Avatars : The Actual Situation

[Keith Lawrence]

Let's sort this one out shall we :)

First of all I'll give you a purely personal view : I don't like the animated ones, I find them distracting and sometimes annoying. Sure, I can switch Avatars off but why should I? Only a minority of people use them. But if they are a harmless bit of fun, like titles and reputations, then I'd just say let people have them!

The Technical Bit : Unfortunately they are not a harmless bit of fun. At present we have twelve avatars on the system of which only two are animated. In total it's taking 80KB of database space, but 30KB or nearly 40% of that space, is those two animated avatars. However, space is not an issue for us, we've got shed loads of it.

BUT... bandwidth is an issue. There is a physical cost to us (not a lot but it's there) but more to the point there is a usability cost to our many, many members who only have dial-up connections. These forums are eye-candy graphic heavy anyway, the addition of massive graphics just makes matters worse. I've viewed YD pages that use several animated avatars and when you look at the page size/download figures less than 20% of the page is content, well over 50% of it is avatars.

If the whole world was on broadband I'd call avatars a harmless bit of fun as well and let it go, but it's not - and until it is we do have to take such things into consideration. There are also extra graphics yet to go into these forums, we will be running selected and limited web advertising. This is projected to be a not insignificant financial contribution to the club and will hopefully more than pay for our web systems. With that little lot running we are in very grave danger of making the forums unusable to dial-up users.

So wearing my Council Member hat I am faced with a decision : I can let you have your 40KB animated avatars with three or four displaying on every page OR I can run web advertising and bring thousands of pounds into the club for the benefit of all. The limitations of internet technology mean that I cannot do both :(

I hope that you can see where I'm coming from folks, I know that some of you wont like it but avatar size has to be kept down. At present it is at the vBulletin default of just under 20KB, the average avatar is around 5KB. We do have the option of turning off animated avatars completely, I would like to cut the maximum avatar size down to around 7KB which looking at the average so far seems reasonable to me. Backend storage space and optional downloads are not an issue, I've already increased your PM mailbox size to 200, I can look at increasing attachment size, I would like to run a graphics and picture gallery, I hope that we can compensate you for your lack of large avatars in others ways.

Feel free to ask questions and discuss but I don't really see that I have much room for movement here. Faced with the choice between advertising revenue or user graphics I know what Council will tell me to do if it goes that far.

Thanks all

Keith L
BSAC Council Member

[Nigel Hewitt]

The Technical Bit : Unfortunately they are not a harmless bit of fun. At present we have twelve avatars on the system of which only two are animated. In total it's taking 80MB of database space, but 30MB or nearly 40% of that space, is those two animated avatars.
Mega Bytes?????????? :eek:

How come? I know binary objects are not the most efficient things to save in a database but that one is hard to swallow. I make the spider one 16K bytes. My cannon picture was 60K and they upload that although it isn't in your database.

My static avatar is 3096 bytes

[Keith Lawrence]

Mega Bytes?????????? :eek:

Ooops :rolleyes: Corrected! Sorry

[Nigel Hewitt]

Ooops :rolleyes: Corrected! Sorry
So does this leave us a problem?
I can't see 16K (at 9600/11*3/2) = 12 seconds for the first instance then a '200' thereafter is an unexpected thing for a dial up user. They know pictures are slow.

If you are running big 'Flash' adverts off site expect me to 'host' them to 127.0.0.1 :cool:

[Keith Lawrence]

It is a problem Nigel. First impressions count, what I don't want is dial-up users taking one look at the site and saying that it's just too slow. We'll be putting very strict limits on individual advert size as well as overall page advertising size, I'll test things out on dial-up myself.

I'm trying to strike a balance here, a single animated avatar can take up more bandwidth than a high revenue earning banner ad. What I'm trying to do is make room for both, both have to compromise a little. A slow loading high graphic page does nobody any good - the user, the poster or the club.

Cheers

Keith L

[Steve Pearson]

Cmon Keith

The amount of dial up users is probably minimal. My avatar has been compressed to 16kb and is below your 19kb limit now.

Why not have a tick box when registering to see what mode of connection users have, and then you would get an idea as to the true amount of dial up users. It doesn't seem to put YD users off as there are 4,500 members

Steve

[Keith Lawrence]

Hi Steve, the comments were NOT aimed at anybody in particular! Before I wrote this post I checked the page size, it was reporting 93KB, avatars are probably about 20KB of that. I have no problem at all with you having a 16KB gif, but what I do have a problem with is when ten of you chip into a thread like this and give me well over 100KB of the things.

I suspect that the majority of our users and those on YD are on broadband or using works accounts, but this is one case where the majority cannot rule. The BSAC is a club for all of its members and that includes those on dial-up, what I cannot do is sanction a brand new forum facility that is only really usable by our members who do have broadband. I have actually tried to use YD on dial-up, I gave up pretty quickly as it's just not worth the wait or hassle.

We have to find a compromise. The advertisers wanted what I thought was a silly amount of space that took no account of our dial-up users, so I've cut them down to size and there will be limits on what we allow. I simply cannot cut back on that and then ignore another major source of download traffic.

Regards

Keith L

[Nigel Hewitt]

Hi Steve, the comments were NOT aimed at anybody in particular! Before I wrote this post I checked the page size, it was reporting 93KB, avatars are probably about 20KB of that. I have no problem at all with you having a 16KB gif, but what I do have a problem with is when ten of you chip into a thread like this and give me well over 100KB of the things.
Again I argue that dial up users expect it and it is cached after the first hit.

And sorry: when I said '200' I meant '304'.
None of us are re-downloading the dancing spidy 16K file everytime.

[Keith Lawrence]

Again I argue that dial up users expect it and it is cached after the first hit.

And sorry: when I said '200' I meant '304'.
None of us are re-downloading the dancing spidy 16K file everytime.

It's the first time that's the killer Nigel. After hitting a few pages and getting the same problem every time people just give up, I know that I did with YD on dial-up. First impressions count and rather than loose them first up I'd rather serve a page that is usable. Caches are only useful after x visits, they will be long gone before x is reached.

I wish there was an answer but I can't see one, a compromise is needed all round.

Cheers

Keith L

[David Walker]

Ignoring the bandwidth, get rid of the animated ones anyway... never been a fan of little pictures moving in my eyesight as i'm trying to read something!

David

[Keith Lawrence]

Ignoring the bandwidth, get rid of the animated ones anyway... never been a fan of little pictures moving in my eyesight as i'm trying to read something!
David

That's my personal opinion as well Dave :) There is a global admin option to turn off animations for avatars, but some people like them and find them amusing so I'm easy on that. Animations can stay but I'm not going to make any special size concessions to them.

Keith L

[Tristan Green]

Wholeheartly agree with you Keith - get rid of the blinking avatars!

They are very distracting and I don't feel they add anything to the site.

How many people will be affected on the BSAC forums? I'd guess only a small percentage - probably less than that which use dial-up?

For comparison; a quick review of the top 500 posters on YD shows that 84 have animated avatars - that's 17%.

Cheers,
Tristan

[Alwassia]

Nigel,
sorry to disagree but the fact that i do not have the option of fast internet of any kind should not be giving me further handycap due to fancy webpages.
Living in the middle east it is already difficult to get the BSAC club feeling so please do not make it more difficult to stay in touch as it already is. WE international memebers have great hopes for the new system.

Keith,
thanks for your considerations


Khaled

[Nigel Hewitt]

I wish there was an answer but I can't see one, a compromise is needed all round.
Then you set your avatar size limit and refer people to the FAQ when they complain. My only worry is that this one is a "we are right and everybody else is wrong" argument. If you end up with big adverts and stingy rules for members we start to ask whose benefit the whole thing is run for?
Are we going to remove the Insert Image because I might include a picture so big that offends the dial up users?

There is a user option to turn off most of these things anyway so why fight about the details? Khaled can turn off the dancing spider, your tutu and my yellow hat forever. Can the sign up page ask fast/slow connection and preset some of these?

[MattS]

Damn vBs timeout ate my post! Let me try again, saving to notepad before hitting the post button.

I have had a little play in Ethereal (sniffer) and it is pretty clear that vB in it's mainly default state is a bandwidth hog. The home page is about 100K, or 30 seconds for a dial up user, and it has no Avatars. I really don't think we are going make much improvement to the feel just by limiting Avatar animation.

To my mind the forum software changeover is largely a wasted exercise if we fail to increase the ammount of traffic. I understand that animated Avatars add little to the content, but I also appreciate that they add to the 'fun' factor which attracts customers who are the content providers. The rep system works the same way. These features increase the magic ingredient 'involvement'.

Options to limit Avatar size and the like are all well and good but every option we provide increases the support/moderation overhead. For instance, make the Avatar limit too low and it will generate a string of requests from people that can not use their preffered graphic. Providing an options to turn graphics off will generate a string of requests from dial-up users, who by the nature of their internet connection are not the most IT savvy, needing assistance to implement the option - if they stay long enough to ask. As is the modern way, you can expect a number of hissy fits from those that are denied what they want or do not have the patience to work out how to do what they want.

Now this sort of Web Application layer stuff is not really my bag (I'm scared of heights), but a touch of google threw up some possibilities. There are a number of low-bandwidth vB style packs available.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/archive/index.php/f-55-p-10.html
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147611
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=108640

There are also some options/hacks which can help reduce the overall bandwidth but they are mainly intended to reduce transfer costs.
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-886.html

I suggest that while the board is in Pilot/Beta we (and I mean you) have a play with these styles and settings. I am thinking that we should be able to offer a low or high bandwidth 'package' which is selected using an entry page. With Divers increasingly carrying smart phones and PDAs we may even be able to get two birds with one stone by providing a low bandwidth option which is usable on a PDA - thus maximising the opportunity.

Please don't ask me to do it as I have enough on my plate at the lower levels.

[Rick]

another vote that the 'turn off feature' bit should do the job - both for signatures and for avatars

[MattDuke]

Damn vBs timeout ate my post! Let me try again, saving to notepad before hitting the post button.

I have had a little play in Ethereal (sniffer) and it is pretty clear that vB in it's mainly default state is a bandwidth hog. The home page is about 100K, or 30 seconds for a dial up user, and it has no Avatars. I really don't think we are going make much improvement to the feel just by limiting Avatar animation.

To my mind the forum software changeover is largely a wasted exercise if we fail to increase the ammount of traffic. I understand that animated Avatars add little to the content, but I also appreciate that they add to the 'fun' factor which attracts customers who are the content providers. The rep system works the same way. These features increase the magic ingredient 'involvement'.

Options to limit Avatar size and the like are all well and good but every option we provide increases the support/moderation overhead. For instance, make the Avatar limit too low and it will generate a string of requests from people that can not use their preffered graphic. Providing an options to turn graphics off will generate a string of requests from dial-up users, who by the nature of their internet connection are not the most IT savvy, needing assistance to implement the option - if they stay long enough to ask. As is the modern way, you can expect a number of hissy fits from those that are denied what they want or do not have the patience to work out how to do what they want.

Now this sort of Web Application layer stuff is not really my bag (I'm scared of heights), but a touch of google threw up some possibilities. There are a number of low-bandwidth vB style packs available.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/archive/index.php/f-55-p-10.html
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147611
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=108640

There are also some options/hacks which can help reduce the overall bandwidth but they are mainly intended to reduce transfer costs.
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-886.html

I suggest that while the board is in Pilot/Beta we (and I mean you) have a play with these styles and settings. I am thinking that we should be able to offer a low or high bandwidth 'package' which is selected using an entry page. With Divers increasingly carrying smart phones and PDAs we may even be able to get two birds with one stone by providing a low bandwidth option which is usable on a PDA - thus maximising the opportunity.

Please don't ask me to do it as I have enough on my plate at the lower levels.

One of the reasons I choose www.simpelmachines.org (http://www.simpelmachines.org) for my forum, was to allow different bandwidth options "Out of the box" plus easy code.

General Portal, with last post plugin

http://www.diving-in-norway.com/

High Bandwidth Mode:

http://www.diving-in-norway.com/snakk/index.php

Imode/WAp2: (PDA)

http://www.diving-in-norway.com/snakk/index.php?;wap2

http://www.diving-in-norway.com/snakk/index.php?language=english;imode


This is all out of the box functionality.

Doesn't VB have the same? Just by changing the php string?

DIN gets over 100,000 hits a month, and a notice quite a few users go for the low bandwidth options. I think most are samrtphone users, but it works the same for a 56K user.

/Matt

[Alwassia]

Nigel,
i actually like your hat, not so much the spider i must say. If there is a solution which keeps them then lets go for that.

[MattS]

This is all out of the box functionality.
Let's not go there. There was a discussion on the choice of forum software. The BSAC chose vB and that is what we have.

Doesn't VB have the same? Just by changing the php string?Like I said I don't know much about this application stuff. I couldn't even spell Bulletin before last week :rolleyes: My priority is ensuring the suitability and reliability of the underlying platform the forums and websites run ontop of. vB Low/High bandwidth modes may be a simple thing to do or it may be complicated, I don't know.

There are enough admins/webmasters here that you should be able to find out what is involved and report back/implement yourself. During the current pilot/beta it matters little if an admin brings the whole system crumbling down. We have plenty of leeway to accomodate the learning curve. That luxury will dissapear as soon as we go into a production phase. The time for experimentation is now, so please experiment :D

[Nigel Hewitt]

Nigel,
i actually like your hat, not so much the spider i must say. If there is a solution which keeps them then lets go for that.
:) But if I added the source picture every time it might be a problem. It's 115K but that wouldn't get commented on.
Would people say how long it takes to load. 3 seconds in my office so the limit is probably my 288K upstream line.
http://www.nigelhewitt.co.uk/nig9.jpg
Euch! I hate umbilicals although 7/24 gas supplies do have their appeal.

[MattS]

Would people say how long it takes to load. 3 seconds in my office so the limit is probably my 288K upstream line.About 20 seconds on dial-up then

[Keith Lawrence]

To my mind the forum software changeover is largely a wasted exercise if we fail to increase the ammount of traffic...


Thanks for that Matt, you have made some very valid points IMHO.

Avatars & graphics are just part of the problem as you say and we also need to do things in other areas. The default home page is around 50KB, I certainly dont want that to grow too much.

vB has a very good style management system where the user can choose their own style from amonst those the admins allow - but as Matt points out you need to be internet savvy about such things. If we default it to an ADSL type style then we drive away the dial-ups, if we default it to a dial-up style then it's bland and boring to the ADSL people! People wont stay around long enough to find out how to tune it for their particular needs. I have in my minds eye a solution -

We create a low bandwidth style as Matt suggests
We make it bloody obvious by putting a tick box in the header somewhere so it's one of the first things people see.

There are of course two fundamental flaws with that idea - we need somebody to do the graphics and somebody to do the coding! Watch this space as they say on that front...

Keith L

[Adrian Kelland]

I have found a low bandwidth style, it is called Low_WAP. It doesn't seem to like the style menu change back to something graphical, I will try to track down the problem soon.

Could someone with WAP give it a test and comment please.

Adrian

[Keith Lawrence]

I have found a low bandwidth style, it is called Low_WAP. It doesn't seem to like the style menu change back to something graphical, I will try to track down the problem soon.
Just had a quick look at the XML file Adrian, it's an old 3.0.1 style and it has several template hacks in it. But it should be OK (ish) with 3.5.0, try uploading it again with the 'Ignore Version' checked, you may have only got a partial style due to the version.

Keith L

p.s. To All : Don't worry if you haven't got a clue what I'm on about - Adrian has:)

[Adrian Kelland]

Just had a quick look at the XML file Adrian, it's an old 3.0.1 style and it has several template hacks in it. But it should be OK (ish) with 3.5.0, try uploading it again with the 'Ignore Version' checked, you may have only got a partial style due to the version.

Keith L

p.s. To All : Don't worry if you haven't got a clue what I'm on about - Adrian has:)
I do? :D

I did use the 'Ignore' second time around. Could be fun to debug... :(

[Ben Panter]

I'm on broadband wherever, but I have admit I can't stand animated aviators. Fixed pictures - great. Bouncy badgers and slinky spidermen? Not my cup of tea... just distracting. Sorry guys!

Is there a user-by-user option that could be set which says "I don't want animation"? Or perhaps, more extremely, "I don't want to see avators"? Then as each page is served the whizzkids can have their animations and grumpy folks like me can just see the words.

[Keith Lawrence]

I've now limited the uploading of all new avatars to 7KB, I've left the animation option on. The existing biggies can stay, excluding the biggies the average avatar size is around 4KB, well within the new limit.

Keith L

[Adrian Kelland]

I'm on broadband wherever, but I have admit I can't stand animated aviators. Fixed pictures - great. Bouncy badgers and slinky spidermen? Not my cup of tea... just distracting. Sorry guys!

Is there a user-by-user option that could be set which says "I don't want animation"? Or perhaps, more extremely, "I don't want to see avators"? Then as each page is served the whizzkids can have their animations and grumpy folks like me can just see the words.
You can turn off avatars in your options within your contol panel.

It is possible to turn off animation with Internet Explorer and I assume other browsers.

Adrian

[Nigel Hewitt]

It is possible to turn off animation with Internet Explorer and I assume other browsers.Turning it off at IE level doesn't save you anything unless you just don't like moving displays. You have already downloaded the complete thing before IE decides not to honour the frame times in the file.

[Ben Panter]

You can turn off avatars in your options within your contol panel.

It is possible to turn off animation with Internet Explorer and I assume other browsers.

Adrian
That's great - I've switched off avatars. I don't want to switch off *all* animation on *all* webpages, just the ones here.
Thanks,
Ben