Camen Design Forum

Gravatar... Oi

append delete theraje

Recently (I think when I started my now-dusty Twitter account) I started using Gravatar to "manage" my avatars. There are a number of fora I frequent, and I assumed it would be handy if I could use a single link to get my avatar to show up on all those boards.

It worked fine, until yesterday morning I decided to change my avatar. Long story short, within the next 36 hours or so I decided to remove all my images at Gravatar and abandon my account there.

Does anyone have suggestions for a *working* solution for a "universal" avatar? It is a pain in the rear having to go into my account settings for every one of my haunts to update everything. Gravatar seemed to be the answer, but it simply doesn't work all that well in my experience -- I'd prefer just to go back to the old "change avatar URL for every forum each time I make a new avatar" than deal with Gravatar another second. That said, it would be nice if there were a way I could not put so much fuss into maintaining my avatars.

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append delete #1. jamesmiller5

Try using Dropbox.

1. Create a free 2gb Dropbox account
2. Host your image under the public folder
3. Use the link and post it to the forums

The bandwidth limit is 10GB a day for a free account.

append delete #2. theraje

I was half-expecting any lists to have two additional items tacked onto the end:

X. ????
Y. Profit!

But you didn't; and for that, I commend you. :P

It's amazing how many accounts one must establish to do much of anything on the Web these days. I might just go back to the "old way" of doing things (which would entail emailing Kroc a picture of myself looking at him with a "sad puppy" expression on my face...)

;)

append delete #3. jamesmiller5

Yea, I agree that it's insane how technically challenging it is to just host some information for others.

I think Dropbox has the right idea, in there terms & conditions it explicitly states that the stuff you host with them is yours and yours alone. I hope someone makes a social network thingy that just runs on Dropbox because its so simple to use.

append delete #4. theraje

Freaking dial-up.

Tried downloading the DropBox app a few times, but the transfer always fails by the time I've gotten 2MB of it downloaded (the total download is currently 14.9MB). I didn't think it would work (I never have much luck downloading anything without it failing after the first couple megabytes), but I gave it a shot.

I now facepalm with great vigor.

append delete #5. Kroc

How often do you change it? You can just host a file on theraje.com and use that URL across all the forums, so you can change the image file when you want, but keep the same URL.

append delete #6. theraje

“How often do you change it? You can just host a file on theraje.com and use that URL across all the forums, so you can change the image file when you want, but keep the same URL.”

Does your current host still do that mumbo-jumbo that resets my FTP account each month?

It's not a frequent thing, but I do like to doodle a new avatar now and then.

Oh -- and I *did* finally manage to download Dropbox's app (started at 2:23 AM Central US, finished at 4:25 AM). I spent that time writing a love-letter to phone Internet -- which I will post here (in a new thread) momentarily.

theraje added on

The "love letter" to which I alluded can be found here:

http://forum.camendesign.com/the_joys_of_dial-up

append delete #7. Jacob

You can host images for free, indefinetly (assuming they get at least one visit every six months), with http://imgur.com

This is useful for when you don't wish to use Dropbox, or are not at a computer you own. There are a variety of lightweight CLI scripts and GUI apps for uploading images to imgur. Several of these measured in the couple-hundred kB range. http://imgur.com/apps

If you can spare a few dozens US cents each month, then you can get an amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and host whatever sort of files you'd like. Uploads can be accomplised with a varaity of GUI apps, the Amazon s3 web interface, or their CLI tool. http://aws.amazon.com/developertools/739

I currently have a few gigabytes hosted on my assorted s3 buckets and pay around $1.47 USD montly. It's a pay-as-you-go service, so you are only charged for exactly what you use. A friend runs an hourly diff-only 16GB backup of their home directory. Other than the initial bandwidth cost ($10 or so USD) she pays just under a dollar for monthly file storage and intermitent bandwidth charges.

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