Avatar Settings

An avatar is an image that represents a person in the community. A person's avatar is displayed when they contribute. Avatars are one way for people to make their participation in the community more personal. You can configure avatars in the admin console.

Admin Console: People > Settings > Avatar Settings

Managing Default Avatars in the Gallery

The application includes several avatar images. By default, administrators and moderators can choose from among these, but you can enable the choice for registered users as well. When registered users can choose avatars, they'll be able to choose from the avatars pictured in the admin console. If the community is configured to support it, they can also upload their own images to use as avatars.

With avatars enabled, users see a "Change photo & avatar" link in the Actions list of their profile page. Depending on how you've set up the feature, users will be able to select from the set of avatar images you've selected, or upload their own.

Adding and Deleting Default Avatars

As an administrator, you can delete existing default avatars or upload new default avatars. To upload a new avatar, from the Avatar Settings page, scroll down to Create New Avatar, and then browse to and upload your new image.

Supporting User-Uploaded Avatars

You can enable avatars for users so they can personalize their profile. You can also allow users to further personalize their experience in the community by enabling user-uploaded avatars. With this feature enabled, people can upload as many images as you specify, and choose one of these images when they want to make a change. You can set the maximum height or width that uploaded avatars should be (in pixels, by default 128 by 128). Enable auto resizing of uploaded avatars to make it easier for people to upload the images they want to use.

Moderating User-Uploaded Avatars

You can have every user-uploaded avatar image added to a moderation queue for approval by checking Moderate uploaded user avatars. When you choose to have avatars moderated, a user uploading an avatar will be told by the UI that their avatar choice is pending approval. Once approved, the avatar will be available for the user to designate it (or others) as their primary avatar. It will not become the user's primary avatar until the user manually selects it.

After a user uploads an avatar, the avatar moderation queue becomes available to a system administrator through a link on the Avatar Settings page in the Admin Console as shown in the following image.

Note: You only see the link when there are images in the queue.

The administrator will then select Defer, Approve, or Reject for images listed in the moderation queue.

Note: User-uploaded avatars won't appear with the default avatar images on the Avatar Settings page. You can view (and delete) a user's uploaded avatar by going to their account summary page in the admin console. To do that, click People > Management > User Search, then click the user's name in the list to view their summary page. On that page, under User Avatars, you can view and delete their uploaded avatar images.

Resizing Avatars

You can set the maximum height or width that uploaded avatars should be (in pixels, by default 128 by 128). Enable auto resizing of uploaded avatars to make it easier for people to upload the images they want to use.