Improved default value for site avatar

[boonebgorges]

Related: #192, #8150, #6544.

Since BP 2.7 [11150] the WP site icon (Customizer > Site Identity) is used as the site avatar in listings throughout BP (/sites/, /members/[member]/sites). This is cool.

When no site icon is available, the "admin_user_id" avatar is used. This is OK in theory, but the logic we use to decide this is pretty bad: ​https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/5.0.0/src/bp-blogs/classes/class-bp-blogs-blog.php?marks=227,234#L219 We join against wp_bp_user_blogs to get a user_id, which is then assumed to be the admin user. The problem is that wp_bp_user_blogs contains one entry for each user of the site. The default logic of the JOIN means that the record with the lowest id is selected. Often this is OK. But (a) the site creator may no longer be a member of the specific site, in which case the lowest id will belong to a different (non-admin) user. Or (b) the site admin may have changed in some other way. Or (c) the site creator's account may have been deleted. Etc. When any of these happen, you get the avatar of a random site user.

A couple possible ways forward:

1. Fall back on Gravatar instead, and never use a user avatar. (This is a big change - this behavior has always been a part of BP.)
2. Use the site's admin_email option to decide on the admin_user_id. We could probably sync this to blogmeta, and then join against that in BP_Blogs_Blog::get()
3. Since admin_email to blogmeta and use it as the default avatar fallback, but leave admin_user_id logic as-is.
4. Something else I haven't thought of.

Option b seems like the safest, since this specific bug (avatar of the wrong user) could manifest itself in other ways if you're relying on admin_user_id to be correct.

[imath]

Option b. looks fine to me. Another option could be to use a default avatar just like we’re doing for groups or users 😊

[boonebgorges]

Ah - @imath has maybe the best idea of all. This is the easiest to implement and most consistent with other components.

The historical reason for using the user avatar is that early BP assumed that user sites in a multisite network would be *blogs*, and would be in one-to-one correspondence with users. As it turns out, BP/MS aren't always or even usually used in this way. @johnjamesjacoby has shown interest through the years in remembering this part of the original idea of BuddyPress, so I wonder whether he has any objections to a blog-specific default avatar.

[imath]

As @espellcaste is working on Blogs component avatar for the BP REST API, I believe we should talk about this ticket during 6.0.0

[imath]

We're running out of time for 6.0.0. Let's progress about it in next milestone.

[imath]

@vapvarun could you design a nice default avatar for blogs?

[vapvarun]

adding 2 design samples, color can be updated

[vapvarun]

Avatar Idea 1

[vapvarun]

Avatar Idea 2

[johnjamesjacoby]

Just saw this ping. 🙈 No objection from me. Change at will.

[imath]

Thanks for your feedback JJJ. @vapvarun what about a design more meaningful about the blog object. The 2 you shared are great but are more meaningful for the user object.

[vapvarun]

Blog Default 1

[vapvarun]

Blog Default 2

[vapvarun]

all variation with background color

[imath]

Thanks a lot @vapvarun 😍 I like blog default 1, I’ll look into the zip, but I believe we should probably use grey for the background and white for the images/texts. To be consistent with group default avatar and our mysterious man for users, we should probably don’t use round corners 👌

[vapvarun]

@imath zip contains all variation in the same pattern for the round corner I will update the final one with a square corner :)

[imath]

Awesome ❤️

[imath]

​8179.patch is my suggestion to fix this ticket during 7.0.0 milestone.

It adds a default avatar for blogs and use it if the blog do not have a site_icon and no admin_user_id was provided to the list of arguments of bp_blog_avatar(). It removes a filter that is deprecated since 1.5.

Here's a screenshot of the list of sites with the patch applied

If you wan to test the patch, you'll need to make sure to get the first 2 images from ​there and put them into the src/bp-core/images folder.

@vapvarun I've quickly made these images, but feel free to add an improved versions of them to the ticket 😉

If we commit this, the blog avatar will be:

1. The blog's site icon if available.
2. The Blog's admin avatar if $args['admin_user_id'] is provided (just like into the BP REST API Blog avatars endpoint).
3. The mystery-blog image by default

[vapvarun]

blog BP red to match with default avatar color

[vapvarun]

Blog Light v1

[vapvarun]

Blog Light v2

[imath]

Thanks @vapvarun for your new images. I'm afraid I might have brought some confusion. I need improved versions of these :

• 150px x 150px

• 50px x 50px

:)

[imath]

In 12772:

Blogs: use a default "blavatar" when the blog has no site icon

So far when the Blogs component was not supporting the WordPress site icon feature or when the blog had no site icon set, we used to fallback on the Blog Administrator's avatar.

We realized this was a wrong approach, because:

• the site creator may no longer be a member of the specific site, in which case the lowest id will belong to a different (non-admin) user.
• The site admin may have changed in some other way.
• The site creator's account may have been deleted.
• Etc.

When any of these happen, you get the avatar of a random site user.

That's why just like we do for users or groups, we are now using a default blog avatar (mysterious-blog.png) as a fallback when the site icon for the blog is not available.

Props boonebgorges, vapvarun, johnjamesjacoby

Fixes #8179