There are two ways you can host
your avatars on the Internet.
The first one is to use your own
computer and your own ISP connection. This is however a complex
operation which requires some system configuration and technical
skills that most people do not possess. It is not a geek thing, but
it is complex and probably time consuming to learn and to setup. It
also eats on your bandwidth and can slow down your chat experience,
especially if you still use a dialup modem.
The second, and
simplest way is to use a free hosting service. There
are hundreds of free hosting services available on the Internet,
ranging from general web sites such as Geocities
or Netscape to more
specialised picture sites such as PhotoBucket,
PictureTrail and
ImageCave. However, free
hosting services can have a few restrictions:
Limited bandwidth: when your avatars are shown to too many people in a short period of time, the hosting service stops. When this happens, people already in a chat room will continue to see the avatars you already used (because their browser temporarily stored the avatar on their computer), but new people who enter the chat room will not see your avatars, at all. This pause in the service usually lasts for 30-60 minutes. Geocities is an example of a site strictly limiting bandwidth for its free service.
Limited picture size: most picture hosting services put a cap on the file size of pictures and avatars which can be hosted. This limit is usually around 250K, which is way above what is needed for an avatar.
Blocked hotlinks: your avatars display correctly on your hosting site but do not show in a chat room. Blocking hotlinks is a way used by hosting companies to prevent bandwidth theft, when for example a page on a server A uses a picture hosted on a server B. You must make sure that hotlinking is possible!
Geocities also had another limitation until very recently: after uploading an avatar, you would have had to rename your avatar from a ".jpg" or “.jpeg” file to a ".txt" file.
I personally recommend ImageCave
which although not the best looking service, is probably one of the
simplest to use.
To upload a file, you need to:
register, then log into the hosting site of your choice
eventually locate the "File Manager" (as called in Geocities) or the equivalent function if you have elected to use a hosting service which also provides other services, such as email and news
click on a "Browse" button to select an avatar on your hard disk
click on a "Submit" or "Upload" button to copy an avatar from your disk to the hosting service.
Each hosting service is different. So if you do not see the button/link names mentioned in the points above, think of synonyms!
Introduction , Step 1: Find a picture , Step 2: Create your avatar , Step 3: Host your avatar , Step 4: Display your avatar.