annotate lib/plugins/gravatar/README.rdoc @ 1621:3a510bf6a9bc

Merge from live branch

== Gravatar Plugin

This plugin provides a handful of view helpers for displaying gravatars 
(globally-recognized avatars). 

Gravatars allow users to configure an avatar to go with their email address at
a central location: http://gravatar.com. Gravatar-aware websites (such
as yours) can then look up and display each user's preferred avatar, without
having to handle avatar management. The user gets the benefit of not having to
set up an avatar for each site that they post on.

== Installation

  cd ~/myapp
  ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/woods/gravatar-plugin.git

or, if you're using piston[http://piston.rubyforge.org] (worth it!):

  cd ~/myapp/vendor/plugins
  piston import git://github.com/woods/gravatar-plugin.git

== Example

If you represent your users with a model that has an +email+ method (typical
for most rails authentication setups), then you can simply use this method
in your views:

  <%= gravatar_for @user %>
  
This will be replaced with the full HTML +img+ tag necessary for displaying 
that user's gravatar.

Other helpers are documented under GravatarHelper::PublicMethods.

== Acknowledgments

Thanks to Magnus Bergmark (http://github.com/Mange), who contributed the SSL
support in this plugin, as well as a few minor fixes.

The following people have also written gravatar-related Ruby libraries:
* Seth Rasmussen created the gravatar gem[http://gravatar.rubyforge.org]
* Matt McCray has also created a gravatar 
  plugin[http://mattmccray.com/svn/rails/plugins/gravatar_helper]

== Author

  Scott A. Woods
  West Arete Computing, Inc.
  http://westarete.com
  scott at westarete dot com

== TODO

* Add specs for ssl support
* Finish rdoc documentation