How to link an Avatar

[Weisseman]

When choosing an avatar to use there is only one way to get it to work out here. By linking it from an external site. There are number of image hosts out there to use. Here's a few that you might consider:

• Flickr
• Photobucket
• Imageshack

Before uploading the picture you want to use please check that it follows the guidelines we have on avatars which can be found here.
When linking you need to use a specific url. Flickr has actually made finding this a little harder than it should have but it still a good image host site. Photobucket and Imageshack don't have this issue thankfully.

To find the url in Flickr you need to click on the image you want to use, the click on image again and an overlay will appear. On the top right will be the All Sizes button. Click that and then choose the size you want. At this point you can right click on the image and copy the image url (eg: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4020/4675413365_e5970e239a_t.jpg) This is the easiest way I've found and it means you can still use images that are set to just you privacy.

For photobucket you just hover over the picture and then copy the direct link url. (eg: http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c127/Weisseman/WeisseSyiNimraissmall.jpg)

Imageshack puts 6 options down the side of the image thumbnail. You need to click on the top on and it will display info of the picture. There the have a field called Direct which has the url. (eg: http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/1439/weissesyinimraissmall.jpg)

After obtaining the url go to your profile. Under the Forum profile option on the left there are 3 options for the avatar. You need to use the 2nd option "I have my own pic:". Copy and paste the url there then click change profile at the bottom.
After that your avatar should work If you're still having trouble please contact one of the staff members and we'll help you out.

N.B

The avatar upload and server stored avatars now work. If you don't wish to link in an avatar you can now just upload it to the server and it should work fine

[Shim]

For visual learners, I've posted this on several threads, so here's a direct page-to-page on how do this with Photobucket .  Hope I could help as well.

[Mooshi]

Here is an imagehost you can put on the list. www.imgur.com Found out about it by accident after reading complaints over some hosts giving bandwidth exceeded messages (mainly against photobucket) It's actually well used and capable of alot of bandwidth appearntly. While I doubt Furtopia will put any strain on photobucket, couldn't hurt adding imgur.

[Arbutus]

Oh, neat, I'd never heard of imgur before. Thanks for sharing that, Mooshi.

[Weisseman]

Imgur is primarily used by the Reddit community x3 I never really thought about adding it to the list.

Also discovered why Flickr has made it harder to link stuff.
To get a link you need to have the privacy options basically turned off for the Share this option to be enabled as they want the picture to link back to a flickr page similar to how photobucket works with links. While this has annoyed me you can still link pictures without having to make any pics public. Just takes alittle more effort to find the link.

I'll have to update the flickr part of the tutorial later as it has changed to this new method.

[Kada-Ru]

Also, if one has a website you can link directly to the url of your avatar image.