My question is if there is a way to only allow a certain role or trust level to have GIF avatars. I’d like to start with only Admins/Mods - but maybe roll it out to trusted users after a certain time. That would also help with load as I’m just starting this project out.
It is possible to allow only site staff (admin and mods) to upload GIF avatars by adding gif to your site’s authorized extensions for staff site setting and removing gif from your authorized extensions site setting. There are no other groups that this can be controlled for, so you would not be able to gradually add other groups to the list. It would also prevent non-staff users from uploading GIF files to your forum’s posts.