Redesign showcase: gorgeous profile background images

We're fast approaching redesign launch, and are ready to share with you something you've requested for years - more gorgeous profiles. We've taken a cue from Facebook/Twitter and also put our own touches on the layout, and will be letting you upload a background images that will display on all pages of your profile. Avatars will also be larger.

We hope you're as excited for this look as we are - start looking for your perfect background image and avatar combo today, so you can bedazzle your profile as soon as we launch!

Backgrounds are 1000x300, and if you want the snazzy avatar look like on Xesxen's profile where the avatar appears to overlap, use a transparent background for your avatar.

Below are a few cropped images from the top of the profiles - both mine (the creepier one, obviously!) and Xesxen's. This is live code, not a mockup in Photoshop.

Wait.. what's the followers thing about?

The concept of "friends" is changing to "follow" as that's how the current system is set up to work. Still, this announcement is about the gorgeous backgrounds, not other redesign questions

I can't even come up with coherent words to describe how awesome this is

Oh dear god, CHANGE! Take it away, it burns.
*As I throw my arms as though I'm pushing it away.

But in all honesty, it really does look beautiful. Great job AP developers. =)

Could you also tell me the new size for the avys, need to start setting some up.

Avatars must be a minimum of 150x150, they save bigger than that and then are reduced to 140x140 in the profiles for display. This value is subject to change prior to the redesign launching (backgrounds are more fixed at this point)

By the way, if anyone (Damias?) wants to start up and run a group for creating backgrounds, it would be great to have a forum section where people could browse some already-correctly-sized backgrounds to choose from. It could start out as a club thread or something?

That's pretty much my reaction summed up in one GIF I think I'm going to do a background for my profile right now (I have an idea of what I want in my mind)

sothis said:

By the way, if anyone (Damias?) wants to start up and run a group for creating backgrounds, it would be great to have a forum section where people could browse some already-correctly-sized backgrounds to choose from. It could start out as a club thread or something?

Click to expand...

Or we can also give the "custom signatures" subforum another use and post the custom backgrounds there (though it might need to be renamed to "custom signature and backgrounds")

^i just quite literally lol'd at that image

This is great, will give me incentive to redesign my hard-to maintain profile. Making it as one image looks good, but maintaining a list on said image up to date is a pain -.- I did not consider that...

Question about the header image, would it potentially be possible to upload an animated gif in it to make an alternating background? (I suspect not but w/ transparency support I thought it was worth asking at least)

Nope, no animations with the backgrounds (avatars will be possible still, but the ratio *must* be a square. Unlike the other avatars [and new bg images] which we'll now allow you to pan/zoom (zoom only for avatar)/crop)

*-* this looks so pretty I am really looking forward to all the new things you'll be doing!

Awesome feature, im one of them who loves the extra little something something when it comes to creativity and design so this update is speaking my language :D
Also im a big fan of being unique, so seeing people getting creative is in a way actually quite fun for me myself as well.

Hmm..... the white border around the transparent avatar in xesxen's shot really doesn't look right. On the other hand, a non-transparent av like in sothis' would probably look bad without the border. Ideally it'd be nice to give the user the option to turn that border on/off, but that would probably be more hassle to code/maintain than it'd be worth. *shrug*

we do not plan to allow customization of borders

I've actually been against personalized profiles for a long time now because they could turn tacky and garish and horrible. But with this, you've put me in my place, Sothis. Nicely done, I can't wait!

Oh my God, you never fail to surprise me. This will be a good motivation for me to kick the laziness and update my profile at last. Gorgeous job, please keep those awesome things coming!

Looks great to me :)

Looks great Sothis!

Thanks for your hard work, I'm sending along a donation to help with the new redesign (and others should too, if you can!).

Looking great! : )