Need help

[computerskillz]

One of the things I'm noticing is that the average user does not know how to resize a pic (yeah, you would think computer illiteracy would be extinct by now, right?), not to mention, alot of people don't even know what the term "Avatar" refers to.

And this causes problems where they lose interest in not being able to have a pic in their profile and not even knowing where to upload one due to ignorance of the term "Avatar" (I've actually had to change that wording on my site, just because so many people were skipping over it in search for where to upload a pic, not knowing what "avatar" means)

So of course I or one of my staff members help them to resize it, but it becomes overwhelming to do so at times, especially when numerous members want to change their pic.

So what I don't understand is, why can't all of this be automated using GD?

I notice on all of the mainstream sites like blackplanet, myspace and even yahoo 360, you can upload any sized pic and it will be automatically resized for the profile.

We have that technology here with GD, so why can't we implement it?

If you have just a small mom&pop site or a little gaming site for kiddies, then yeah it wouldn't matter. But for someone who is making their site more mainstream and open to the general public of users who frequent major sites and are accustomed to certain functionalities being automated, it kinda makes an IntegraMod/phpBB site owner lose legitamacy from the door.

Think about it.

You get a member to join your site who has a profile on match, yahoo, myspace, BP, etc where all they do is just upload a pic and the rest is handled for them, but then they come to your phpbb or Integramod site, they get a message like

Your AVATAR(huh?!) must not be greater than x amount of PIXELS(huh?!) wide and x amount of PIXELS(huh?!) height.

To your average mainstream user coming from sites where all they have to worry about is what new cool person they wish to meet, the above sounds like greek to them.

Fortunately enough, the code to implement GD resizing on the avatar should be significantly less in number of lines than in this post.

[Adrian Rea]

Yes an interesting idea and one I do not have the skills for but worth the thought.

Have you suggested this in the phpbb forums?

I also think the resize would need to be an option as I know of many images that when resized look awful and are better resized locally then uploaded.

As for the word Avatar, so many places use it now there is a catch 22 situation that some would look for avatar instead of pic, especially where there are a number of mods on board in which you can upload a pic.

Perhaps this is a language issue? there has been talk of developing a distinction between differences in the English language. So maybe we should have a lang folder for non-computer educated people (no offence intended to your forum group <img>)

I do see your points, time will tell if we can get a solution. Thanks for the thoughts though. I can remember being flamed on phpBB for having an avatar 5 pixels bigger than the allowed amount. (You gotta love 'em!)

A

[found it]

i have inmplemented this on certain parts of my site by justing adding hieght and width dimensions where the image is going to be shown......

This is done just by adding it in the right spot on the template file, I have even got photos resized in blocks...

I understand it isnt the best solution for all users to risk editing the template files but if you have a couple of places to resize the images it is quite handy...


also have you looked at smarters site as there are many mods on there ....

[computerskillz]

i have inmplemented this on certain parts of my site by justing adding hieght and width dimensions where the image is going to be shown......

This is done just by adding it in the right spot on the template file, I have even got photos resized in blocks...

I understand it isnt the best solution for all users to risk editing the template files but if you have a couple of places to resize the images it is quite handy...


also have you looked at smarters site as there are many mods on there ....

cool idea.. I didn't think of that. So basically all I would have to do is set a a maximum avatar size in the board config, something like 500x500, and then in the template for viewtopic and profile pic, just set the image height to something like 130px, which would automatically adjust everyone's pic.

lol.. sometimes things can be so easy that you just don't realize it at first.

My apologies for the verbosity in the first post.

I'll implement this and then post the steps here for those interested. Thanks

[found it]

cool idea.. I didn't think of that. So basically all I would have to do is set a a maximum avatar size in the board config, something like 500x500, and then in the template for viewtopic and profile pic, just set the image height to something like 130px, which would automatically adjust everyone's pic.

yep basically just add the size you need on the page you need.