1. This question was added on when I asked in a reply how you get the initials in a circle by default when the user has not supplied their own Avatar. You said that the Leira Letter plugin did it. I installed this plugin, but my forums still show an empty circle for users that have not specified an Avatar for their account. So what am I doing wrong here?

also enabled here?

Wordpress > Dashboard > Settings > Discussion > Default Avatar > "Letters (Generated)"

1. How does a registered user of my WP website gain access to their Forum account profile? I know that <url>/forums/account will take them there. But aside from providing that link on the page, how does the user themselves get to that page? Once they have created a post/reply, they can get there by clicking on their name on the post/reply, but how do they get to that page without previously adding a post or reply? This is the original/initial question.

Your users can access her profile via the menu item My Profile

Forum Menu

or via the widget wpForo User Profile and Notifications

wpForo Widgets

watch this video > https://www.screencast.com/t/pWG0E28P

Thanks for your efforts Chris. 

I don't feel like I am communicating my questions/issues to you correctly.

There was never an issue with assigning a picture by specifying a URL or uploading an avatar. These work as expected; and as you have illustrated above.

The two questions/issues are:

1. How does a registered user of my WP website gain access to their Forum account profile? I know that <url>/forums/account will take them there. But aside from providing that link on the page, how does the user themselves get to that page? Once they have created a post/reply, they can get there by clicking on their name on the post/reply, but how do they get to that page without previously adding a post or reply? This is the original/initial question.
2. This question was added on when I asked in a reply how you get the initials in a circle by default when the user has not supplied their own Avatar. You said that the Leira Letter plugin did it. I installed this plugin, but my forums still show an empty circle for users that have not specified an Avatar for their account. So what am I doing wrong here?

Note: I am unable to Paste screenshots into this post, as I am able to do in my own forums; as you have done above.

Thanks,

Jeff

This is not wpForo core related issue. The problem may come from, UM, Lazy Load, optimizing plugin from the theme or another plugin in your website, you have to find out where is the problem coming from.

WpForo has 3 avatar variants, if default avatar is selected wpForo uses WordPress avatar system so if the issue on WordPress will be solved wpForo will show the avatars correctly.

How you see in the screenshots below, my avatar is showing correctly, that's because I have added the avatar by wpForo account.

https://wpforo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-08-28_15-04-47.png

https://wpforo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-08-28_15-03-05.png

https://wpforo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-08-28_15-03-32.png

Deleted all caches; delete user cache; refreshed Forum page twice; no Avatars. 

Perhaps I am missing a step.

I am by no means a WP expert.

Not sure what I was expecting to see from this, but no change that I can see.

fyi

But, I am not sure you answered my question in the first post above. I may have a cache problem, but the question remains, how does a user edit their Forum profile if they have never posted/replied before? Where is the link to that? I am sure it is somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. 

Afterwards, I found that <siteurl>/forums/account does allow the user to get there, but should there be a link to this somewhere on the forums page?

Thanks again. 

Posted by: @jeffjjones

I can edit my profile once I have added a reply/topic by clicking on my name/nickname next to the topic/reply.

Question: how does a user setup their profile Avatar (e.g. access their forum user profile) before they have posted/replied? I can't figure out how to tell my customers to access their profile until they have posted/replied.

It seems there is a cache issue.

Please follow the steps below: 

1. Please navigate to Dashboard > Forums > Dashboard admin page, click on the and button.

2. If you have a cache plugin installed exclude the wpForo forum page from your cache plugin. Here is good information about that:   https://wpforo.com/community/faq/wpforo-and-cache-plugins/

3. Delete all caches and press CTRL+F5(twice) on the frontend and check again.

Posted by: @jeffjjones

Follow-up: here on this site, I see that if the user has not setup a profile avatar, then you display what appears to be the first-letter of their name ("J" in this case) in a green circle. How do I enable that feature on my forums? https://birdersdiary.com/forum/

You need "Leira Letter Avatar" plugin for that.

Question: how does a user setup their profile Avatar (e.g. access their forum user profile) before they have posted/replied? I can't figure out how to tell my customers to access their profile until they have posted/replied.