Going forward avatars will be required and there will no longer be an option to disable them. It should also be able to backfill all current users without an avatar.

This is because they are a useful tool for handling responsive display of interactions with users. Its also a standard for all social apps these days. Not to mention it causes layout issues if we do not standardize everything related to avatars.

As such we need to include something to accommodate anyone who does not have or want an avatar during registration. Something similar to GitHub where its a graphical identity icon representation of their username.

something like

https://github.com/splitbrain/php-ringicon (my personal preference)

or this

https://github.com/rmhdev/identicon

where it can generate an svg avatar that can be stored in the database to load if they do not have a custom one.