What is Gravatar and Why Use It?
Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is a free service that lets you create a profile image that follows you from site to site. When you comment on blogs or participate in communities that support Gravatar, your photo and profile details appear automatically when you use your email address.
What Gravatar Can Do for You
- Consistency: Your photo or logo shows up wherever you use your email address, which helps people recognize you quickly.
- Professionalism: A clean, consistent image adds credibility to your comments, posts, and online interactions.
- Branding: Add links to your websites and social profiles, along with a short bio, to create a simple digital calling card.
- Saves time: Update your image once in Gravatar and it updates everywhere that supports it.
Gravatar is widely supported by WordPress and many other platforms, which makes it an easy way to manage your online identity.
Create or update your profile by going to Gravatar.com.
You can find my gravatar profile here: https://gravatar.com/christinahills
Let me explain about comments: When you comment on ANY WordPress site, a little tiny photo of you shows up. If you have a Gravatar.com account, then instead of the little grey “Mystery Man”, you can have your own picture show up. See Below…
Without a Gravatar
With a Gravatar
A ‘Gravatar’ is your little avatar (photo) that shows up whenever you comment on your WordPress websites, or any other WordPress Website.
How to Check to See if you Have a Gravatar Account Already:
You can check to see if your email address is associated with a gravatar account already with this tool https://gravatar.com/site/check
So go get a free Gravatar.com account, and then leave a comment below and see if your picture shows up!
(Originally published March 2013)
Excellent direction on Gravatars – Not sure that it’s true for ALL WordPress sites, though. I see variation based on how a user logs in – i.e., if they are using Facebook or Twitter to login to comment, Disqus, or other comment plugin, and then, there’s the variation between WordPress sites hosted by WordPress, and self-hosted wordpress sites on your own domain. Would be great to see a table that sorted all these variations out ! I keep different avatars for each of these options so I can recall how I was logged in when I comment – or “who” I was at the time? Gravatar is great tool, but it is not universal, unfortunately. I’m using my self-hosted WordPress site email and domain name here in your comment section. I’m curious to see which image shows up.
Andrew,
Yes you are correct that it is not true for the WordPress sites where the business owner has decided to use a different commenting system. I only teach the self hosted WordPress, as I don’t believe in using WordPress.com except for hobbyist.
Also, various themes use the gravatar in different ways. In any case, it’s FREE to get one, you set it up once and then you can forget about it.
🙂 Christina
p.s. I like your gravatar photo!
Thank you! and likewise – great Gravatar. I follow your program, and always learn something from you – thank you for always delivering. Agreed on the “hobbyist”…, Go BIG or don’t go. Enjoy your Easter.
Andrew
Andrew,
I agree! Go big or don’t go!
🙂
Christina,
Thank you for the guidance on gravatars. You have a wonderful way of making WordPress features so easy to access. Thanks for everything you do!
Amy,
Nice to see your picture show up here!
This is a test post to view the gravatar I just made
Testing, testing, 1-2-3
Thanks so much for this post. I have a huge problem on my blog. When I comment on other blogs, my Gravatar image shows, but on my own blog it won’t. Please help, I have been battling with this for a while…
http://www.ugochi-jolomi.com
Thanks very much in anticipation.
do you have 2 different email addresses? add both to gravatar
Testing
not quite working yet…
Testing
Thank you
It’s working now! Good job @kristen 🙂
Just leaving a comment to test out my gravatar image
Testing