Can a user photo support a remote image? User photos don't appear to be saved in the same method as Assets. I'm looking to do a remote image (from plugin) as the user profile image. I've got the path saving to the column, but the image is not rendering. Anything special I need to do to get that to render?

$user = craft()-&gt;users-&gt;getUserById($userId);
$user-&gt;photo = $gravatarPath;
craft()-&gt;users-&gt;saveUser($user);
Can a user photo support a remote image?


The answer to that is currently "no", in Craft 2.x.  However in the upcoming Craft 3.x, user profile photos are proper "assets" and can be saved to any asset source.


  I'm looking to do a remote image (from plugin) as the user profile image. I've got the path saving to the column, but the image is not rendering. Anything special I need to do to get that to render?


I assume you're just ignoring Craft's default user profile "photo" field and adding your own custom one?  Or are you trying to replace the profile field that Craft uses to display profile photos in the CP with your own custom one.  I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd pull off the later in the current version of Craft 2.x.