i have a moving gif size 50x50 pixels with a size of 6748 bytes. i tried to put the URL (stored on freeservers.com) in the "You can enter an URL of your avatar:" box and click the submit button, it does its stuff, blah blah blah. but instead of having my custom icon shown, it shows the alien head (first icon).
i tried uploading it directly to the server, but no luck.
why?

after you select where you want the custom avatar to come from, you need to check again to make sure that USE A CUSTOM AVATAR is selected. After you find the address of the avatar, it automatically unchecks the radio button. Weird, i know...

well, what do you know...
it didn't work at the internet cafe, but it worked here at home
maybe different browser settings...

I had some problems with it too, selected it about dozen times, it was alien's head, it's too big, it's not a valid jpg/gif, blah blah.. At least I got it working, I didn't give up

You know that default URL it sticks in there? "http://www." ?

My problem was I erased the URL because I didn't want to use a URL and I wanted to upload the custom icon.

Since I erased the URL each time I tried, it assumed the empty URL was the URL I wanted to use because it was changed. Since it decided I was linking to the empty address box, it would not let me use a custom icon and I always got an "alien head".