Gravatar, Get Yours Poppin’
by Samuel Febres
I thought I’d do a quick little write up on a service called gravatar that is run by the fine folks over at wordpress.com/org.
A gravatar is nothing more than a Globally Recognized Avatar. Avatars are small photo boxes that you see when people leave a comment on a blog. What a Gravatar does is allow you to have the same ‘buddy icon’ wherever you leave a comment on someone’s blog. Gravatars support is included in new versions of self-hosted WordPress blog, and for all (or almost all) wordpress.com blogs and can also be used by other platforms. As wordpress blogging becomes more popular, you might want to take a few minutes and give your comments a ‘face’ when responding to what someone has written on their blog, and a Gravatar is the easiest way to do this.
So, how do you get a Gravatar? Glad you asked, it’s really easy.
Signing up for a gravatar.com account is FREE, and all that’s required is your email address. Once you’ve signed up you can upload your avatar image and soon after you’ll start seeing it on gravatar enabled weblogs!
Make sure that you enroll with the email address that you use to leave comments on blogs so that it works. Also, you are free to register more than one email address and store more than one gravatar, so if you’d like, you can have one gravatar for one email address, and another gravatar for another email address.
A quick note regarding those who have wordpress.com blogs. You’re partially enrolled for a gravatar already. When you sign up for your gravatar, use the email address and password that you use for your wordpress.com blog to sign up/login. You’ll have the option to use the wordpress.com avatar or upload another. Enrolling in gravatar will now allow you to go to someone else’s (self-hosted) blog with gravatar support, and have your gravatar show when you leave a comment.
Head on over to gravatar.com and put a face to your words. 