When it comes to determining how users can represent themselves with an Avatar (i.e., profile picture), Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) offers five options:
- Default Avatars
- Gravatar
- Vanillicons
- Avatar Pool
- Upload a custom Avatar
📝 NOTE: If you allow users to upload their own custom Avatars, they'll have a choice: either use your default Avatar, Gravatar, Vanillicon, or Avatar Pool images OR upload their own custom image.
Let's learn about each type, and how to set them up.
Default Avatars
Setting up a Default Avatar allows your organization to select a default profile picture for all users across your Vanilla community.
📝 NOTE: If you allow users to upload their own custom Avatars, these custom images will override the default.
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Appearance > Avatars.
- In the Default Avatar area, click Change.
- On the next page, click Upload New Avatar and select the image to upload.
Gravatar
Gravatar is a global profile picture service run by Automattic (the company behind WordPress). If the Gravatar addon is enabled on your Vanilla community, a user’s Gravatar will be used as their Avatar if they have one.
📝 NOTE: To enable Gravatar, contact your CSM or Vanilla Support.
Vanillicon
The Vanillicon addon automatically creates a unique, smiley face-based profile image for each user, pulling from an extensive library of colors and expressions.
📝 NOTE: If this addon is enabled, you cannot set a Default Avatar.
📝 NOTE: If you allow users to upload their own custom Avatars, these custom images will override the Vanillicon.
Enable the Vanillicon addon
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons.
- Enable the Vanillicon addon.
Avatar Pool
With Avatar Pool enabled, you can upload a custom selection of Avatars for your users to choose from. You can limit users from uploading their own custom profile Avatars, "forcing" them to use one of your predetermined Avatars, or give them both options.
📝 NOTE: To enable Avatar Pool, contact your CSM or Vanilla Support.
Create your Avatar Pool
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Appearance > Avatars.
- The option to upload new Avatars for your users to choose from is at the bottom of the page.
Upload a custom Avatar
Your organization can decide whether users are allowed to upload their own custom Avatars; if not, they'll be required to use whichever Avatar option you've chosen. In this section, we'll first examine the prerequisites for custom Avatars and then walk through how to upload one.
📝 NOTE: The recommended image size for avatars is 560px by 560px.
Prerequisites for custom Avatars
Before users can upload their own custom profile images, two prerequisites must be met:
1. In the Dashboard, on the Settings > Appearance > Avatars page, enable the Allow users to change their own avatars option.
2. For any Roles you want to have the ability, enable one of the following permissions:
Garden > Profile Picture > EditGarden > Profiles > Edit
3. If the Avatar Pool plugin is enabled, a user Role will need this additional permission:
AvatarPool > Custom Upload > Allow
Upload custom Avatar
With those prerequisites in place, you're free to upload a custom Avatar, if you so choose, and there are two ways to do so:
- Hover over your current Avatar and click Change Icon. In the resulting dialog, click Upload New Picture and browse for and select one.
- Click the dropdown highlighted below and select Edit Profile. On the resulting page, click Change My Picture and follow the prompts.
Ranks
Regardless of which of the five Avatar options you choose, you can also control Avatars to a degree with Ranks.
⭐️ EXAMPLE: Some Vanilla communities only allow lower-level ranks to use the default options while higher ranking users can upload their own custom profile pictures.
Check out our Ranks article to learn more.
Passing Avatar images via SSO
If you have implemented single-sign-on (SSO) from your website or app to Vanilla, you can pass a URL to an Avatar image. This URL will be updated each time the user signs in so that if the image is changed on your end, it will automatically update in Vanilla.
Social logins
If your members are registering using social logins (e.g., Twitter), the profile photo from that service will be used as their profile photo.
📝 NOTE: By default, a user will not be able to change their photo in Vanilla if it has been passed via a social login.
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.
