Shortly before the board went kaboom earlier this month I made the decision to allow board members to use avatars. That is still the case. Avatars must be stored elsewhere on your personal website or on an image hosting site like photobucket (that's an example, not an endorsement

Emails and Private Messages
In the past I only allowed emails through the board because they are not stored on the server. I made this decision based on the fact that I pay for this storage, and I was unsure how much space would require if I allowed users to store private messages. I have decided to allow a limited number of private messages to be sent and stored here, and this practice will continue unless the space requirements become burdensome.
Patrick