If you’ve stumbled around the web for a while, then you’ve probably seen the little pictures that some people use alongside their comments in blog posts, or on forums. So how do you go about getting your own picture against your blog comments or forum posts?
Not all blogs or forums allow their users to have pictures of themselves next to their comments or posts, but those that do tend to utilise the same easy-to-use system.
If you post questions on forums, or leave comments on blog posts and would like to enhance your comments with your photograph or some graphical icon, then read on, as it’s really not that difficult to achieve.
Avatars
The little pictures that you see next to blog comments or forum posts are called avatars. An avatar is a computer user’s representation of themselves in the online world.
In computer games an avatar is often the three-dimensional character that users use to represent themselves, in blogs and forums though, an avatar normally takes the form of a picture of themselves, a cartoon representation, or some graphical icon having some particular meaning or significance to the user.
To be able to use your own avatar on different blogging or forum platforms, there would really need to be a universally accepted system for the use and transfer of avatars across platforms, otherwise you’d have to set up a separate avatar for every system or website that you’re likely to use. This, as you could imagine, would be a real pain.
Fortunately, such a universal system does exist and it’s called GRAVATAR.
Gravatars
A gravatar is a Globally Recognised Avatar and is an free online service to serve avatar images globally and in a defined way.
A gravatar is always square and can be up to 512 pixels wide, although the default standard is 80 x 80 pixels.
To be able to use gravatars, all you need is a valid e-mail address and a suitable image that you want to use as your avatar.
Gravatars are linked to your e-mail address. Whenever you leave a comment on a blog post, the blogging software uses your e-mail address to retrieve your avatar from the gravatar website. However, in an effort to alleviate spam your e-mail address is not used directly, but an encrypted version of it, called an MD5 hash (or message digest), is used instead.
The MD5 hash, derived from your e-mail address, uniquely identifies your gravatar and prevents spam by not sending your real e-mail address in the process. Furthermore, there is no possibility of anyone extrapolating your e-mail address from the MD5 hash!
The MD5 hash of an e-mail address is always 32 characters long, using the characters 0 – 9 and a – f (hexadecimal notation). For example, the MD5 hash of the e-mail address iHaveAn@email.com is:
3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802
To call up the gravatar linked to this e-mail address using its MD5 hash, the blogging software would use something of the following format:
Try clicking on this link and your browser should display the gravatar logo.
Ratings
The gravatar system also has an in-built (voluntary) rating system to try and prevent inappropriate images being displayed.
When choosing your gravatar image, if you feel that it may be unsuitable for certain audiences, you can choose which of the following ratings is most appropriate for it:
- G – Suitable for all audiences
- PG – Possibly offensive, usually for audiences 13 and above
- R – Intended for adult audiences above 17
- X – Even more mature than above
Website managers running websites supporting the gravatar system can set the appropriate rating for their site. For example, if you ran a site that children may visit, then you would set the site’s gravatar rating to G. This would mean that only user’s gravatars with a G rating would be displayed and any gravatar with a higher rating would be replaced by a safe, default image.
Sign Up for a Gravatar
If this captures your imagination and you fancy getting your own avatar, then you will need to sign up with the gravatar system.
To sign up for a gravatar, you need to:
- Go to www.gravatar.com and click on the signup link
- Enter your e-mail address and then click signup
- Check your e-mail and click on the activation link in the e-mail sent to you from gravatar. If you can’t find the e-mail, try checking your junk mailbox just in case your spam filter has caught it by mistake.
- Choose a username and password
- Click on the link to add an image
- Choose an image from your computer and upload it to gravatar
- Crop and size your image
- Choose a suitability rating for your avatar
You should now be ready to go. Your avatar image is now linked to your e-mail address through the gravatar system and will appear when you leave comments on gravatar enabled blogs and forums.
Give it a Go
If you’ve successfully managed to create a gravatar and are now itching to try it out, why not leave a comment on this post to see how it all works?
Nicely written article, covering every aspect of Gravatar 🙂 .
Keep it up!
Richard
Very useful – the sad thing was I went and did it!
did it work?
i hope it did. if no than i just wasted 3 minutes of my life.
Thanks for the help!
Fantastically helpful, even for a techie novice, thanks for the tips
thanks for the great how to article
thanks for the articles
hm, this seems interesting, I think ill give it a try
thank you. God on a Wheel that was easy.
Really helpful thank you.
Testing. Testing. 1….2….3…..
Receiving you loud and clear 🙂
Ahhh a avatar for my blog comments! Cheers!
did it work? well did it?
Yeah! This is very cool information!
Wow.. that is crazy how easy you made that. Most times it takes me hours to figure out new things. This was very easy thanks again!
You’re welcome. Glad it worked for you.
Very helpful. Lets post this comment and see if it works.. Hmmm 🙂
I was wondering how to do this. I just went to the site and picked an image, let’s see if it worked!
Perfect – nice work. thanks!
Just testing. 🙂
Try again. Maybe I needed to wait some time. Think I did it right. Feel free to delete above mishaps.
Thanks again. P
Hi Paula, I deleted your first two attempts. 🙂
Awesome!! So glad this worked!!
Very new to blogging & commenting, hope it’s not bad etiquette to put in a keyword as my name? (Did a quick search on blog etiquette, didn’t see anything that indicated it was bad or too spammy, but let me know.)
So yes! Very helpful instructions, thank you very much. Noticed some people had pictures next to comments, googled it, landed here, and Voila! Super easy to do. Just wanted to say thank you!
Hi, Looks like you’ve got your Gravatar working now, glad my post helped.
In answer to your question, having your keyword in your name can certainly be considered spammy and you may find some of your comments getting deleted on various sites because of it.
I already had a gravatar.com account … and didn’t know (because of a wordpress.com account I once had setup).
Thanks to your post I started using it!
Thanks!!
Stefano
It certainly seems to work. Pleased that I could help.
See if there is my ugly face now next to my comment? 🙂
Awesome, it worked!
Thank you Richard.
Love,
Y
You’re welcome, glad it worked for you.
Have no idea whether this is going to work or not as it doesn’t show up on some sites.
Thanks for the article, it covers every aspect of Gravatar.:)
great post! you made it seem very easy to get an avatar and it was. thanks for the tip 🙂
Glad you found it easy to follow, thanks.
thanks for the tutorial but what I was looking for is how do people do that .. I mean .. like I can see on your blog .. some people use their pictures .. how can I do that ??? ..
all I have is a leave a reply section .. name mail website !! ..
I keep seeing that on blogs !! there is no registration page where I can create a profile and put my picture !! .. and there’s no login with your facebook or something ..
So, How on earth can I do that ??
You need to go to the Gravatar website to create a profile with your picture that is linked to your e-mail address. Whenever you leave comments on a blog using the same e-mail address (if the blog is Gravatar enabled) your picture will automatically show up next to your comment.
Testing out the functionality
Seems to be working fine for you, congratulations.
Thanks for your post. Exactly the information that I was looking for. I appreciate it.
I am having trouble seeing how exacly you post a picture. Where is the button down here?
There is no button on this page to post your picture. You have to go to the Gravatar website first to create a profile with your picture that is linked to your e-mail address. Then, when you leave comments on a blog using your e-mail address (if the blog is Gravatar enabled) your picture will automatically show up next to your comment.
Very useful information. Thanks a lot.
You’re welcome and it looks like you’ve got it working.
Thanks so much! Been wondering how all the cool people did it 🙂
You’re most welcome, and glad to see you have it working.
Ok, here goes! If it doesn’t work, I’m gonna try it again! I would like to know if previous comments I made with this email address will fill in with the new avatar. Do you know if it does? Thanks! Now I’m not a white figure on a gray background anymore…I hope…once I click on “submit comment”
It certainly seems to work and in answer to your question, yes, previous comments that you have left using the same e-mail address should now display your avatar (providing the website in question has Gravatars enabled).
Here is my first effort in trying out my new gravatar
…and it worked!
Yup, just got my Gravatar. I hope it works !
It did 🙂
i am testing to see if my avatar is working
Not sure if I did this correctly ~ here goes
🙂 🙂 🙂
You certainly did do it correctly 🙂
Thank you!! Hope this works – appreciate it.
You have success! Happy New Year!
Thanks for posting this information. 4 years and still getting hits!
Thanks, I suppose people still find the article useful 🙂
Thanks for the info!
You’re welcome and it seemed to help judging by your picture.
Howdy! How ya’ll doin’ on this fine Summer day?
It’s raining!
Thanks!!!
I hope this works, for some reason I had a very ugly default avatar. LOL
Seems to work fine and definitely not ugly 🙂
Thanks for the post.
I still seem to be having a problem getting my photo to show up when I post on blogger blogs using my wordpress account. Any idea why this is?
Hi Kory,
Looks like you have the basic Gravatar working as your photo is showing up in the comments here. Blogger is a Google product now, so I’m not sure if they use the Gravatar system to display photos of commenters. Maybe you need a Google+ account with an associated image for this to work?
Richard
Very helpful, thank you
You’re most welcome, glad it helped.
Trying a different gravatar.
Thanks for the info. I was trying to figure out why my photo wasn’t showing when leaving comments.
You’re welcome, it seems to be working for you now.
let me see eheheeeheee
We can see you 🙂
Really a nice tutorial.
Thanks Jenny and thanks for the link to the handy utility.
Just another comment to test Gravatar. Thank you!
You’re welcome, your Gravatar seems to work fine.
Thank you. This was very helpful.
You’re most welcome.
Really helpful, Thanks.
You’re most welcome.
This has been, by far, the most intelligent and efficient article I found while searching for help on the web. Any technology is very intimidating to me. So, this year’s resolution is to change that. From all the sites I’ve visited, your article got me interested in learning even more. Thank you very much.
Thanks very much Christine, I’m so pleased you found my article helpful.
Good article and points raised regarding website images. We do website design in Tewkesbury Gloucestershire (https://minimalwebdesign.co.uk) and it’s difficult convincing clients to update their photography and not just their website design alone! Thanks guys.