New Emojis As Reactions AND Animated Profile Pictures AND Profile Banners (1 Viewer)

[Socialism]

Hello,
This message is addressed primarily to @brent012 as the webmaster i think you're the one who does this sort of thing.

Can we have some new reactions?
I've spent the morning researching XenForo, and it looks as if it is a relatively simple process to add a new reaction!
Xenforo Community - Reaction Score Announcment


As you can see, on the right hand side at the top, "add a reaction score"
Then, this screen allows you to fiddle with various settings


To me, it looks like, at least for the emojis that XenForo ships with, adding another would take only a matter of minutes?
Additionally, there seems to be a resource for this process (which i believe may only be for custom reactions)
Where is the difficulty in these steps like, genuinely, am I missing something here?

So that's the first post there.

Onto the second point! Can we have animated profile pictures? I've also done some research on this and found that, assuming you have access to the server that this runs on, you just have to swap the default image processer from "GD" to "Imagick"! Here's the button to do that, albeit extremely blurry...
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/animated-gif-for-avatar.147408/


Here's what appears to be a setup command, as it looks like perhaps support was removed in 2021? I obviously can't verify how well this works however.
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/imagick-support.194089/post-1515419
I can't remember exactly where I saw it, but i'm positive i saw a post that said that no images would be broken when converting to imagick...
I'd recommend checking out:

• https://xenforo.com/community/threads/animated-gif-for-avatar.147408/
• https://xenforo.com/community/threads/gif-avatars.208223/
• https://xenforo.com/community/threads/help-to-install-imagemagick.24854
• https://xenforo.com/community/threads/imagick-support.194089/

I've also found several stack overflow users who agree that Imagick is superior to GD (although all posts are more than a decade old)

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9914718/choosing-between-imagemagick-gd-for-thumbnail-creation
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5282072/gd-vs-imagemagick-vs-gmagick-for-jpg
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions...r-less-resource-intensive-and-produces-better

Now whilst researching imagick i found that there were major security flaws, it appears as if these have been mostly patched out, or can be restricted such that problematic files such as .pdfs can be blocked? this is the area i'm the least sure of, since I don't understand how operating, maintaining and securing a website works. Note that Imagick themselves purport that it is safe, https://imagemagick.org/script/security-policy.php although i'd find it unlikely they'd call themselves unsafe ... So, I guess do a bit of research on that yourselves

That wraps up topic two.

Now, my third question,
The manuals make it sound as if profile banners are shipped with the default product? can we have them?
https://xenforo.com/docs/xf2/user-upgrade-profile-banners/ the docs list them as a possible paid feature, but
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/user-profile-banners-username-changes-security-locking-accounts-and-more.181117/ - pretty clearly states that you can just enable them... I can only assume that this site isn't running an up to date PHP version, as listed on that page as a limiting factor? It seems like a pretty simple change, just one button for so much customisation??!!!

thanks for reading this!!!! i'd really appreciate if you answer all three posts, please @brent012 THANKS IN ADVANCE


p.s for my 2024/5/6ers omgggg this took me hours im so glad its done

 

[Socialism]

It also looks like there's considerable amounts of user interest in some of these features, if i do say so myself

 

[brent012]

Thanks for this, I really appreciate your enthusiasm on this and looking into it!

The short answer is that most of this is happening, and we can hopefully provide an update shortly. The longer details are below:

I've spent the morning researching XenForo, and it looks as if it is a relatively simple process to add a new reaction!
To me, it looks like, at least for the emojis that XenForo ships with, adding another would take only a matter of minutes?
Additionally, there seems to be a resource for this process (which i believe may only be for custom reactions)
Where is the difficulty in these steps like, genuinely, am I missing something here?

Unfortunately, the ability to use emojis in custom reactions was introduced into a later version than the one we are currently running - so we are waiting on that upgrade before adding custom reactions.

The old approach was pretty clunky as it required providing custom images in a manually created sprite sheet (as that resource shows), which could lead to slower page loads, inconsistent emojis with the rest of the site or possibly janky looking reactions across the themes.

I believe the first requests for custom reactions came up around the time that this change was teased by XF, so we decided to wait for this improved approach first.

Can we have animated profile pictures? I've also done some research on this and found that, assuming you have access to the server that this runs on, you just have to swap the default image processer from "GD" to "Imagick"! Here's the button to do that, albeit extremely blurry...

Now whilst researching imagick i found that there were major security flaws

This one isn't planned in the short term sorry.

The reason we don't use imagemagick is because of security and compatibility concerns as you guessed. But not just mine specifically, we don't have full access to the server the site runs on - the hardware and a lot of the software is maintained by a managed hosting company.

Our host was specifically uninterested in enabling imagemagick when we migrated to XenForo a few years ago. So even if we enabled that setting, it won't work as the server side components are not there. When we did this migration, it was around that time that all of these vulnerabilities were happening and imagemagick was getting a lot of bad publicity and seemingly a never ending stream of issues, so it was a stance I agreed with.

Maybe in future it's something we can revisit if alternatives become available, or if the risk (to security and compatibility) of ImageMagick has fundamentally changed.

The manuals make it sound as if profile banners are shipped with the default product? can we have them?

Yeah, this is something we are planning on enabling with the upgrade. But it was also something we had some graphical issues with in testing (that have been resolved).

I can only assume that this site isn't running an up to date PHP version, as listed on that page as a limiting factor?

It's not because of PHP (or any of the other minimum requirements), it's with the actual XenForo version. We are planning XF upgrades (and always will be as new versions come out), but it's something that the whole team needs to test and fit in with our schedules. We're all volunteers with full time jobs or study and other commitments too.

The testing process is looking for any regressions in features (e.g. if moderation tools have been broken), but also to look for any configuration changes that need to be made to either enable new features we like, or disable/tweak features that don't make sense for BOS or other configuration changes we have made. Then the actual upgrade has to be planned for a time where it minimizes the impact (we don't want to risk issues right before an exam period for example), and when our mods etc. have availability to assist with any possible problems.

For this latest version this testing has found various issues we've been working through of varying severity. @Trebla will hopefully soon be able to provide an update about when we are proceeding and to show the new features when we are ready to go forward with this.

 

[Socialism]

Thanks for the answer!!!

We're all volunteers with full time jobs or study and other commitments too.

I definitely wasn't trying to be rude here i completely understand, the site is run by volunteers

I can't wait for the update!!!! Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions