Avatars Activated, Please Read

[Doug]

Many of you have been waiting a long time for avatars to be activated. Your wait is now over!

An avatar guide has been posted below for those who may not be familiar with avatars.

Even though image scale is on, you MUST ensure that the image size that you want to upload is no greater than 25kb prior to uploading. The image scale only resizes the dimensions, not the file size.

If you are having problems changing your avatar from your current one, first try clearing your cache, then close your browser and retry.

Please post your questions or problems here.

Thank you!

[Doug]

What is an avatar?

Wikipedia defines an avatar as: “…a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego….” It goes on to state: “Avatars on Internet forums serve the purpose of representing users and their actions, personalizing their contributions to the forum, and may represent different parts of their persona, beliefs, interests or social status in the forum.”

Basically, an avatar is a small picture, usually no larger than about 25 kb in size that will be displayed to the left of your post, beneath your username. It will be displayed with every post and helps other forum members easily identify you.

Do I have to have an avatar?

No. If you don’t upload an avatar, you will not have one. So, if you do not want an avatar, no action is required.

I do not wish to view other’s avatars. Can I opt out?

Yes, and it is quite easy to do. The steps are outlined below:
First ensure that you are logged into your account. Near the top, right hand side of the page, above the picture of The CJ3B Page homepage, click on “My Controls.”



On the left hand side of the page will be a column called “Menu.” Near the bottom is a sub-heading called “Options.” In this section, click on the selection titled: “Board Settings.”



Near the middle of the page, you will see a column titled: “Welcome to your control panel.” Scroll down until you see a sub-heading called: “Board display settings.” Beneath this sub-heading, scroll down until you see the option: “Do you wish to view members avatars when reading topics?”



In the drop down menu to the right, select “No.” Near the bottom of the page, click on “Change my account options.”



Finally, click on “CJ3B Bulletin Board” near the top left of the page and it will return you to the Bulletin Board main page.

[Doug]

I would like an avatar, but don’t know how to make one.

It is not difficult to create an avatar. First, you need to decide on a picture, and it needs to be in one of the following formats: .gif .jpeg .jpg .png .bmp. Once you have a picture in the proper format saved on your computer, perform the following steps.

First ensure that you are logged into your account.
Near the top, right hand side of the page, above the picture of The CJ3B Page homepage, click on “My Controls.”



On the left hand side of the page will be a column called “Menu.” Near the middle is a sub-heading called “Personal Profile.” In this section, click on the selection titled: “Edit Avatar Settings.”



Near the middle of the page, you will see a column titled: “Welcome to your control panel.” Scroll down until you see a sub-heading called: “Your Image Avatars.” Select the “Browse” button and this should open a window and let you navigate to where you saved your picture on your computer. Select “open.” Note that depending on which browser you use (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, etc) your exact view may vary.



The image location should now show up in the box. Select “Update Avatar” button.



Your avatar should now be enabled. All of your previous posts should now display your avatar, as will your future posts. Finally, click on “CJ3B Bulletin Board” near the top left of the page and it will return you to the Bulletin Board main page. If you have any questions or problems, please contact an administrator.

[Chet]

Nicely done Doug!

Look forward to seeing some cool 3B avatars!

[Don]

Good Morning Doug,

I tried to add an avatar this morning but seem to be having trouble. All goes per your instructions, picture is jpeg format, but when I hit 'UPDATE AVATAR" it starts to load then goes to a different screen and says "This menu has been disabled".

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Don

[Don]

Doug, I'm back.

OK,,,, next question,,, after I posted that last message, 30 seconds ago, I seee that the avatar I tried to load the first day I joined has been turned on. so how now do I remove an existing avatar and replace it?

Thanks again,

Don

[Doug]

Hello Don,

I had that same issue on Friday. Try this procedure:

Go into your control panel and select delete avatar.
Your avatar picture should go away.
Next, you will need to delete your cache (in explorer, I think it's Tools>Internet Options. It's in there somewhere. I don't use explorer except at work, so I can't check on it right now.)
After you've deleted cache, close your browser and then open it again.
Go back into your control panel and reload your avatar.
At this point, it should work.

After you've deleted your cache, other's avatars will look different if they've changed it. I've changed mine about 75 times since Friday. For example, I put an avatar on here on Friday night, but it came out all skewed, so yesterday morning, I used some good photo editing programs and came up with a pretty nice avatar. I loaded it using my PC. Later in the day, I logged on with my laptop and it still showed the old, skewed avatar. I had to delete the cache and then it displayed the correct avatar.

Also, before trying to upload your photo, you MUST ensure that it's no larger than 25kb in size. The site will absolutely not accept it if it's any larger.

Hope this helps. Let me know if it doesn't!

Doug

[Don]

HEY DOUG !!!!

IT WORKED !!!!! THANKS

Incase you can't tell it's a picture of a Koenig PTO mounted before the body was installed. Just a pic to play with.

[Chet]

I'm all for keeping pics small. It's very annoying when someone post a pic that has not been resized.

With that said...these got to be the tiniest Avatars I have ever seen!!!

Just sayin'.

[ElmoTexas3B]

Doug,
This may be a stupid question. However, How do you come up with a pic of you jeep that is only 25KB in size??? It seems that ALL my jpeg pics are WAY over 25KB. I have several cool pics of my 3B but they are to large. Any help / suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[Doug]

Clint,

Sorry for the delay; I've been working some long hours this week.

The easiest way to make your picture smaller, that I know of, is to use Paint. I think that Paint is loaded on every computer running windows.

Now, the first step is to save a copy of your original picture. Work with the copy and leave the original alone; you don't want your original to be 25kb in size!

To find Paint, go to Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Paint. Or you may have to perform a search to find it.

Once Paint is open, select: File --> Open and now choose your file and select Open. At this point, your picture should be displayed in the Paint program.

Now, select: Image --> Stretch/Skew and a popup window should appear. The top section is Stretch and the bottom is skew. You'll want to work with the stretch section. Try putting in 50% for both horizontal and vertical. Select OK.

Close and save the file. Right click on the picture icon and select properties. This should display your image size. Now, just keep repeating that process until you have a good file size. That is kind a long, round about way of making your picture smaller.

There are other photo editing programs out there that will allow you to do so much more. Two that I have are Print Shop 22 and Gimp. I used both of those to create my avatar.

Anyway, using this method will get your picture size down to an acceptable level to create an avatar.

If your avatar doesn't display properly, remember to try the procedure for clearing your cache in my post above.

I hope that this helps. If you can't get it to work, just email your picture to me and I will work it and send back the file.

Good luck!

[ElmoTexas3B]

Doug,
Thanks for the input. I worked all weekend so hopefully I can give you tips a try this week . I will let ya know how it turns out.

Thanks again,

[johnrb]

For those who would like something a bit more sophisticated than Paint, there is Irfanview. It is, without question, the most useful free graphics software available. Note the price is zero - it's free. It's a mini-photoshop - can be used to crop, re-size, re-proportion, color correct your pics. It will change the compression of your .jpg pics so you can control the file size and keep it within the 25kB limit for avatars as well as keep the size reasonable for posted pics.

http://www.irfanview.com

It's free and has no adware, malware, etc. If you want to use it for almost any graphics, video or audio format, download the plugins file as well. So far the only plugin I've found that's not included is Quicktime for videos.

I also use it for scanning, merging pics together (panorama), general housekeeping for all my digital photos. Many more features I have yet to explore.

Current version is 4.23
You'll love it.

[johnnybravo]

I am new on this site and I am having difficulty posting an Avatar. Following is my photo and the error message I get. Can you help? 55.8KB is the smallest I could get using websizer, is this still to big??


The error returned was:

You are not allowed to upload that type of file as an avatar or personal photo

[Doug]

Johnny, I am on the road this week so may have some difficulty helping out. What I would suggest is to read John's post directly above yours. I'd save a copy of your original and name it avatar or something - you don't want to resize your original down to 25kb!! Then try resizing using irfanview as John suggested. Once it's the proper size, THEN upload to the site. Unlike when posting pictures, you can upload an avatar directly from your hard drive.