Joomla! Extensions Directory - Avatar Gallery 2 beta 1 (was Avatar Matrix)

The extensions and reviews listed in this area have been submitted by the community and their listing does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favouring by Joomla!/OSM.

This content is provided as a free service to our visitors, and, as such, Joomla!/OSM cannot be held liable for the accuracy of the information. Visitors wishing to verify that the information is correct should contact the parties responsible for authoring the content and/or development of the extension.

Are you seeing blanks over some extensions' compatibility, license and type field? Head over to JED forum to learn why.

Community Builder Plugins

Show All Developer's Extensions

Avatar Gallery 2 beta 1 (was Avatar Matrix)			module
Rating 25 votes	Developer:	Roger D. Davis, PhD	Version:	2.0 beta 1 (Updated 36 days ago)
	E-mail:	This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it	Compatibility:
	Views:	36,920	License:	Other
	Favoured:	26	Type:	Commercial.
			Date Added:	Mar 13, 2007

April 5th, 2008: Avatar Gallery 2 is in its first beta (so please...expect issues). The beta is fully functional, but expires May 5th.

Major advances include:

1. The use of Tables to present the avatars and user data (AG 1 used pure CSS, which became a problem due to the way different browsers handle floats). You can quickly switch between various table styles in the admin backend. Some styles have a nice 3d effect, while others are more minimal (see the Table Styles Demo menu at right). You can, of course, get into the css for each of these styles and change it to whatever you want.

2. The incorporation of the Highslide thumbnail viewer, along with MooTools BubbleTips. Now you can choose between MooTools BubbleTips and Highslide when presenting popups over your avatars. Data fields you select in the admin backend can be programmed to appear beside the thumbnails on the web page or inside popups. Highslide will also be a welcome addition to web designers who make extensive use of jQuery in their templates or modules. Highslide and jQuery do not conflict. MooTools and jQuery do.

3. The ability to resample thumbnails to any dimensions, eliminating the issues of unequal thumbnail sizes. Previously, there was a problem with thumbnails of unequal size taking up too much horizontal or vertical space, distorting your layouts. One approach to that problem was to force thumbnails to a particular size using the HEIGHT or WIDTH option in the IMG tag, but the results were obviously pixellated and unattractive. Resampling thumbnails produces attractive results and completely eliminates the problems.

4. Development of a Query Constructor. The strength of the Avatar Gallery has always been the ability to construct your own queries and sample any cross-section of your userbase. If you wanted to display doctors in Idaho or Blondes in Asia, you could. Unfortunately, SQL proved challenging for many users, which limited the appeal of the module to SQL novices. Fortunately, Avatar Gallery 2 now includes a Query Constructor designed to open up the power of the module to users who don't know SQL.

6. Common queries like Random Users, New Users, Users Currently Online, and Authors are built into the Query Constructor.

7. Much greater ability to display "Members Like Me," that is, members similar to the logged in member in some respect. The query constructor lets you use "UserValue", then automatically finds the value for any field in the CB database and inserts that value. This lets users quickly see members in their own city or of their own profession, for example.

8. Ability to display either thumbnails or usernames or both, with attractive icons beside them. If you display only usernames, you essentially build a list of users based on your query.

9. Ability to put in Yahoo Messenger field. Shows Yahoo Messenger Online Status and launches Yahoo directly on the user's local machine when the Yahoo icon is clicked.

Previous Features, retained in Beta Version 2.0.

* Query your userbase in an infinite number of ways with SQL, yield precisely the members you want.
* Example queries like Random users, users online, last registered users given in admin backend, ready to be customized.
* Control the data fields that are echoed for each avatar and their location.
* Add data fields to MooTools BubbleTips that popup when an avatar is moused over.
* Multiple modules per page, all independently styleable.
* Add avatar or thumbnail to BubbleTip popup.
* Add links to Nick's Gallery uploaded for each avatar displayed.
* Add a Send Private Message link to each avatar,
* Private message link supports all popular private message components (Jim, uddeIM, Clexus, etc).
* Add an online status link to each avatar.
* Control the version of Mootools that drives the BubbleTip popups.

The Avatar Gallery displays Community Builder (http://www.joomlapolis.com) avatars in the various module positions of your website, thus making your site much more "social networking aware." In order to make the Avatar Gallery powerful and flexible, some sophistication with SQL and CSS is assumed. Specifically, SQL is used to query your userbase, so that you can display users who are most relevant to the page content on which the Gallery appears. CSS is used to style the avatars and the data captioned for each user, both near the avatars and in Mootools BubbleTips (http://mootools.net).

Once you understand some SQL, there's no need for separate modules to display latest registered users, most popular users, and so on. You can choose to display dentists in Chicago, for example, or females in Honolulu, or users with Joomlaboard Karma > 0. Install as an ordinary module, not as a CB plug in. I've entered the Avatar Gallery into this category because it's meaningless without Community Builder.

Editor's Note:

This extension requires registration to download.

Report this listing

User Reviews (12)

Really Thanks for great module by bravindef, March 24, 2008

Really Thanks for great module, my 1st project was finished and successed because several module and this module, thanks guys

Quality and Support by jlsaloff, February 4, 2008

This module is the star of our site (The Polka Dot Banner) as it allows our authors' book covers to be readily clickable to their profiles while also giving me an edge in their participation. I love that this add-on is so flexible and able to be molded by me. That way I can add my own personal touches instead of having the same mod as everyone else, per se. I mostly want to thank Roger for his fabulous support. When our site went down due to a hosting move, he stepped in - on a Sunday, no less - to help me get the code right and the site back online. If you're not sure it it is right for your site, try the free download, but the Avatar Gallery is well worth it's incredibly low price.

You can limit userneme characters! by b166er, January 30, 2008

The module is great, you can do manual SQL queries, i was looking for avatar module but a needed to limit the username characters this is the on that can do that

You NEED this module for CB! by momentis, January 24, 2008

I cannot say enough about this module. It does EXACTLY what is advertised, and it does it extremely well. For beginners, the module is simple enough to get running right away. However, don't be fooled by the ease. Roger has SO much flexibility built into this little gem that even advanced users will drool. For instance, you have the ability to easily pull data from pretty much any table in Joomla, or any other database for that matter. If you can write the SQL query you can get the data into this module - WITHOUT HACKS!!!

Like many, many extensions out there, you will NOT be left in the dark if you have questions. I have found very few developers who are as responsive as Roger. We're talking almost instantaneous answers to questions and problems. And the answers are concise and accurate. As an added bonus, he's extremely friendly and never condescending, no matter how basic the question (trust me on this one!!).

In short, if you are running CB on your site and you are serious about making the experience better, BUY THIS MODULE. You will not be sorry you did. Well worth the tiny investment. Great work, Roger!

Very Nice! by Creatorffm, December 26, 2007

0 of 1 people find this review helpful:

This mod does exactly what it says. It installed very easy and the sample avatars are just beautiful. It fit into my custom template very nicely and being able to edit the css directly from the module itself is very helpful. Many settings round off this great mod. The developer did a great job on this one.

A must for CB social networking sites by gordonbell, September 19, 2007

0 of 1 people find this review helpful:

This module lets you display member profile avatars on the front page to encourage others to register. It also lets you do things such as display user names, city and country in "bubbles" and link the avatars to member profiles. The many who don't chose an image or avatar can have one automatically assigned.
At this stage of the module's development, it would be helpful to know something about SQL. I don't but for a very nominal fee, Roger provided excellent technical support, and even installed and configured a newer version for me.
This module allows CB users to approach custom designed functionality without the expense. Thank you, Roger!

Excellent support by oshprd, May 27, 2007

0 of 1 people find this review helpful:

Like the other reviews pointed out Roger is stellar when it comes to support. I downloaded this extension to force users to have an avatar, but got it wrong. Within 5 minutes of my "help" email, he responded and went through all the steps to resolve avatars not appearing in profiles.

The only thing I might suggest in the future is a couple more "pre-made" queries for users such as myself who are not familiar (yet) with SQL. Other than that you can't beat this extension.

Very, very nice. by spritje, April 29, 2007

0 of 1 people find this review helpful:

I never took the time to register here, and I've downloaded numerous modules and components. This is the module that has triggered me to register and vote. An amazing component, highly configurable. Indeed, you can use (multiple!) SQL queries to let it do anything you want. A few good and common queries are pre-configured, to get you starting.

I run a photo-forum, and currently run Joomla, SMF, and Coppermine. Also, I use CB Gallery (also known as Nant's Gallery). This module pulls profile links and Avatars from Community Builder, displays links to the CB Gallery photo's al with the use of one query. Since you can add SQL queries yourself, really anything's possible. You certainly don't need to be an expert, but some SQL knowledge does help.

A great module, installed in a minute, took about ten minutes to grasp. Very nice. I examined the PHP code, which is nice, easy to understande, well-structured. Highly recommended. I sure hope the developer keeps updating this module (although I don't really have a wish-list). I made one minor tweak of my own: the CB-gallery links are displayed as one line of links (e.g. : 1 2 3 4 5 6, etc.) - when you have 20 pictures in a CB Gallery, this line needs to be broken in pieces to get it to fit into a Joomla left or right module. This is easy to program with moderate PHP knowlegde, and this is what I have done to let it fit my needs 100%.

Fantastic extension and a great guy to talk to by David_A, April 23, 2007

3 of 4 people find this review helpful:

This is a truly great extension making any site with CB profiles appear more fun, more interactive and a lot friendlier to its users. There were some issues when installed with it not showing up some fields and I sent an email to Roger.

If response time, friendliness and ability could be given 1 - 10 scores here, he should get 10.0, 10. and 10.0 respectively. His response was practically immediate, his advice was spot on and he was a real pleasure to deal with.

Roger is one living, breathing reason why the Joomla community is overtaking everybody else.

Very useful with CB! by jimmo, April 21, 2007

2 of 3 people find this review helpful:

I installed this extension, basically because I was tired of my users not having an image in their profiles. This solved that problem quickly! Now, if they get an automatically asigned avatar, unless they upload their own pic ;) Besides that, you can display a module showing the latest users, users online, and a lot of other possibilities.

My only suggestion is that it would be great if we could choose .gif avatars, besides .jpg (at this time they can be uploaded as jpg), since this way you could upload animated gifs and, when images have no degradation colors, they are better displayed in gif and have smaller size.

I highly recomend it with CB.

PD. Also, when I had a problem, I received a fast an excellent support from the developer :)

Challenging but rewarding! by evolgrinder, April 17, 2007

2 of 2 people find this review helpful:

This was the missing element for any community Joomla driven site like mine.

Firstly, it emphasises that the site 'has' users by displaying their avatars and other details in mootools bubble tips (I've placed it in the module position in the right column). At the same time, encourages them to update their profiles with additional info, something I've noticed since the installation.

Secondly, it gives them a good resource when seeking out other users with stacks of customisable options through the backend.

Although the task of setting it up seamed daunting for someone with limited knowledge of MySQL, like me, Roger was very helpful (and patient) and provided assistance whenever needed. This is a very classy addition to Joomla and extremely useful. Highly recommended!

Don't pass up - All CB users should try it by jhimwich, April 8, 2007

2 of 3 people find this review helpful:

This module, at first, seems daunting. It's quite different from most other Joomla add-ons. SQL code is everywhere, tons of options, little is intuitive.

With a little SQL on your end, however, what this module can produce is nothing short of amazing. Almost any display of users you can conceive of is possible (recent, random, popular, all those that live in New York and like "The Daily Show", etc.). Whatever time you put into this module will definitely be rewarded.

Plus the mootools integration is great. First class work, and it elevates what's possible with a Joomla module to a whole new level.

Main Menu

Extension Categories

Who's Online

Directory Support

Disclaimer