Light code, heavy disk and data

This plugin is great in that it allows all users to upload a custom avatar, and I trust there are no security implications. It has several shortcomings that make it a “no go” for my site.

The first problem is that it creates as many as 10 sizes of the avatar image – one modest test of a 512×512 .png file occupied a total of more than 320k of disk space in all the versions (images 26, 32, 52, 64, 96, 128, 192, 250, 500 pixels square), *plus* the space of the original image. In jpg format, it was smaller, but still close to 200k.

These do not show up in the media library (a plus and a minus) so there is no easy way that I can see to manage the huge number of photos we would end up with (other than to go to each user’s profile page…)

A test user I set up was able to directly upload a photo, no problem, but the displayed “Choose from Media” just took me to an eternally-rotating “wait” icon as that user did not have access to the media library.

The usermeta table also is filled with an array of the full URL of every size – this ends up being quite large. I could see this bogging down the type of listings I need to make (a school intranet – listing full lists of classes with avatars).

Seems to be an okay plugin, clean and simple for users, but I fear it would swamp even a modest site and end up as difficult to manage. There are trade offs made in every plugin, and some of those decisions won’t work for my site. If you have a small community site, this plugin will probably work great for you.