Profile Photo Gallery

Give your members a set of profile photos to choose from, instead of leaving every avatar to whatever they happen to upload.

You supply the photos. Members pick one from their account settings, and it becomes their profile photo everywhere on the community — topics, profiles, the member list, hovercards, notifications.

Why communities want this

• Younger or moderated communities where letting members upload arbitrary images is a moderation problem you would rather not have.
• Themed communities — a game, a show, a team — where a set of house avatars is part of the character of the place.
• Anyone tired of the letter avatar. Most members never set a photo at all. A row of ready-made ones they can pick with a single click converts far better than an upload form.

What it does

• Photo sets. Group your photos however you like — "Mascots", "Seasonal", "Staff" — each with its own heading that members see.
• Restrict a set to member groups. Staff-only avatars, supporter-only avatars, a set that only appears for a promoted group. Secondary groups count, so a member given a staff group as a secondary sees the staff photos.
• Members choose from their account settings, in a tab alongside Email Address and Password, where they already go to change things about their account.
• One click to change, one click to remove. The photo they are wearing is marked, so it is obvious what they have.
• See what is actually being used. Every photo in the AdminCP shows how many members are wearing it, and deleting one that is in use warns you first.
• Upload in bulk. Select a folder's worth of images at once; they are resized on the way in.

How it stores them

One copy of each photo, shared by everyone who chose it — not a duplicate per member. A community of five thousand members wearing twenty avatars stores twenty images.

It uses the same mechanism Invision Community's own Gallery application uses for this, so photos work everywhere a profile photo appears, with no theme edits and no template hooks. They can also be moved to S3 or any other storage you have configured, from the AdminCP screen you already use for that.

What it does not do

• It does not remove or replace your members' ability to upload their own photo. That stays exactly as your group settings have it — the gallery is an additional way to get one, not a restriction. If you want uploads switched off, that is a group setting in Invision Community itself.
• It does not import photos from anywhere. You upload the images you want offered.

Requirements

• Invision Community 5.
• Nothing else. No third-party service, no cron job, no theme changes.

Invision Community offers a profile photo gallery on its Cloud Team, Business and Enterprise plans. This brings the same idea to a self-hosted community.