Avatar and Gravatar are frequently used words in WordPress and so many newbies wanted to know about it.  In this post will check what are avatar and Gravatar in WordPress, Why You Should Use a Gravatar Profile, How to Create the Gravatar Profile, how to use them in WordPress and How WordPress Display the Avatars.

What are Avatar and Gravatar in WordPress?

The word avatar used for a user’s profile image in online communities. An avatar can be a user image or a cartoon or an illustration. A user can customize their avatars as per their needs to differentiate from others.

Gravatar is a web service that allows users to create globally recognized avatars and use the same image in all websites which supports Gravatars. Gravatar.com owned by Automattic which was founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. It allows users to create a profile which associates their image which is called avatar with their email address.

Gravatar is globally recognized as millions of people and websites using Gravatars and so many websites like WordPress has built-in support for Gravatars.

WordPress websites will display the visitor’s avatars beside their names when the user comments on the website.

Why You Should Use A Gravatar Profile:

Recognition: If you’re a blogger or business owner you should have a Gravatar profile. Gravatar helps using the same profile on all websites and this will make easy for users to recognize the person more easily on all websites or platforms.

Improves the Branding and Trust: Maintaining one user profile across all platforms will increase the branding and credibility of you and your blog or business.

Improves interactions: Gravatar makes easy to identify the brand or person easily across all platforms. This makes easy to carry the trust and conversations on any platforms.

Loyal commenter: A comment with a recognizable avatar increases the credibility on your opinion.

Increase Traffic: If you regularly comment on numerous websites with a recognizable avatar, others users who regularly coming across you may end up clicking your Gravatar to know more about you and your website. This leads to increase the traffic to your website.

Easy to use: Gravatar makes easy to use the same profile on all websites without doing anything else. A user no needs to add the image for every website they joined. User can change the profile image from one location that is Gravatar.com.

How to Create the Gravatar Profile:

A user must have a Gravatar profile in order to use the avatars on any websites that use Gravatars.

Create Gravatar account:

Go to Gravatar.com and sign in using the WordPress.com account. A user must have a WordPress account to create a Gravatar account.

If you don’t have a WordPress account, create one free. You can also create a Gravatar account using Gmail.

Once you logged in to your WordPress.com account, you must approve Gravatar to use your WordPress account.

Upload Your First Avatar:

Now you will be logged in to manage Gravatars page. Click on add one by clicking here to upload your image.

Now you have four options to upload the image. You can upload from your computer by clicking on upload new option. Or you can also add image URL link by clicking on add URL option. You can also take one picture by clicking on from webcam option and taking the picture. You cannot add the image from Past uploads option as this is the new Gravatar profile and must not have any previously uploaded images. This option you can use later once you have uploaded images to Gravatar profile. Click on any three options and upload your profile image.

Crop and choose rating:

Once uploaded the image, crop and select the appropriate rating to classify the image. Your avatar was successfully added and this image will appear beside your name when you comment on websites that support Gravatars.

Now you’ll be redirected to manage Gravatars page. Here you can add a new image and remove the image.

Update profile:

Now go to my profile page and update your information which will be visible to the users who clicked on your Gravatar image.

How WordPress Display The Avatars:

Whenever a user commented on any WordPress websites, as WordPress has built-in support for Gravatars, it will search for their Gravatar profiles matching with their email address and display their images beside their names.

In order to display the visitor’s avatars beside their names who comment’s in any WordPress website, the admin must enable avatar display in comments settings from settings >> discussions.

Whenever admin enabled to display the avatars, WordPress will search for their Gravatar profiles matching and display their images. If they don’t have Gravatar profile, no image will be displayed.

Here admin can select whether to choose a default avatar or Gravatar logo or any other from discussion settings.

If you have any questions, let me know via comment section.

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