why not just use gravatars?
Because i use Gravatars, but users have the rights in WordPressMU to upload there own Avatar’s. The standard avatars are Gravatars.
There are plugins that allow you to upload avatars. The best, in my opinion, is bavatars. But there isn’t, as far as I know, a plugin that provide a connection with the MU avatar database.
Gravatars is a wonderful tool, and those of us who are technical or on multiple forums can see their advantage. The average joe blog, probably can’t; or doesn’t have one already.
When joe average says “hey, how do i upload an avatar like jim bob over there?” and your answer involves him leaving your website, signing up for a wordpress account and then… etc. it’s over!
Gravatars are a nice default, but it’s far from a solution for the majority of forums out there.
To give a few examples:
1) I only uploaded an avatar to Gravatars last week. This aint my first or only forum and i’m slightly more technical and active on forums that the average joe user.
2) On my largest bbPress site (which isn’t that big compared to others on here) less than 1% of users have a gravatar, and definately less than 5% of active users do ( i made on of those Gravatar walls for them last week after Matt posted a link to one on planet.wordpress.org)
It’s definaely something I’d recommend to everyone to see what teh Gravatar uptake on their forums is actually like.
3) Depending on the forum, human avatars aren’t ideal. I run a forum for my brothers warcraft group. 2-300 users, about 30 active each day. Since enabling avatars for them, not 1 picture of them; just loads of gnomes and green skinned dudes.
Sadly, as a forum, one of bbPress’ big downfalls from an end user perspective is personalisation (and Avatars being one).
“When joe average says “hey, how do i upload an avatar like jim bob over there?” and your answer involves him leaving your website, signing up for a wordpress account and then… etc. it’s over!”
But my WordPressMU blog en bbPress forum is connected with a bridge. So a user has one account for the WordPress en bbPress installation. If he upload a avatar on WordPress (because profile pages in bbPress links to the profile pages in WordPress, so i use only WordPress for profile pages) it cames on wordpress, but not in bbPress. And that is wat i would.
I use Gravatars for the standard avatars, but it is more personal to upload your own avatar. And to upload a avatar twice (WordPress and bbPress) isn’t very user friendly.
Thx,
Leander
I’m not familiar with the setup, but yes if you have bridged your WPMU & bbPress installations then it should be fairly easy to do.
Find where the avatar is stored in WP and then use that information on the bbPress side to extract the data and produce the code for the avatar.
Hmmmm okay! I hope there was an easyer way to do this, like a plugin or something. But i give it a try to look into the WordPress and bbPress files!
Hmmmm the last link won’t work because i use Buddypress..
oh.
I would like to get the same avatar in bbpress as in WordPressMU. On this moment, the WordPressMU and bbpress avatars are different. Is there a plugin to get the same avatar from WordPressMU in bbpress?
hmmm.
try asking on the buddypress forums then.
bbPress is not BuddyPress sadly,
BuddyPress used a heavily modified version of bbPress; but if you’re using BuddyPress nothing we say here can help you really. You’re definately on the wrong forum, sorry.
No i use an extern installation of bbPress. So not the integrated bbPress forum in Buddypress 
But i think that i have enough info. Thanks!
