great website.
Location: Forum - Wainuiomata.com Website - great website.
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Author: Soap Merchant
so far ive found this website to be very responsive and efficient, and to the point.
User type: Standard User
Posts: 82
Date: June 22, 2006, 5:27 a.m.
obviously its not finished yet, but i look forward to seeing the finished product.
Do you (the owners) have any plans though at some stage to allow people to increase their access rights (like depending on how much they contribute) and to maybe eventually allow people to upload custom avaters, like animated ones?
Ive seen some really cool forums around. I dont have any specific php or web language suggestions cause this is not my area. And i wouldn't even know what i was looking at if i tryed to analyze the code. As for the layout and design, i think its well constructed and set-out and highly unique in that it has everything a good website should have. Not many websites ive seen have all of these features just their and so easy to access. As far as wainuiomata goes, i think its a good thing for the valley. And truly hope that oneday it becomes a central online meeting/selling/business place for wainuiomata.
good job guys, and keep it up.
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Author: robvdl
Hi, thanks for your response about the Ynui site. Yes we do upgrade certain people's access rights. There's actually five different access levels: Guest (not logged in), Standard User, Power User, Moderator and Administrator. We upgrade certain people to Power User if they have paid an optional monthly charge for premium computer support through the forums, or if they are very close to us. We have to do this, because we're running a computer service and repair business too, and can't expect to help everyone for free, because that will take too much work away from us off course.
User type: Administrator
Posts: 130
Date: June 22, 2006, 11:25 a.m.
Unfortunately there's no plans to support avatar uploading, because we specifically chose to make use of the new Gravatar service (Globally Recognised Avatars). Gravatars are unique, because a user can upload their own avatar on Gravatar.com for free, which will automatically be used by any blog that supports Gravatars, this includes our news section too. And yes, Gravatars can also be animated GIF's if you want. Have a look at this blog post for example, there's some animated Gravatars in here.
Our forums are not like any other forums, they have been written by us ourselves, and are not some pre-made PHP package you can download. Other forums might allow you to do avatar uploading, and it's not that I cannot add this to the forum, but rather that I want to stick to using Gravatars as they're more modern. The idea is to get people familiar with using Gravatars in the end, so they eventually sign up for one and can post on any blog using that icon.
I see that you have already signed up for a Gravatar. I do know that at this particular time, Gravatar.com are quite busy and it took around a week for them to rate and accept the last Gravatar I uploaded, comparing this to any other time, where it was just overnight. Just wait and your Gravatar will eventually be up, they're probably just doing some work on their site, and the service will most likely improve again in the future. -
Author: Soap Merchant
Hi.
User type: Standard User
Posts: 82
Date: June 22, 2006, 5:02 p.m.
Yeah, as you can see my avatar is up now
Why is this avatar so me???? I guess im a product of the 80's lol.
well have to go now, gotta go do my studys.
might jump onto chat room later on tonight when i get home.
cya rob.
btw, that gravatar service is pretty cool idea. Just upload your avatar and bam its their. well more or less. Would be nice though to have a higher upload size limit, so can put higher better quality pics on, is also a bit annoying because sometimes your a few k's to much. I suppose i should learn how to crop and change image attributes. lol. Perhaps you know of a good app specifically just for doing this. I mean converting pics into avatars of a certain dimension and size etc?
get back on this thanks
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Author: robvdl
Lol
User type: Administrator
Posts: 130
Date: June 22, 2006, 5:52 p.m.
. Anyways, because I didn't write the Gravatar service myself (I just implemented the service into the Forums and News), it's beyond my control on how big the uploaded images could be in file size.
However, the default Gravatar size is normally 80x80 pixels, and larger Gravatars will automatically get resized to these dimensions. Ideally you want to upload your Gravatar as that size. An image of that size shouldn't be too big in file size really. You should be able to achieve a much higher image quality if the image is made to that size.
You could use a good free paint program called Paint.NET, we've mentioned this program in the Ynui News a while back, it's a pretty good program, easy to use too.
Open the image in Paint.NET. If the image is not quite square, you might want to change the canvas size first, or you won't get the correct aspect ratio when resized later. To do this, click the "image" menu, then click "canvas size". If the image is say 160x120 pixels, make the canvas size 120x120, and select the anchor how you want to crop the image.
Once you've cropped it, click the "image" menu again, and select "resize", enter the size 80x80 pixels.
Then all you need to do is save your nicely resized Gravatar. depending on the type of image, if it's a photo, save as JPEG as this is more optimal for photos, if it's a cartoony or drawn image, select GIF or PNG, as these are more optimal for flat colour images.
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Author: Soap Merchant
cheers for this advice. I will check out the app. I am happy with my current avatar for now. But it would be usefull for future ones.
User type: Standard User
Posts: 82
Date: June 23, 2006, 3:47 a.m. -
Author: Mega Byte
good site
User type: Standard User
Posts: 17
Date: July 2, 2006, 10:19 p.m.
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Author: Uber_deathworld
Megabyte your a spam-a-holic
User type: Standard User
Posts: 63
Date: July 3, 2006, 12:45 a.m. 
lol although i do find this extremely funny ..
