how can I allow hot link avatars?

[Justice]

I currently have a UBB, and some of my users have really large custom avatars. They're hosted on different sites and linked to mine. From what I can see on vBulletin, all avatars are hosted on the server and get run from a script. This would use up far too much of my bandwidth, but I still want to offer custom avatars. Is there a way to have avatars on a vB run by hot linking to another website?

[Freddie Bingham]

You would have to hack a bit. Disable avatars and rename a custom profile field to "Avatar". The user than types in the url to the avatar and you put $userinfo[field7] (or whatever is may be) in the postbit template. Than in the getpostbit function in functions.php you would have to add something like:

if ($userinfo[field7]) {
$userinfo[field7] = "<img src='$userinfo[field7]' border='0'>";
}

[Justice]

cool. sounds like the exact same thing I did with UBB... shouldn't be a problem

thanks for the reply

[eva2000]

nice freddie

[Admin]

LOL, it seems to be people have been trying to do this for ages now.

[eva2000]

only problem i see is if members started to post a avatar as an inline attachment and use that url to link in the custom field... which essentially is using the vB owner's bandwidth anyway

[Freddie Bingham]

eva yes it will happen.

Some enterprising souls like to post attachments and then refer to them in their signatures. If you have users on your forums doing this, you should stop the practice. It can have a noticeable performance hit on your server in bandwidth and in cpu usage.

[Justice]

I don't see this being a big problem. Let's say you set the minimum amount of posts at a medium to high level. The only people using avatars would be regular members. Then you make it a rule not to use attachments for avatars...

Now, anyone who would disregard the rules would probably be more likely to use an obscene avatar or do something a lot more detrimental to your forum. And very few regular members would do that (why risk getting banned and/or starting your post count all over)

[DrunkenStud]

hmmm I cant get that to work.

Im putting the code in the functions.php and edited the postbit template but the output im getting is just the text typed into the field.

All the field numbers and stuff are right its field5, but it still aint working? Any ideas?

[Admin]

Where exactly did you add the code in the function?
It could be you added it in a bad place.