how did it work before then Drac?

Edit: not trying to be difficult but I've always just ahd a generic silhouette (sp?) and everyone who hasn't loaded an image has had the same picture. Now they are 'personalized' and I'd like to understand how that wa achieved.

They have a Gravatar plugin for this site, if you assigned you email address for this site to Gravatar then you could select your image. If you didn't then it had the Gravatar logo, you now have a character logo it may be the plugin has been tweaked a little so different users get a different one.

Mine looks like I'm very startled having been surprisingly and roughly 'taken from behind' 😯

well, if you know what you look like under those circumstances cheeseyfeet then thanks for sharing. 😉

edit (again) thanks Drac – still a bit surprised as gravatar seems to insist on an email address. maybe they use forumname@singletrackworld to do it?

Your assisgned Code with your account that code will allow the different avavatar.

Right click on stupid picture.
left click on " block all pictures from gravatar.com.

problem solved.

but everyone else will still see what I look like 😉

yes round and yellow with a squint in one eye

oh, I was just getting used to being a green triangle.

Mine is me – simples

On a more serious note Magicalia have either been hacked or stopped paying its bills. bikemagic.com would appear to be up for grabs. 😐

I don't understand this at all.
Every other forum I use I can either upload an avatar or link to one hosted elsewhere.
Why is this one different ?
What's Gravatar ?
Why do they want my email address ?

http://en.gravatar.com/

grvatar claims to be used on many sites, but this is the only one I have ever seen it on.

Eduaktor – wierd – http://www.bikemagic.com seems to work but not without the www.

grvatar claims to be used on many sites, but this is the only one I have ever seen it on.

I've seen it on a fair few others , mainly techy sites and blogs etc

My main issue is that I don't want to have the same picture on a chatty mountain bike site that I also use on a professional techy site, but I do want to use the same email address. So I don't bother with it.

And no, I don't think that gravatar requires STW to share your email address with them. (No reason that it should anyway)

But your link isn't Bikemagic wwaswas, it's an ad for the bikemagic.com domaine name. Bikemagic is/used to be a site like this one but with a largely unmoderated forum.

and I have a fish

Edukator – for me it's the 'real' bike magic complete with forum et al.

Thanks wwaswas. I'm getting a very green Network Solutions page. Bizarre.

as I said – I get that 'for sale' page if I don't put the www on the front of the bikemagic.com bit when I type it into the browser.

Edukator http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

No, I still don't get it.
Why not just upload an avatar like any other forum ?

And no, I don't think that gravatar requires STW to share your email address with them. (No reason that it should anyway)

but you do to get your own gravatar, as the pic id is keyed to your email address: "The next part of the URL is the hexadecimal MD5 hash of the requested user's lowercased email address with all whitespace trimmed, for example the fictitious "iHaveAn@email.com" would have a hash of '3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802' "

How is that supposed to help Drac? I am using www. wwaswas.

Edukator – there does seem to be some DNS shannigans going on.

the url is still owned by the same people but is resolving to the page you are seeign.

Edit:

WHOOPS – Record expires on 17-Mar-2010.

they forgot to renew their registration…

No, I still don't get it.
Why not just upload an avatar like any other forum ?

Advantage for STW: less load on the hamsters because everyone's pics are held on the gravatar servers.

(Theoretical) Advantage for you: upload one image and it will appear on every Gravatar-enabled website without having to faff about uploading it to each one separately.

but you do to get your own gravatar, as the pic id is keyed to your email address

Yes it is keyed to your email address, but as you point out they use an MD5 hash. In other words they generate a unique number from your email address and send that to Gravatar when requesting your pic.

They don't share your actual email address to gravatar, so there is no breach of data protection.

Ta, not just me then, I thought it might be an ISP sensitive but looks like they just need to pay up.

More details;

Domain Name: BIKEMAGIC.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM
Name Server: NS2.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 23-mar-2010
Creation Date: 17-mar-1999
Expiration Date: 17-mar-2011

too late I fear – this lot will want £1000's to release it back to them I think.

Advantage for STW: less load on the hamsters because everyone's pics are held on the gravatar servers.
Fair enough. So why not allow linking to an offsite avatar on Flickr or wherever ?

Now that i know I'm stranded on STW I suppose I'd better make an on-topic post: my gravatar looks just like me – how did they know? I don't even have a web cam.

Fair enough. So why not allow linking to an offsite avatar on Flickr or wherever ?

Not sure, but I can guess the theory:

– gravatar means everyone's pic is the same size, so much easier to layout the page.

– I think gravatar is moderated, so no offensive images.

– no need for users to know about technical stuff like image URLs. As long as they know their own email address it will work.

The truth is I was having a look round the settings and saw that I could swap the generic grey image with the auto generated face one. So I clicked on it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

'Finger trouble' eh?

Tsk, you should know nothing prompts fear in herds of middle-age men like unexpected change.

Change is bad. 😀

It brings out the inner autistic in all of us.

FYI in the near* future you will be able to upload your own avatar. And there will be other positive changes for everyone to have a little moan about.

*near is relative.

They don't share your actual email address to gravatar, so there is no breach of data protection.

what I meant is, to set up your own gravatar you have to go to their site to upload the pic and supply your own email to identify yourself to them

FYI in the near* future you will be able to upload your own avatar. And there will be other positive changes for everyone to have a little moan about

Instead of playing around with little pictures, d'you fancy rolling your sleeves up & lifting the bonnet on the search engine? 😉

Instead of playing around with little pictures, d'you fancy rolling your sleeves up & lifting the bonnet on the search engine?

We are moving the main site over to the new server this week sometime, then sorting the search.

Which takes considerably more effort than 'ooh, pretty pictures, click'. 8)