You've seen this on blogs before. Several people leave comments for a post, and some have a personal picture next to their comment while others have nothing or a generic image.
How do people get their image next to their comments? I'm glad you asked.
One way to get a personalized image to show up with all your posts is to have a gravatar on a blogging platform that is recognized by the WordPress application. When you comment, your gravatar is automatically "brought in" based on the email address you have attached to your own blog and your use of the email address in conjunction with the comment you leave.
"Wait a minute," you're saying, 'gravatar'? What's a gravatar? I thought it was called an avatar?"
An avatar is what you have on a social media site like Twitter and/or Facebook. It's local to that application and doesn't travel when you use the email address attached to your Twitter and/or Facebook account to post to another social media site.
A gravatar, however, is a globally-recognized (thus, the "G.R.") avatar. When you use the email address associated with the avatar to comment on blogs, the image comes along with the email address.
So what if you don't have an avatar on another blogging platform that the WordPress application recognizes, and you're not on WordPress.com where your avatar would be globally acknowledged as a gravatar? What then?
In 2007, the folks behind WordPress, Automattic, purchased a service called Gravatar, and Automattic integrated that service with WordPress, so anyone could obtain a globally-recognized avatar. You sign up with your email address, and then you attach the image that you want to appear when you comment on blogs, and that becomes your global image.
You can have the same image attached to more than one email address if you use different accounts for different purposes. Of course, you can also attach different images to different email addresses.
Want your own gravatar?
Get started now by going to Gravatar.com. It's quick, easy, and free!
Comments