The forum updates that have been going on across the rest of the Stardock websites have finally made their way to JoeUser. There are a whole slew of changes that hopefully I'll get to describing and documenting later for everyone, but one of the most immediate differences people have already noticed are the Forum Avatars; the little pictures that appear next to people's names on forum posts.
We've had avatars for a while, as anyone who had one before would have it show on any comment they left on an article or thread. The difference now is, on the forums, those without an avatar will see a little gray silhouette that says "No Photo." This little tutorial is for those of you who hate that little gray man looking back at you, mocking you and your lack of ultra-cool avatar. Follow along for a very simple guide to getting yourself a forum avatar.
I've tried to make the process as clear as possible by illustrating the steps with screenshots. If there is any confusion, please let me know and I'll try to get things cleared up.
- Click on the "Forums" link located at the top of any JoeUser page.
- If you are not automatically logged into the forums, do so now.
- Click on the "My Account" link across the top of the forums
- Click on the "Update Images" tab
- The first section is labeled "Personal Icon" This is your forum avatar that will appear next to posts you make on JoeUser.com, WinCustomize.com, GalCiv2.com or any other Stardock forum.
You need to have an image created that is in .jpg format ready to go. I have a little Master Chief icon I've been using for a while that I like...
Generally speaking, the smaller your image is to start with the better. It will automatically be resized to 50x50 pixels (the size of the above image), so you'll lose a lot of quality and it'll be hard to see whatever picture it is you uploaded.
- Once you have an image saved to your computer that you want to use, click on the "browse" button under the "Personal Icon" heading.
This will bring up the Open File dialog, browse to your saved image, select it and then click "Open"
After clicking on "Open" you'll be returned to the web page, and in the field next to the browse button, you should now see part of the file path to your image file.
- Now, click on the "Upload" button lower on the page.
- If you followed these steps and uploaded a .jpg file, you should see the following after clicking upload:
There you have it, a quick-and-dirty tutorial on how to get your forum avatar uploaded to the system!