* Trivial question on forum avatar size

[Tony Jones]

Apologies for the triviality of this, but why are forum avatars so tiny? It's 2024, 100x100 at 6kB seems a little antiquated! I thought I'd actually set mine up, tried to upload and have spent 15 minutes failing to scale an image small enough!

Not exactly important, but as I understand it the forum software has an easy to set option to control the range of permissible file sizes.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Apologies for the triviality of this, but why are forum avatars so tiny? It's 2024, 100x100 at 6kB seems a little antiquated! I thought I'd actually set mine up, tried to upload and have spent 15 minutes failing to scale an image small enough!

Not exactly important, but as I understand it the forum software has an easy to set option to control the range of permissible file sizes.

Yep, and we set it to reduce our storage costs.

[Tony Jones]

Yep, and we set it to reduce our storage costs.

Really? How much does this storage cost that increasing the size of a few 100 avatars from 6k to something more contemporary breaks the bank?! I'm astonished, given how little storage actually costs!!!!

[tatewise]

FYI: We have over 7,000 members on record.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Yep, and we set it to reduce our storage costs.

Really? How much does this storage cost that increasing the size of a few 100 avatars from 6k to something more contemporary breaks the bank?! I'm astonished, given how little storage actually costs!!!!

My icon (which I use in a lot of places) is just over 3k and does the job nicely. Your intended icon must be pretty special.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Plus 100 x 100 fits in nicely with our theme and doesn't impact performance overly for those of our members who don't have fast Internet.

[jelv]

If Avatars over 100x100 were allowed I can guarantee that I and others would be turning this option off! I've done just that on other forums where pointlessly large avatars were allowed.

Avatar size.png (53.01 KiB) Viewed 390 times

[Tony Jones]

Plus 100 x 100 fits in nicely with our theme and doesn't impact performance overly for those of our members who don't have fast Internet.

I'm not railing about the 100x100, more the file size

[Tony Jones]

FYI: We have over 7,000 members on record.

At 6k per avatar, that's 42 Megabytes of storage — increasing to 20k (something I find people debating on forums ten years ago) would up that to a huge (I'm being sarcastic) 140 Mb, which is still peanuts by any measure.

I feel like I'm trying to flog a dead horse

[Tony Jones]

If Avatars over 100x100 were allowed I can guarantee that I and others would be turning this option off! I've done just that on other forums where pointlessly large avatars were allowed.

Avatar size.png

I'm not suggesting the arbitrary 100x100 should change, just the file size

[Tony Jones]

My icon (which I use in a lot of places) is just over 3k and does the job nicely. Your intended icon must be pretty special.

I don't have to make an avatar for anything else, just picked a small colour image and unable to get it to shrink to the intended file size.

[Tony Jones]

It's entirely obvious I'm not convincing anybody, and every comment so far has been in defence of the status quo, so I will stop trying to suggest what seemed to be a trivial update behind the scenes and go back to lurking.

Could an admin feel free to close / delete this thread

[ColeValleyGirl]

I'll leave it here -- you might pick up some support when the board is busier.

Is there something out of the ordinary about your image? I'd be happy to try shrinking it.

[jelv]

When you shrink your chosen image, what format are you saving it as? It should be jpg and I note that the avatar you have set up is a png.

Attach the image to a post and I'll try converting it to an acceptable size for you.

[Tony Jones]

When you shrink your chosen image, what format are you saving it as? It should be jpg and I note that the avatar you have set up is a png.

Attach the image to a post and I'll try converting it to an acceptable size for you.

I've no idea where the avatar came from, thanks though for the note on image format — useful information I wish the upload function had shared

[Tony Jones]

I'll leave it here -- you might pick up some support when the board is busier.

Is there something out of the ordinary about your image? I'd be happy to try shrinking it.

Thanks for the offer, thanks to the next poster I now learn the file format was the problem. I'm off to make a cup of tea and take a break