Avatars are so popular and forums so prevalent that there are websites solely devoted to offering you a huge assortment of avatars. Some are free, some you pay for, some are plain and simple, some can be joined with frames and other image elements. They come in many sizes, but usually will not exceed the dimensions most common message boards allow. Here are just a few examples. Click on each one to go to the website that offers them and many more like them.

You can also make an avatar out of an image you already have, like a picture of yourself, your car or motorcycle, a pet or just about anything else. Of course, most of the images we have are way too big to use as an avatar. Yes, there is a way to resize an image and some message boards can do this automatically. Unfortunately, the average photograph does not lend itself to avatar use. Sizing the pictures we have down to avatar size will lose so much detail that the resulting image is unappealing. You should use image editing software to not only reduce the physical and file size of the image, but crop the image so that the most important aspect of the icon is left.

One question that always seems to crop up on message boards is, what is appropriate? There is certainly nothing wrong with a picture of yourself. After all, the definition of an avatar is a “virtual representation of yourself.” You might also want to represent yourself in a caricature, as I do in the avatar I have used many times – the one that leads this article off, or as a pet lover, a patriot, a computer fanatic, or any number of other ideals or fantasies. You might just want to use it as an opportunity to show off your work, your mate or your favorite technology.

The things we should consider are, ta daaa, each other. We should keep in mind that there are hundreds of people browsing the forums and message boards we frequent. There are many more people looking at and reading the boards than those who post. Some of us visit them every day, sometimes several times a day. Many of us are adults, but many have different sensibilities than you or I. There is also a huge population of child Netizens, maybe your son or daughter, that wander into these virtual rooms. There may be no hard and fast rules concerning avatars at the forums you congregate at. I would like to suggest some things you might consider before selecting your avatar.

• Crop and resize your images to no larger than 120x120px (pixels) or smaller. They can be rectangular or oval, but no larger than 120×120.
• Keep the file size no more than 15Kb. It reduces the time it takes a page to load and it is more considerate of the site owner, who pays a premium for high bandwidth usage.
• Although there are thousands available, don’t use highly animated avatars. Mild animation is okay, but some distract from the focus of the forum and can become quite irritating, especially if there are several on the same page.
• Keep them PG-13 rated or less. Try not to offend other members or visitors.

Of course, all of this depends on the community standards of the forum you are participating in. It’s nice to be able to show off our talent or taste in artwork, but when it is to the detriment of the information and communication that we all come to forums for, it – and you – loses its appeal quickly. It’s simply a matter of consideration for your fellow forumites.

NOTE: This began life as a reply to a forum post in October 2006, asking for a critique of of the website, geek4ums.com (you can get to the site without my help – it is a bit different than it was a year and a half ago when I originally wrote this). It was in the section for Forum Organization. I’m a stickler about staying on-topic, so my review was about how the site was organized and nothing more. The following is my, um, “review”, to use the term loosely. I offer this review to you because it is endemic of many websites across the Ether. It might even apply, in some ways, to yours.

To me, “organization” has more to do with how your site is laid out, how accessible it is to the visitor looking for something and whether the way you have organized your forum categories and discussion forums is conducive to adding and retaining members and encouraging visitors and lurkers to become participants. Organization doesn’t have much to do with colors or graphics or the style and design of your forum.

Now, aside from the the questions of style and design, you have problems from the top down. Just because its pretty, doesn’t mean it’s organized well. I’ll begin with… your domain name. When I saw your domain name in your post, my first thought was that it’s a technical site that might deal with computer hardware, software, networking or some other geek type endeavor. But noooooooo, it doesn’t have anything to do with the traditional geek aspirations.

When I clicked your link, the first thing I saw was Star Wars (on the munchkin’s shirt), but it’s not really a Star Wars site (although there is a Star Wars category). Okay, now I’m confused and the first rule (or maybe it’s the second or fourth…) is: don’t confuse your visitors. You have to let them know at a glance what your site is about. Since you didn’t do that and I am a little on the impatient side, I decided to use what appears to be a fairly well organized navigation bar. At least there’s that. So, the obvious choice would be “About.”

There is an About button, which is very good because any real website needs an About page for, well, to tell visitors what your site is About. Yours don’t worky. Click, click, click and nothing happens. Okay, first I’m confused and now I’m a little frustrated. There must be a problem. It’s a pretty site and looks like someone spent a lot of time building it into such an attractive page, maybe I should let them know there’s a problem. Lucky for me there is, right next to the borked About button, a Contact button — and the pointer turns into a hand, so it MUST work.

Guess again. You have to login to contact the webmaster. Jeez, have you ever heard of such silliness? Oh yeah, and I ain’t even a member, just a guy who wants to do the webmaster a favor, but I can’t because I have to log in. Even with that inanity, you’d think a well organized website, even a tightly secured one as this one seems to be, would realize that not everyone wanting to contact the webmaster is gonna be a member. So, maybe including a register link on the login for the non-members might be a good idea?

Well, I just don’t give up that easy. I’m persistent if anything. Right next to the Contact button that don’t work, which is right next to the About button that works even less, is the FAQ button. I’m no dummy. Ever’one knows a FAQ means “Frequently Asked Questions.” I have no doubt my original question, which unfortunately, I shouldn’t have had in the first place, “what is this site about,” will be answered quite handily in the FAQ. I mean, everyone wants to know what the site is about, so it’s gotta be way up at the top of the list of FAQs.

Ummmm, guess again. Nothing about Geek4ums and what it’s about. Okay, what about contacting the webmaster? Surely that would have a place in the FAQs, right? You’d think so.

No, apparently you wouldn’t. Alright, now I am just getting a little bit perturbed. My boxers are perti-near bunched. Can’t figger out what the site is about right away, the About button doesn’t work. Neither does the Contact button and the Frequently Asked Questions don’t seem to contain questions that are frequently asked by a curious kinda guy like me.

There is the Groups button though. Maybe that will assuage my frustration. My familiarity with forums tells me that there’s just gotta be some contact info there for some of the honchos of the site. Ya think? Hey, you’re way ahead of me on this, aintcha? Yer right, there is the list of staff, but you gotta log in before you can email or PM anyone. And again, no register link if you ain’t a member.

The Members button is pretty much the same as the Groups button. No login, no contact allowed. The Profile button is obviously not gonna work, since I ain’t a member and don’t even want to join until I find out what the heck this site is all about. At least the Search button is a little more straight forward. It don’t pull no punches. It tells me right up front that I gotta be a member to use Search.

The next button in line is gonna be my last hope. Support. That’s the ticket. There’s a login button next to it, but I ain’t a member, and there’s a Register button, which I ain’t about to click until I find out just what this site is about. So, I’m left with Support. I was gonna say that ever’one knows that Support is just for situations like this. But since I have had so much trouble with the buttons here, I’m not gonna make that mistake again.

But you would think, of all the buttons that look so purty on this site, that this one single button would finally give me the relief I seek. It’s so obvious and out there and plain as the pimple on the end of my nose: this button, when properly pressed, will initiate the support system of this website to give me the answers to all my problems. I mean, after all, this is a friggin’ GEEK site. Every geek I know can get a button to work right. So, here goes…

click

Click!

CLICK!!!

Awww, ferget about it! That’s not good organization, plain and simple. And I didn’t even get past the navigation bar.