the first forum I've seen limited to only URL. It just looks weird. Much smaller forums I know use the upload system, so I'm really not sure how exactly this storage thing works, either way, I don't think it is that expensive to implement it since most pre-made forums come with that option already.

Also, here's one forum that uses the rectangular avatar, which is also a MLP forum (Brazil): Link (http://sonicrainboom.boards.net/)

For anyone interested in seeing, I'm going to drop some pictures of the avatars there below on the spoilerbox since you have to register to be able to see the posts and profiles from other users anyway. And like I said, this looks much, much better.

Pictures below:
Spoiler: show

(https://i.imgur.com/wH1y2eg.png)



(https://i.imgur.com/fPuaYTL.png)



(https://i.imgur.com/ayXdNV9.png)



(https://i.imgur.com/4H3BcoV.png)



(https://i.imgur.com/dcuvEMy.png)




If anyone from the team needs help with this in case this goes forward, I can help, either with donations or tips on forum aesthetics.

I'm also going to take the chance and say that the reward system included on that forum for the number of posts are really good too. In case anyone is wondering what's that it is those mini-images below the avatars from the pictures above. It not only increases people to become more active on the forum, it makes people happy to actually earn something for being active on the community, and it looks good for everybody (plus, it's kinda nice to show off your reward of 2k+ posts).


Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 16, 19:40:04
Sorry for the double post.

Anyways, I'm going to use my own post above just so you can see how better the spaces can be used. I know, the post was quite long, but here's my point. From what I've seen, there's a lot of big signatures here, so, even if the post is relatively small, it still has some space going down just for the signature, which will create unused space on the avatar/posts/info area.

Here's what I mean:
Spoiler: show
(https://i.imgur.com/USyjCM5.png)


And I don't have anything on my signature!

Now, the question is, why not use that unused space to improve the avatar quality? And add a post-reward system?
Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: Night Striker on 2018 Aug 17, 09:58:43
Quote from: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 16, 19:28:45If anyone from the team needs help with this in case this goes forward, I can help, either with donations or tips on forum aesthetics.

Btw, they won't accept donations (https://www.legendsofequestria.com/faq) from people. (It's under "What can I do to help with this project?")


Quote from: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 16, 19:28:45I'm also going to take the chance and say that the reward system included on that forum for the number of posts are really good too. In case anyone is wondering what's that it is those mini-images below the avatars from the pictures above. It not only increases people to become more active on the forum, it makes people happy to actually earn something for being active on the community, and it looks good for everybody (plus, it's kinda nice to show off your reward of 2k+ posts).

I would support this. Totally not because I'm one of the more active users on the forums.
Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: Pipkin on 2018 Aug 25, 21:25:06
I'll only comment on what I know, personally

Avatars: Uploading images to the site will take up unnecessary space on our servers, hence the URL fetching for avatars.  On the note of avatar sizes, the vast majority of any site that has avatars are square proportions.  I don't even know if the web dev team has the ability to change that, as it's the standard for 95% of websites, but most likely isn't something we'd change.
Also randomly changing avatar size to non'linear proportions will break a very many users' avatars as they are mostly made to be square, mine included.

Rewards/Karma system:  We've tried that in the past.  It ended very badly.  It most likely will not come back, especially the badges.
Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 27, 19:07:07
Quote from: Princess Darcy on 2018 Aug 25, 21:25:06Also randomly changing avatar size to non'linear proportions will break a very many users' avatars as they are mostly made to be square, mine included.

Rewards/Karma system:  We've tried that in the past.  It ended very badly.  It most likely will not come back, especially the badges.

Not true. Having an increased size limit doesn't specifically change the avatar layout based on the maximum size allowed. If you're having a square shape, it'll stay that way, if you change to a rectangular shape (if it's allowed), it'll adapt automatically. On that forum I used the examples, theres a lot of avatars that still use square ones because it's either preference or they don't know how to resize. Unless ancient html/css is being used, this shouldn't be a problem.

About the Reward system, since it's something pretty common to find, care to explain a bit better on what happened?
Title: Re: [Suggestion] Avatar Improvements
Post by: Pipkin on 2018 Sep 18, 22:10:08
Quote from: SapphireCookie on 2018 Aug 27, 19:07:07Not true. Having an increased size limit doesn't specifically change the avatar layout based on the maximum size allowed. If you're having a square shape, it'll stay that way, if you change to a rectangular shape (if it's allowed), it'll adapt automatically. On that forum I used the examples, theres a lot of avatars that still use square ones because it's either preference or they don't know how to resize. Unless ancient html/css is being used, this shouldn't be a problem.

About the Reward system, since it's something pretty common to find, care to explain a bit better on what happened?

In that case it would be something for the web design team to review and make a case on, for the avatars

For the karma/badge reward system, at the time it was used we felt the forum was better off without it.  Again, ultimately it's a web designer and possibly PR call.