Avatar How To
Avatars are small images that are displayed next to your Username in various areas on SoFurry. If you have used an on-line bulletin board or forum before you know what they are. In this section I'll help you select either a default avatar provided by the SoFurry community or upload your own.
Using provided Avatars
The simplest way to set an avatar is to use one of SoFurry's Provided Avatars.
- Log in to SoFurry.
- Click the link at the top left-most part of the header under your user name titled settings
- On the left-most side of the settings page are a set of persistent links under the heading titled Tools. (These links stay on the page no matter what tab you click on.) The top link is titled Avatars. Click the link.
- A new page will open titled My Avatars. At the bottom left most side of the page is a link titled Provided Avatars. (Indicated by 1 on the image to the right.) Simply click the link and select any one of the provided images by clicking on the USE link at the bottom of the avatar.
Using a custom Avatar
If you already have an avatar you would like to upload to use then this part is for you, but first I have to mention a few things about what kind of files are allowed.
Please note: After uploading new avatars it may take up to a couple of hours for your new avatars to 'appear' in your profile and on other places on the site. This is normal. The reason is that avatars are low priority compared to things like live chat so all the servers get updated in the background when they are not as busy.
- Avatars come in two varieties. Clean and Adult. You should always have at least one clean avatar that will be displayed to users who have adult settings turned off.
- You can have multiple avatars. Their are some exciting things in the works with avatars but at this time SoFurry will randomly choose one of your avatars from the list you have uploaded based on the viewer's adult settings.
- Avatars need to be 100 x 100 pixels in size.
- Avatars can be in PNG, JPG or GIF format.
- You can use animated avatars, but the image should not flash or use rapidly changing colors out of courtesy. (It can also be dangerous! Rapidly changing colors, in particular the color red, can adversely effect people with epilepsy and other serious medical conditions.)
- Animated avatars need to be less than 2MB. Look for this size to be reduced soon!
Once you have a file that meets the above parameters it's time to upload it. The image on the upper right has numbers on it illustrating the steps detailed below.
- Log in to SoFurry.
- Float over your user avatar at the left of the header and choose settings from the menu that appears.
- On the left-most side of the settings page are a set of persistent links under the heading titled Tools. (These links stay on the page no matter what tab you click on.) The top link is titled Avatars. Click the link.
- First click the Upload New Avatar Button. (2)
- A file dialog box will appear. (3) Note: Your dialog box will probably look different depending on your operating system / browser.
- Select the file you wish to upload and select the Open button. (4)
- If your file is larger than 100 x 100 pixels a new page will open (5) allowing you to crop (select a smaller part) of the file to use as your avatar. In the example image I moved the bounding box on the top image so that it selected the part of the picture I wanted to use as my avatar. The bottom image shows a preview of the avatar. Once your finished click the Crop Avatar link.
- Your avatar will appear in a list back on the My Avatars page. If your avatar contains adult content click the [toggle] (6) link to switch it between adults and all ages.
- If your not happy with your new avatar or simply would like to remove it click the delete (7) link to remove it from SoFurry.
If you have multiple avatars the SoFurry servers will choose one at random to use about every fifteen minutes or so. (Two if you have both adult and non adult avatars. The adult one will be displayed to those users that choose to see adult material and the non adult one for users who are too young or elect not to see adult works.)
