Avatars don't rewrite correctly + avatar 404

Avatars don't seem to be getting the same rewrite treatment as attachments, and it seems to be leaking duplicate images out to search engines.

This comes down to two issues:

1. Avatar url's aren't getting rewritten (attachments already do this):

/image.php?userid=66&d=1272871853 should redirect to /avatars/username.gif
/avatars/username-123.gif should redirect to /avatars/username.gif
etc. None of these redirects work at the moment.

2. Avatars don't 404 or redirect to a noindex page (like attachments do)

Avatars for non-existent users AND users without a custom avatar should 404. Right now, they're passing a generic vbulletin image for the former, and a 1x1 clear image for the latter. These images are getting indexed by google and shouldn't really exist.


Thanks for the great product . For all the tweaking and messing I've been doing over the past few days, I'm surprised that these are the only issues I've found!

-- Happy customer

Your avatars are working correct on your site.

I understand - this was hardly a critical bug report. While avatars are working correctly in every visible way, I was just pointing out that the redirects were missing which prevent duplicate content.

For example,
/avatars/a-53.gif
/avatars/b-53.gif
/avatars/c-53.gif
/avatars/d-53.gif
all link to the same image. Ideally, they should 404, or redirect to userid 53's avatar url, or... something other than link to some user's image. As a matter of fact - they don't even link to user 53's image right now. I have no idea WHERE it's getting that image from.

I can confirm that issue , thank you for reporting , it will be fixed in next vBSEO version.