think tank forum

so i'm going to code a plug-in for ttf that will store avatars in s3. in addition, it will never delete old avatars. whenever you upload a new avatar, it just gets added to your avatar folder.

here's where i want some opinions:

say you upload avatar #1 and make three posts (#1, #2, #3). then you change your avatar (to #2) and make posts #4 and #5.

should your posts #1, #2, and #3 display your new avatar (#2)? or should they display the avatar that you had at the time (avatar #1)?

great question. I kind of like the idea of posts always displaying the avatar that you had at the time you made the posts. it seems like all forum software does not do this though, and I wonder why.

i like the idea, too.

i guess the good thing is that i'm archiving the avatars anyway. i can easily change if ttf displays your newest avatar or the one you had at the time.

do it!

context! go for it

but then should user titles stick with the post?

definitely

sigh.. that's a *huge* change

can't be much more work than getting persistant avatars, can it?

i guess not...

still pretty weird, though. in the current version of ttf, user titles are revisioned. maybe i can join them out of that table properly, instead of saving the title with every post.

yeah, just save the id of the titles

The thing for me, is I tend to associate a personality to an avatar and not a name. It's one way I keep track of who is saying what instead of reading all the names, I use my peripheral vision to see the 'tar.

same here, i've been mighty confused once or twice when someone has changed their avvy to something similar to someone else's

i like how ttf is just a group of personalities... NO IDENTITY HERE!

hmmm that's a really good point, sriehl. I do the same thing.

yeah, i'd become a bit confused as well

maybe we can define the color of the black bar over the posts ourselves, not being allowed to choose a color someone else has?

haha.. this last suggestion is very creative and yet ridiculous.

RAINBOW TTF

I love the idea.

Why do I have the feeling people would war over who gets pink...

i would choose an ultra violet

too bad i don't know the rgb hex for that

:)

i also like the idea of custom colours on the bars.

I like it.

There could also be the option to change the colour of the menu bars.

#gg00gg

so are avatars s3'd now?

no, but one day, perhaps.

http://cdn.wingedleopard.net/heart.png -- works as http
http://s3.wingedleopard.net/heart.png -- works as http
http://s3.wingedleopard.net.s3.amazonaws.com/heart.png -- works as http

https://cdn.wingedleopard.net/heart.png -- no service
https://s3.wingedleopard.net/heart.png -- untrusted connection
https://s3.wingedleopard.net.s3.amazonaws.com/heart.png -- untrusted connection

amazon aws has a wild-card certificate for *.s3.amazonaws.com. unfortunately, if will not work with buckets that have periods in the names (because then the browser thinks that there are a few layers of subdomains, and the certificate only allows one level of subdomains).

i like to name my buckets with a fqdn (e.g., s3.wingedleopard.net) so that i use the canonical name (as opposed to the non-canonical name of s3.wingedleopard.net.s3.amazonaws.com). to use https, i would need to name my buckets without any periods, and the https content can only be served via non-canonical name (e.g., thinktankforums.s3.amazonaws.com).

this means that i cannot use cloudfront for https, nor can i hide the fact that i use aws.

ideally, s3 would allow you to get a certificate of your own for s3.wingedleopard.net, and their web server would offer that certificate to the agent. they might be working on this.

http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connec … eID=124577