WordPress MU

Hi folks. I've read through the forums on this and can't find something simple, free and built for WPMU.

I need an easy way for users to upload (and ideally crop) a profile image that can be called sitewide for comments, sidebars, etc. Users mostly don't use Gravatar. I'm working for free for a nonprofit with a shoestring budget, so paying $80 to get the premium Avatars plugin seems out of the question.

The plug-ins I've found can't do the job. For example, suleiman's 2-year-old WPMU Avatars Pack doesn't work with IE (sadly, plenty of my users use IE); and others like Profile Pic, aren't built for WPMU. BuddyPress works for avatars, but I'd rather not the whole BuddyPress system just to get avatars working.

Is there a newer plugin? A hack? I know some basic PHP.

Thanks in advance to the helpful folks on these forums!

Avatars is actually one kind of plugin more likely to work in MU even if it doesn't say so. :)

you could try this one:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-local-avatar/

I'm still using Suleiman's and it's still working fine for me & my users, many of whom use IE.

Be aware that some of the avatar plugins write the file to the root of your install instead of in the blog's blogs.dir location.

Thanks Andrea -- I guess I wrongly assumed something like Add Local Avatar would only be able to call avatars on the main blog, but not subblogs. I'll give it a whirl tomorrow and report back here.

@kgraeme : Pardon my ignorance, but what's the problem with writing to the root?

Add local avatars gives users the option of where they want to upload their pic. It defaults to the root of the site. I prefer not to have user uploaded content cluttering up the root of the site. It's particularly an issue if you need to upgrade or move your site, and then you have to hunt down that "extra" content. We hacked Add Local Avatars to always use the blogs.dir/$blog_id/avatars directory.

The thing to know about Add Local Avatars, though - is that while it works in WPMU, it doesn't create a site-wide avatar. It creates a blog specific avatar. We decided we actually prefer this option, as if people are members of multiple blogs, they might be highlighting different facets of their personality on each, and want different avatars on each. I looked into trying to make it a site-wide avatar, but it would require essentially a re-write of the plugin.

@ DeannaS : Wow, thanks for the warning. I definitely need avatars to be sitewide. Suleiman's avatars are sitewide, right? I'll try that one today and report back here.

Glad to hear others have tried - now we know! (Hey, it was just a suggestion to try it...)

I do know there's tons of avatars plguins out there. Finding them and testing them is the issue.

@jlm99, I would really rather not have people writing random files to the core code area of my MU install. Whether you're comfortable with it is entirely up to you.

Andrea & others who've used Suleiman's avatars, did you have this same problem?:

In comments, instead of the new avatars displaying in the place of the built-in avatars ("mystery man", in my case), both avatars are displaying. It looks like these new avatars are being echoed right before the username field in the comments, rather than in the actual avatar area. For example, see the comment on http://bit.ly/QPT8c - my new default.jpg avatar and the mystery man are both there. Hack suggestions?

(I posted something on the plugin page too, but since Suleiman has said he doesn't intend to continue work on the plugin, I figured this would be the best venue.)

Because the theme has the call to the gravatar hard-coded on the right, and the avatars are being pulled automatically with a filter on the left.

So I need to change each individual theme to call these new avatars instead of gravatars?

No, only if they call a gravatar specifically. Which the default theme does. But a lot of other themes don't.

And you just take out the part where it calls the gravatar in the default theme.

Did you try it with another theme yet?

Yeah, I got the exact same thing with Stripes theme and Carrington. The hacking is a bit over my head, but I'll try to edit the spot where the themes call a gravatar to call local avatars, and try to get rid of the new extra call Suleiman's plugin is making inline with the username, because the avatars look much better the way the themes have them rather than inline with usernames, IMHO. Any advice on that process will be much appreciated.

Thanks for helping me along! WPMU is terrific!