Major Additions - Living Avatars

Introducing Living Avatars!

Today is a great day and I have something really cool that some of you are going to love! It's called Living Avatars, a new vBulletin addon that I've been working on for almost one year.

This program will allow your users to customize their avatars by using the mouse to drag and move items around (items such as clothing pieces, etc). In order to collect items, you need to spend points, the more you post on a forum the more points you get! Thus, Grow your Forum with Living Avatars!

Tour

Click here for the tour movie.



Here is how it works in detail:

1) Download and install Living Avatars to vBulletin (install instructions below).
2) Once installed, go to the Living Avatars admin panel and click 'forum integration'.
3) The user profiles of your members will now have an extra link:



4) Now, the more a user posts on your forum, the more points he or she will earn. If a user has posted 500 times, and then you install Living Avatars, then that user will start with 500 points.

5) Once users have a few points, they can then start spending their points to collect items:



6) Now that they have collected a few items, they can create their ultra cool avatar! Check it out:



I highlighted the canvas in red, in that box (the canvas) you can use your mouse to drag items around. It seriously works beautifully.

7) Now, press the 'Save Avatar' button and your avatar on vBulletin will be updated:



And that's it! Cool yeah?!

Ok, so on with the install instructions:

Installation Instructions
Installation is very simple, just follow these steps and you shouldn't have any problems (if so, then I'm sorry and I'll try and help you out asap!).

1) Download & Extract living_avatars.zip
2) FTP the living_avatars folder to your forum
Example: http://www.yoursite.com/forums/living_avatars/
3) Run Setup: forum/living_avatars/setup/
4) CHMOD the Living Avatars 'avatars' folder to 777 (this folder: /living_avatars/avatars/)
5) Delete the setup folder (/living_avatars/setup/)

Now that Living Avatars is installed, go to the admin panel of Living Avatars and click the 'Forum Integration' link, from there you can press one link which will update the vBulletin modifyavatar template to insert the Living Avatars link.

Upgrade Instructions

1) Download & Extract living_avatars.zip
2) FTP the living_avatars folder to your forum (overwriting previous Living Avatar files)
Example: http://www.yoursite.com/forums/living_avatars/
3) Run Setup: living_avatars/setup/
4) Delete the setup folder (/living_avatars/setup/)

Uninstall Instructions
1) If you enabled the forum integration link from the LA Admin Panel, then login to the LA Admin Panel and disable it.

2) Drop these tables:
la_admins
la_avatars
la_groups
la_items
la_items_purchased
la_packs
la_points_spent
la_positions
la_settings

3) Delete the living_avatars/ folder.

Why should I use Living Avatars?
"Grow your forum with Living Avatars" - Simply that! Not only is Living Avatars a lot of fun to use but it's also addicting. Users will want to post on your site in order to gain enough 'points' to purchase a certain item (ex: Sword of Doom!). Imagine having certain items that are rare & expensive, such as "Dracula's Cape" which can only be purchased 3 times and costs 50 points (aka posts)...get it?

Where can I download more Avatar Packs?
You can download free user created avatar packs here:
Avatar Packs

How can I create Avatar Packs?
Please read this tutorial if you are interested in creating avatar packs:
http://www.livingavatars.com/help/p2_articleid/2

LA 120 Released
+ New Frontend & Backend
+ New theme editor

LA 115 Released
+ Better vBulletin integration

LA 114 Released
+ Online/Offline feature now works correctly.
+ LA admins can be deleted from the admin panel.
+ Fixed a positioning bug in the canvas.
+ Fixed IPB and SMF userid/avatarid conflict.
+ Fixed PHPBB3 download.php file change.

LA 113 Released
+ SMF Support (1.1 -> 1.3)
+ Better Forum Link Integration.
+ Less Warning Messages.
+ 'Bring to Top' is now used.

LA 112 Released
+ Added IPB 2.3 Integration.

LA 111 Released
+ Added phpBB3 Integration.
+ Fixed Crop Tool.
+ Better LA link integration for phpBB2.
+ Fixed a bug that caused avatars not to show up in the forum.

LA 110 Released
Updates & Fixed Bugs
+ Database changes, redid a lot of the LA Grouping logic.
+ You can only reinstall LA if logged in as admin.
+ Fixed 'Items Misplacement Issue'.
+ Fixed mysql error when adding admin with high userid value.
+ Items & groups an be moved around & deleted.
+ Removed admin/forumlinks.php file.
+ Add/Remove Forum link added to settings page.
+ New layout for admin panel.
+ New groups can be added.

LA 102 Released
+ Avatar Packs can be upgraded.
+ Avatar Packs can be uninstalled.
+ Minor changes to the design layout of certain pages.
+ Fixed a points remaining calculation bug.
+ Fixed a mysql_connect() database warning for vB users.
+ Other small misc fixes.

LA 101 Released
+ Better error checking when saving avatars.
+ Update to work with the vBulletin File System.
+ Fixed some vBulletin & phpBB integration issues

Always Backup your Database before Upgrading
Living Avatars might have database changes during the upgrade. Please, take the extra time and backup the living avatars tables (the tables that are prefixed with 'la_' in your forum database) before upgrading to new versions. I always do as much as testing as possible before releasing updates but it's still better to be cautious.

[ssslippy]

Originally Posted by BeatificFaith

I have been using Living Avatars for a while and have one problem. The avatars do not show up in member profiles, but they do show up in administrator profiles. I just ran the upgrade and that did not correct it. When looking at the link for the member profiles avatars it just displays my forum's homepage URL. For my own profile it of course displays the image URL. What can I do to correct this?

Custom Avatars are disabled for your users.

[subduck]

Originally Posted by Madmp3zz

Wondering if it has something to with the mood manager hack.

Most likely.

[Darkwaltz4]

For those of you looking to tie this into a DIFFERENT points system than what is built in (which is based off of post count), I have posted the instructions to integrate my points system into it (there is also a converter from vbbux/plaza for those who use that instead)

The post with the modification instructions are here. Enjoy!

[midirtrider]

I thought this was kinda silly when I first seen it.. but now Im thinking its kinda cool..

only wish there was more GOTH type styles.. or METAL, skater, tattoo's stuff like that

[AdmiralGeek]

ever since installing this mod, i get the following error when my users try to uplaod a regular avatar from their computer, or even when an admin tries to upload an avator.

 Warning: move_uploaded_file() [function.move-uploaded-file]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/tmp/7c0d8328e2a1be6fd3de993f7bb9f052) is not within the allowed path(s): (/usr/share/pear/:/usr/local/apache2/:/misc/35/000/134/065/6/) in /includes/class_upload.php on line 413

somekind of user permissions conflict is going on. Even does the same on my test board with a fresh installation of VB.

when i drop the tables from the database, all is okay....

It is worth looking into

The class_upload.php is not damaged or corrupted in any way, Line 413 of the specific file, has to do with the permissions set for the usergroups upon uploading.

line 413

	$moveresult = $this->registry->userinfo['permissions']['adminpermissions'] & $this->registry->bf_ugp_adminpermissions['cancontrolpanel'] ? move_uploaded_file($this->upload['location'], $temppath) : @move_uploaded_file($this->upload['location'], $temppath);

[subduck]

That error doesn't have anything to do with Living Avatars.

Living Avatard doesn't use the move_upload_file function, neither does it alter any of vBulletin's files.

[Neal-UK]

How can I remove this modification please. I'm sure there was an unistall option before.

[subduck]

Read the first post.

[HangingClowns]

Originally Posted by subduck

Read the first post.

I uninstalled the hack, in the way that you said, but it's givnig me a database error about the user.avatars. How can i fix that?

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.7:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT user.avatarid, user.avatarrevision, avatarpath, NOT ISNULL(customavatar.userid) AS hascustom, customavatar.dateline,
customavatar.width, customavatar.height
FROM user AS user
LEFT JOIN avatar AS avatar ON avatar.avatarid = user.avatarid
LEFT JOIN customavatar AS customavatar ON customavatar.userid = user.userid
WHERE user.userid = 1;

[subduck]

Are you still getting that error?

Also, to anyone who is interested, a World of Worldcraft pack is being created:
http://www.livingavatars.com/forum/showthread.php?t=560