Yes, I need some advice as a noob

[ZorroGames]

Can I upload my own avatar and, if so, what are the parameters - feel free to point to the obvious thread I missed. I gave no shame about being clueless so far...

[DataNinja]

This thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?80781-Setting-Up-A-Custom-Avatar) might be helpful, but it is also fairly out of date.

The gist of it is, yes, you can set up a custom avatar that is a .gif, a .jpg, or a .png, is not animated, and is 20-120 pixels wide and tall. Any larger, and it will be automatically cropped.

To set this up:
1. Go to settings.
2. Click on General Settings on the left sidebar.
3. Scroll down to the bottom.
4. Change avatar to "Custom".
5. Put your Avatar's URL in the "Custom Avatar URL" box.

(Just remember this site doesn't support direct uploads. I use imgur for hosting my Avatar, but any image hosting site will work well. Also, remember to follow the rules outlined under the "Avatar and Signature" section of the Forum Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1).)

I've seen a few problems and most of them turn out to be:

The board software does not support spaces or most special characters. These will show up as '%##' in the URL; spaces are %20 and are the most common problem in a URL that prevents an avatar from showing up. Dashes or underscores (-,_) are allowed; remove any spaces or replace them with these characters.

Edit: Also, in the future, technical things along this line should probably go under the Board/Site Issues Forum.