BuddyPress

Hey guys, I’m working on a plugin that is an adaptation of ravatar (which was built for for Wordpress 2.5). I realise its been out of development for a while, but I’ve done some code changes and have it working on the latest 3.x Wordpress – I wanted to use my own random (wavatar) type system where I design different head graphics and have them alternate colour/background etc. as I grew tired of the wavetar effect and wanted my own graphic.

Wondering if people are interested in this as a public release?

Hey guys,

Just letting everyone know I’ve finally made progress on this: I now have custom avatars for Buddypress – the code needs tidying up, but its pretty much there. If all else fails then it reverts to the mysteryman. At the moment I’m trying to see if I can set a male/female setting, so when users sign up it can auto-generate dependent on their gender.

Should note it filters bp_core_fetch_avatar, so if someone uses a gravatar then it’ll show accordingly.

Anyone interested in this as a plugin? The theory is that I’m going to do various different graphics/styles so people can ultimately choose or design their own avatars “parts”. Might need someone look over my code though – its rough at best. I could also see this as quite a nice official implementation in the core as I’m sure designers would like to extend the avatar system.

Some screenshots:

http://www.obscuresounds.com/output.png

http://www.obscuresounds.com/avatar-screenshot.jpg

@grimbog

Was there any progress on this? I was interested in the same thing, whether if it’s code or an actual plugin.

Thanks!

@grimbog: This is interesting. Hope to hear good news soon.

@Reezo, @Dimensionmedia:

Thanks guys… sorry for taking such a long time to update on this. Ended up having to work on some other projects. I’ve managed to get the custom avatar generator to function okay now, and have a live project that uses it (http://school.ocdaction.org.uk/), but I need to tidy up the code a little. At the moment I’m having to plug the wordpress avatar function (get_avatar) and use that for my rendering duties. What I’d like to happen is for the bp dev team to make their bp_core_fetch_avatar pluggable, as it doesnt really have much scope for extending in its current state. Maybe I’m wrong, but if someone has more knowledge of how to alter bp_core_fetch_avatar for my needs then that would be awesome. I did think of filtering, but one aspect of bp_core_fetch_avatar I don’t particulary see the need of is that it pushes the final img url through http://www.gravatar.com, which in my opinion is a wasted resource, as this plugin would only read directly off the parts folder when it generates an avatar, and then loads from a cache dir.

Welcome any thoughts on this.

Hi I am looking to utilise something like this. Any progress?
thanks

Hope you do well with this, I would also be interested in using this.

I’m sure many others would too!

Good news all… I’ve finally got this working as intended, and I’m currently in the process of packing it all together in to a plugin for release to the community over the next few days. Just creating a small webpage where people can download it, and I’ll hopefully have an online user guide.

Screenshot:

http://www.obscuresounds.com/obscureavatar-beta.jpg

For now it works like this:

1. designers can create transparent png “parts” of an avatar divided in to 3 sections (body, face, head).
2. the plugin can differentiate between male and female by parsing in a string (m, or f), so again designers can create gender specific avatars based on needs.
3. users who upload avatars via BP will bypass obscureavatars, and the plugin will only use gravatar as a last resort for groups, and blogs.
4. it works for both wordpress, and buddypress.

Essentially it sets out to do what I’ve wanted – to make the avatars a bit easier to work with for designers. Although I mainly develop backend stuff I love UI design, and one thing I’ve noticed is that pretty much all wordpress projects either use gravatars tacky generated content, or the dull wordpress avatar. Not only that but they fail to facilitate basic gender styles, which is essential for social network propagation now-days.

I want to continue developing this in to something more sophisticated (I’m thinking it would be cool if designers could zip their parts in to packs, so that people can interchange them in an instant), but I will only be able to do this based on its popularity and support.

Hey, looks like a novel approach — I’ll have a play when you get the plugin out

@djpaul: Thanks Paul, I would really appreciate any thoughts and feedback when its out, as I can imagine the coding will be a little hazy in places. Should be fairly easy to understand though.

This is cool, i’ve been monitoring this off and on – glad to see you come through! Happy to test this one out.

any progress? would love to see whats been done and test it out to see if we can use it… really looking forward to this.

hello everyone.. found a solution to this.. so thought i’d share it here too.. (i’m posting this in all the different threads out there about the same topic)

If you want a custom set of pics to replace the default buddypress avatars and be assigned by random to members… here goes:

http://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/custom-set-of-avatar-pics/#post-101775

sid

there is a problem in that avatar so i cant upload my avatar