I prefer unreal portal over the IPB Portal by Defuse since it makes use of all of your skin wrappers, anyway,
If you want to have avatars in your news post, got to the admin panel > Look and Feel > Manage Skin and Templates.
Select your skin and in the dropdown choose Manage Templates and CSS.
Now on the right part of the panale, scroll down until you see skin_uportal
Next choose News_block
then Finally replace the coding inside with this: <tr><td class='row2'><img src="./uploads/profile/photo-{$fetch['id']}.png" onError="this.style.display='none'" width="100px" height="100px"/><else /><img src="./uploads/profile/photo-{$fetch['id']}.jpg" onError="this.style.display='none'" width="100px" height="100px"/><else /><img src="./uploads/profile/photo-{$fetch['id']}.jpeg" onError="this.style.display='none'" width="100px" height="100px"/><else /><img src=./uploads/profile/photo-{$fetch['id']}.gif" onError="this.style.display='none'" width="100px" height="100px"/> <b>{$this->lang->words['posted_by']}</b><if test="authorIsGuest:|:$fetch['author_id']==0"> {$fetch['author_name']}<else /> <a href='{parse url="showuser={$fetch['id']}" template="showuser" seotitle="{$fetch['members_display_name']}" base="public"}'>{$fetch['members_display_name']}</a></if> @ {$fetch['post_date']}</td> </tr> <tr> <td class='row2'><if test="limitNewsHeight:|:$newsforum_height==1"><div style='max-height: {$newsforum_height_limit}; width: 100%; overflow: auto'><else /><if test="limitNewsWidth:|:$newsforum_width==1"><div style='width: 100%; overflow: auto'></if></if>{$fetch['post']}<if test="limitNewsHeight:|:$newsforum_height==1"></div><else /><if test="limitNewsWidth:|:$newsforum_width==1"></div></if></if> {$fetch['attachmentHtml']}<br/></td> </tr> <tr> <td class='row2'> <b>{$this->lang->words['comments']}</b> {$fetch['comments']} :: <a href='{parse url="showtopic={$fetch['tid']}" template="showtopic" seotitle="{$this->lang->words['view_comments']}" base="public"}'> {$this->lang->words['view_comments']} </a></td> </tr>Live Demo:
http://clubsyn-x-treme.com/-X-Base