The 3W’s Behind Gravatars
Posted on 17. Apr, 2009 by Terry Reinert in General
Have you ever commented on a WordPress blog and wondered why there is a weird looking thumbnail or a big question mark thumbnail next to your comment? Ever wondered why other people who comment have personalized photos showing up with their comments and you don’t? It’s because you don’t have a Gravatar (a Globally Recognized Avatar). With just one free Gravatar account you can have a different picture show up for every email address you use to comment on blogs. No longer shall you be the faceless blog commenter person. No longer shall you be the one without a fancy cool photo next to your comment. From now on, you will be the tricked out cool commenter on the virtual block whose got this whole blog commenting thing down to a moderately well defined not so scientific science.
I’ll keep the history lesson brief… The WHO behind Gravatar’s is Tom Werner… you know, the guy who started WordPress! Ok, history lesson over. See, I told you it’d be brief. Oh, and the WHY behind Gravatar’s was covered in the first paragraph… you know that whole I want to be one of the cool kids feeling you’ve buried deep inside…
As for the WHERE, head on over to the Gravatar website to get your account set up. Create your account and then go into the manage page. From there simply click on Add An Image and select where the image is located. You can choose between your computers hard drive, an image on the web, take an image using your computers webcam, or use a previous uploaded image. Then you add an email address and assign the uploaded photo to that email address.
That’s it, you’re done. Whenever you post a comment on a WordPress blog using that email address your image will show up next to the comment. That is if the blog you commented on has Gravatar’s turned on anyway.
Now go forth and create many Gravitars and be happy for you are now one of the cool kids on the virtual block.
Oh, and I should probably add that Gravatars can be configure on WordPress blogs to only allow pictures with certain MPAA style ratings. Most blogs keep this set to ‘G’ so that no questionable content appears on their blog. So, keep that in mind while you are selecting a picture to be used as your Gravatar. That one of you dancing drunk and half naked at your bachleor party is probably not a good one to use. However, if you are dancing drunk and half naked at your bachleorette party then please feel free to email it to me and I’ll let you know if it is OK to use or not… 
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Terry
17. Apr, 2009
SHOW US YOUR NEW GRAVATAR!
Get a Gravatar set up and then post a comment here to show it off to the whole world… well, show it off my small reader base anyway!