To Gravatar or not to Gravatar...

[Arantor]

So I'm currently overhauling the entirety of the avatar system for my upcoming site. I currently have Gravatar support - you know, where it's based off your email address and it's the sort of thing you probably set up once and haven't changed. Certainly true in my case - I set mine to the Powerslave album maybe a decade ago and never changed it since. In case you're wondering where you configure it... it's an offshoot of wordpress.com. And it's implemented in XenForo by default amongst others.

But here's the thing, the upcoming site is roleplay based. It doesn't seem to me that roleplay folks would *ever* want Gravatar. I think if anything, the software should apply a default avatar to accounts that don't have one to encourage people to personalise.

What do other folks think?

(I know regular forum software is split on the subject of Gravatar vs letters-on-a-background as a position. Both fly in a regular forum context. I think only the latter might in a roleplay context.)

 

[Cedric]

I don’t mind gravatar. Beats having to set it all the time. But I’m no roleplayer, so I dunno what their point of view is.

 

[Uncrowned]

Options would probably be the best thing here. I can 100% see custom avatars being a big part of a roleplaying forum, but at the same time, I see a lot of roleplaying forums where most users have their standard avatars.

 

[Arantor]

I wonder if that's because you and I frequent rather different forums. The ones I've studied in the last year in particular... no default avatars to be found except for people who almost never contribute - anyone *really* contributing sets up plenty of avatars, to the point where I'm actually added multi-avatar support at present.

 

[kolakube]

I prefer to disable Gravatars so I have less offsite stuff loading on my pages. I can see custom themed default avatars and a "setup wizard" encouragement for users to upload their custom avatars working well for something like a roleplay site.

 

[Arantor]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I definitely have thoughts on a setup wizard approach, perks of having a platform I can tool exactly to my desires.

 

[Heatman]

Options would probably be the best thing here. I can 100% see custom avatars being a big part of a roleplaying forum, but at the same time, I see a lot of roleplaying forums where most users have their standard avatars.

It is always right for you to give the option to your members to choose the way they want to make use of the avatars because that is going to sync very well to them with setting up their account the way they love better represented with their avatar. Having a single option available is not something I would suggest.

 

[Reverie]

I think options for them would be good, and you could set an automatic one if they choose to not use one. I think just one with the forum name can look nice, and if they choose to change it to a custom avatar that's okay!

Gravatar is awesome, but with roleplaying in mind I don't know if that would be the best for them.