Do you have a Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar)? As a loyal fan of the WordPress software that runs each of my weblogs, I feel that it is important to support WordPress in any way that I can. Because this blog focuses on WordPress, that is especially true here.
You may remember that last October Automattic, the company behind WordPress, purchased Gravatar. In the time since then, they have revamped the infrastructure of Gravatar to drastically speed things up, integrated it into the WordPress.com platform, and then updated the Gravatar WordPress plugin to function better with self-hosted WordPress blogs.
If you don’t already have a Gravatar, I recommend you first sign up with Gravatar for a free account using whatever e-mail address you normally use to leave comments. Once confirmed, it will then prompt you to upload the avatar you want to use. You’ll need to use the e-mail address used for your Gravatar in the e-mail address field of the comment form (all in lower case) when leaving a comment for the Gravatar to display properly next to each comment.
Now that Automattic is backing it, and WordPress.com blogs have integrated them, I think that over time Gravatar will continue to grow and the service will continue to get better. It is with that belief that I decided to add individual Gravatars to the comments on this blog (I also revamped the comments section to better support it). I would also like to see other self-hosted WordPress blogs begin to support Gravatars as well (many currently either support MyBlogLog avatars, or no avatars at all), so what I decided to do is update this post with an outbound link to your blog if your blog supports Gravatars.
Here is what you need to do to get an inbound link to your homepage:
- Update your blog to display the commentators Gravatar with their comment. This can easily be done by installing one of the many Gravatar plugins (including the official Gravatar WordPress plugin) and then calling the plugin somewhere in your comments.php file. Depending on the theme, it will usually go in the commentblock section. If your blog already supports Gravatars, skip to step 2!
- Leave a comment below with a link to your blog.
It is really that easy! I will then confirm your blog displays Gravatars with the comments and update this post with a link to your blog’s homepage, giving you a quality inbound link and hopefully some additional traffic. I’d like to turn this post into a showcase of WordPress.org blogs that support Gravatar!
If you have any questions, comments, or just want to test your Gravatar, you can also leave a comment below. Also, if you’d like to help further the cause, you are also welcome to publish a post promoting Gravatar and link to this post, but it is not required to get the inbound link!
Self-Hosted WordPress Blogs That Support Gravatar
PS. It's at www.rachelhenwood.com 
Hi Michael, IWPhone don't have anything for the admin section, but I'm pretty sure this plugin will perfectly fits your ...
I've been working on getting my gravatar to work for a while now. Hopefully this works! 
I'm probably going to install this on my blog pretty soon. But, is there an option for an iPhone friendly ...
So many people are missing out if they are not making their blogs/website mobile friendly. Thanks for sharing!
Maria Reyes-McDavis 
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 5:56 am
And what about mybloglog plugin? I think more people are registred with mybloglog over gravatar..
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 6:17 am
@Ricardo - I think that may indeed be the case right now, but as pointed out above, I think that Gravatar will continue to pick up steam.
The MyBlogLog plugin you mention (MyAvatars) tends to slow down blogs quite a bit. So far, I haven’t had any problems with having Gravatars loaded on this blog. It is also a great way to support WordPress!
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Using gravatars for quite a while now. Really like the concept and would like to it in other applications. For instance MS Outlook.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Hi! Thank you for this nice post. I hurried to my WP and installed the plugin after registring my avatar. I wonded how long it takes before it gets updated.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 7:32 am
@ Camiel - I have updated the post with a link to your site!
@ Oyvind - I also verified that your blog is displaying Gravatars and updated the post with a link to your site!
It looks like both of your Gravatars are showing up on this site just fine, so if they aren’t showing up on your site, it may just be a cache issue and will start showing up later today.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I completely agree that using Gravatars is a good plan. I was happy when they bought it as it had been a little slow before that. It seems to be pretty quick now and doesn’t slow down loading like it used to.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Thanks! This was really nice stuff. I registered at Mybloglog as well, this is a new world to me, fun! The avatars got updated now.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Gravatars is fun and makes the comments more attractiv. If you are able to understand german text, I posted a little guide “Gravatar - do you have one?”
http://www.calaelen.com/2007/10/31/gravatar-hast-du-schon-einen/
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Great stuff you have here. I’ve used Gravatars for a while now as well but gave up on them a while back because the site was always down. Glad to see Automatic has stepped in to help.
Now you have to tell me how you did the live comment preview. That is COOL!
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
My blog is fairly new, so I enabled Gravatars from the get go. User-icons are such a staple on other platforms (I was a LiveJournal user for many, many years), it’s great that WordPress.com/org are working to integrate them with the product. It can also help add continuity to your posts, especially if you are like me and tend to use the same icon (or one of two icons) on WordPress, Twitter, etc.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
@ Tony - Let me know if you decide to re-enable Gravatars on your site.
The preview is created by a plugin called “Live Comment Preview”. I will have a review up shortly for the plugin. Currently it doesn’t work for people logged in as Admin, but it works great for everyone else! You can download the plugin here.
@ Christina - I’ve got you added to the list!
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I re-enabled Gravatars today. All seems to be working fine now.
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
@ Tony - I’ve added you to the list!
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I’ve actually created a Gravatar class if you click the link in my name. Loosely coupled and works like a dream - it also has a cache with an expiration date for the avatar - to save on loading times. It can merely load the avatar in locally.
Adam @ TalkPHP.com
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 1:25 am
I think it’s working on my site now. Had some trouble editing comments.php but it seems to work alright.
I’ll tweak it later to make it look more pretty.
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 7:37 am
@ Adam - Thanks for sharing that with everyone!
@ Tysen - I’ve got you added to the list!
Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I like the idea. It makes the web more personal.
Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I thought about it and since I had the time decided to set it up for my blog.
There isn’t much help to be found to hack your existing theme to display Gravatars. I used a partial tutorial from Skippy.net to get the basics and managed it.
You can see it in action at my blog here. Am I too late to make the elite list?
One thing though. The default image looks sort of ugly and bright when the user hasn’t set any gravatar.
Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I set a transparent GIF as the default gravatar image so for people who haven’t signed up for the service will not get a placeholder image.
Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
One of my reader pointed us to this plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easygravatars/ that should make things easier.
Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
@ Marc - Thanks for the comment! I have added you to the above post!
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Thanks for linking to the easygravitar plugin Marc. That’s the one I went with.
Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
gravatars rock! i have them running on my new theme.
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’ve been working on getting my gravatar to work for a while now. Hopefully this works!