[DISCUSSION] Feedback wanted before we continue working

COMMUNITY,

We're currently planning our next big update to the website and we'd like to discuss with you something that we've come up with.

Gravatar
Currently, our website is comprised of two different ways to share your own image on our site; You can either use Gravatar or you could upload an image to our site.
Why would we switch entirely to Gravatar? Our current avatar system allows a user to either use the avatar associated with their email on file or to upload one. When you upload one, we're using up space on our website that could be used for other things. Not only that, but we have to go through complicated checks to make it all possible.

With the updated forum, we'd like to completely remove the ability to upload an avatar and only support Gravatar. Would the community be okay with this?

Activity Feed
For our new forum, we're planning on laying out the forum in a more grid like way. You'll be able to see new topics per board and each topic will give you more information. But to continue on, we're also planning on introducing an activity feed. If something happens throughout the site, you'll be notified on your forum homepage. This could be as simple as someone commented on your profile or that there's an upcoming maintenance.

Private Messaging
We know that this is a highly anticipated feature, and we're currently looking into adding it into the new site. How would you want private messages implemented so we can successfully give you exactly what you want.


Please let us know all your feelings about the information we've supplied. Thanks!

Sincerely,
Jake Andreøli

Personally, I've never heard of Gravatar, and this is the only forum I've ever seen use it, so we should probably just hotlink to them.

The activity feed sounds good, as long as somewhere you can view latest posts (that link you to the latest post instead of page one of the whole topic :P).

As for Private Messaging, maybe they could act like normal topics, but you get to choose who sees them?

Gravatar is a service that lets you sign up and use your email address as a way for sites to request a profile image for you. I know the GTAForums and StackOverflow use it, and is commonly used for Wordpress replies.

Well still, my point is that a lot of people don't have it set up, and it would be nice if we could have the option to hotlink our avatars.

For private messaging:

A messaging system... to people on the forum... that sends messages.

(But really, nothing fancy, at least for me, just a thing to send messages to specific people so I don't have to find out where they live or something)