Personalization Added

I know it sounds like a simple thing, you would really like to have a picture up that identifies you on GolfStakes.com. Now for the past couple of months we have had a graphic up, but you had no way of personalizing this graphic or to add your own. Now you do.

Introducing Gravatars

Gravatar.com is a web site which provides globally recognized avatars and allows a user to sign up for free and to upload as many avatar images as they would like to have and manage all of these images from one spot. GolfStakes.com has taken the unique approach of taking the Gravatar.com provided path and linking that in with our system so that you too can have access this this great service.

Steps to putting up your avatar

There are a few steps that need to be completed before a GolfStakes.com user can have an avatar posted on the web site. First you need to visit Gravatar.com and signup for a free account on their web site. You will need to provide an email address to them, and you will  need to be able to verify this email address.

Once you have your Gravatar.com account login to GolfStakes.com and go to your settings page.

Two things you should notice. A gray golfer image is displayed next your profile control panel. This is where you new avatar will be displayed. Second, you should see that under the profile management heading there is now an option to add/remove an avatar. Click this click to add your Gravatar.com image.

You're now on the avatar management page.

We give you short introduction of what we're doing with Gravatar.com, how to get a Gravatar.com account, and what we'll do with the email address that you provide to associate your Gravatar.com account with a GolfStakes.com user account.

Clicking the 'associate accounts' tab will now take you to where you can actually associate the accounts.

Now the only thing that we need from you is the same email address that you used when you signed up for Gravatar.com. What we're going to do with this email address is that we're going to do a one way encryption of the email address and then use that as part of the path way for your Gravatar.com identity icon. We will have no way of knowing what email address you have entered and the email address is no longer human readable (the encryption used can not be used to un-encrypt this address). When you click the associate my email address' button you will be sent back to the settings page and if the email address you entered on GolfStakes.com is found on the Gravatar.com servers, your new image icon will be displayed in the upper left corner.

Now we know that there are times when you no longer want to have an icon identifying yourself. You can easily go back to the settings page, and click the 'add or remove avatar' link. You will now see on the avatar page and option to remove your Gravatar.com email from our servers. Once  you click the button on this page, we no longer know which email to use, and the GolfStakes.com default icon will now be displayed in place of your custom image icon.

Summary

We hope that you like this new feature of GolfStakes.com. As you start to use the site more, you'll notice that the new avatars will start to appear in new areas. Right now you will see your new avatars on the profile page, and on your handicap page. You will also be able to see your friends avatars, and soon you will be able to see avatar images when you search for friends, and on some of the golfing statistics pages. Let us know how we're doing and we hope that you enjoy this new service on GolfStakes.com