Forcing VBulletin to use an external URL for an avatar
 

Hi,

I'm integrating vBulletin with our java application, and part of the solution is to keep the user data in sync.

Avatars are part of the user data, and they are hosted by an image server running in the java app.
What I would like to do, is when I create or update the user in vbulletin, I want to at the same time update the url of the avatar to point to their avatar on the java site.

All the threads on this topic seem to indicate that this cannot be done without modifying the vbulletin code.

I understand the reasons why this feature does not exist, however, in this case it is safe because the external url is at a site that we host. Users will not be able to change their avatar through vbulletin (only through the main site)

Has anyone done this before? I've spent lots of time digging around the forums, but haven't yet found a way to do this.